Love Lost for Vietnam: A Contextual Analysis of The Vietnam in Me - Term Paper Example

Here Number 27 November Love Lost for Vietnam: A Contextual Analysis of “The Vietnam in Me” In the late 1960s, Minnesota native Tim O’Brien was one of the millions of young American men whose days of unabashedly enjoying the freedoms of youth were interrupted in an instant as they were drafted by the United States government to serve as soldiers in the Vietnam War. As a testament to the continued trauma that encompasses daily life as a Vietnam veteran, O’Brien’s short narrative, “The Vietnam in Me” highlights the inner struggle haunting the author as he tries to live life outside of the shadow hanging over him from his experience in the Vietnam War. Throughout the narrative, readers are introduced to O’Brien’s lingering feelings of intense despair and sorrow over the fact that the most horrid experience of his life was due to his own personal need to find and secure love. This contextual analysis will analyze how O’Brien used his trip back to Vietnam to discover what imprint his war experience truly left on his heart and if he could ever learn to trust love again. In order to establish the connection between love and Vietnam, this analysis will center on O’Brien’s views on his war experience and their impact on his personal life, his driving need to seek out love and how the guilt over his desire for love led to his contributions as a soldier in Vietnam and continually destroy the author’s chances for true happiness. In beginning this contextual analysis, the first area to analyze is how O’Brien viewed his time as a soldier in Vietnam and how this experience impacted his life. As he began his narrative, O’Brien sets an immediate tone for how he felt about his time in Vietnam. “On Gator, we used to say, the wind doesn’t blow, it sucks. Maybe that’s what happened - the wind sucked it all away. My life, my virtue” (1). Although O’Brien has obvious despair over the events that unfolded during his time in Vietnam, he was not alone in these feelings. Despite the over two million men who were forcibly deployed to Vietnam through the draft, as well as those who voluntarily enlisted, American society forgot their efforts to further democracy as these men were essentially treated as outcasts upon their return. According to Harvard Sitikoff in “The Postwar Impact of Vietnam,” the after effects of fighting in Vietnam were more dangerous than being in the war itself. “Although most veterans did succeed in making the transition to ordinary civilian life, many did not. More Vietnam veterans committed suicide after the war than had died in it. Even more - perhaps three-quarters of a million - became part of the lost army of the homeless” (Sitikoff 2). In addition to their own personal struggle, Vietnam veterans also faced difficulty integrating back into American society. “Whether or not they felt proud of their service or sustained war injuries, returning Vietnam veterans received a lukewarm reception for their service,” (Encyclopedia of the New American Nation n.p.) When comparing the narrative’s message of Vietnam being a place of grim and continuous death to this historical information of American soldiers returning home to be forsaken by their fellow countrymen, it is evident that while he survived this experience, O’Brien is forever marked by the physical and emotional scars he incurred while he was at war. To further analyze how O’Brien’s wartime trauma impacted his life in a post-Vietnam world, it is necessary to first begin discussing his life after returned home from the war. In 1994, 25 years after he was first sent to Vietnam, O’Brien was still locked in a guilt-ridden sense of denial over what had transpired a quarter century earlier. “I have just taken my first drug of the day, a prescription drug, Oxazepam, which files the edge off anxiety. Thing is, I’m not anxious, I’m slop. This is despair. This is a valance of horror that Vietnam never approximated” (4). By addressing his own internal feelings of remorse and hopelessness over his involvement in Vietnam, O’Brien demonstrates the desire to be forgiven from society. This inherent need for social redemption can stem from a personal sense of morals as well as the reception that O’Brien and his fellow comrades faced when returning home after their time at war. Along with O’Brien’s Vietnam experiences haunting his memories, another key aspect of the narrative is his overwhelming need to seek love and approval from others at all costs. As O’Brien himself states, his drive to secure feelings of love was responsible for him being in Vietnam in the first place. “I had come to acknowledge, more or less, the dominant principle of love in my life, how far I would go to get it, how terrified I was of losing it. I had done bad things for love, bad things to stay loved. Kate is one case. Vietnam is another” (4). Upon receiving his notice, O’Brien considered fleeing to Canada or facing jail time but, put his own feelings aside to ensure he would have the support of those he loved. “But in the end I could not bear the prospect of rejection: by my family, my country, my friends, my hometown. I would risk conscience and rectitude before risking the loss of love... I was a coward. I went to Vietnam” (4). Upon analysis, O’Brien’s inner conflict over this fact is evident. As a Vietnam veteran, he must come to terms with the fact that he let his need for acceptance and love overtake his own personal sense of ethics. What would his life have been like if there was no Vietnam to destroy it? As far as O’Brien is concerned, he can never answer that because of love and in a strange way, he loves his experience in Vietnam for showing him the immense power of that emotion. “For me, at least, Vietnam was partly love... You love your mom and dad, the Vikings, hamburgers on the grill, your pulse, your future - everything that might be lost or never come to be” (4). Although Vietnam nearly destroyed O’Brien, his time in the war torn country taught him how to love and be thankful for every aspect of life. Another area where love and Vietnam cross in this text is with the author’s relationship with his significant other, Kate. Beginning with the first and positive aspect of O’Brien’s relationship with Kate, it is clear that he respects her ability to help him see Vietnam in a new light. “... Kate’s presence has made me pay attention to the details of here and now, a Vietnam that exists outside of the old perimeter of war” (3). By sharing his war experiences with Kate and traveling with her to Vietnam, it is clear that O’Brien is, at the very least subconsciously, attempting to move past the horrors he faced while a foot soldier in Vietnam. In sharing his Vietnam experience with Kate, O’Brien not only gets to see the country through new eyes as she views it, he also gets the opportunity to reaffirm that the events he witnessed were truly horrific in nature. “...Kate walks up, hooks my arm, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t have to, leads me into a future that I know will hold misery for both of us. Different hemispheres, different scales of atrocity. I don’t want it to happen. I want to tell her things and be understood and live happily ever after. I want a miracle”(8). Upon analysis of the text, it appears evident that the author’s inner conflict with love will make any relationship doomed from the start. O’Brien cannot give his full heart to another seeing as the last time he took such a serious step, he ended up in Vietnam and his life was never the same. According to Stan Tian of Health Guidance, O’Brien’s experiences are not uncommon. “The emotional effects of war on soldiers very often hinders their future achievements too as they find it impossible to imagine or plan” (n.p.). With this realization, the analysis can transition to the last point of review which consists of discussing O’Brien’s underlying mental catacombs of guilt over his contributions to the Vietnam War and how these feelings of guilt entrap any chance he has at living a happy life. Starting with his sense of guilt, O’Brien is very vocal about his own personal desire to show the people of Vietnam remorse for what happened to them during those violent decades of the past when he returns to LZ Gator in 1994. “In a strange way, the occasion has the feel of a reunion - happy faces, much bowing. ‘Me Wendy,’ says a middle-aged woman. Another says, ‘Flower.’ Wendy and Flower: G.I. nicknames retrieved from a quarter-century ago... Dear God. We should have bombed these people with love” (2). With this statement, O’Brien connects his guilt with love. This full circle understanding of how love was responsible for O’Brien being in Vietnam but, also the love he learned to appreciate as he struggled to survive during the war demonstrates the power of this emotion that lives inside him. “Intimacy with death carries with it a corresponding new intimacy with life. Jokes are funnier, green is greener. You love the musty morning air. You love the miracle of your won enduring capacity for love” (O’Brien, 4). Upon analysis, the real struggle hidden within the lines of “The Vietnam in Me” is the fact that O’Brien understands that the love that put him in Vietnam is also what he needs to utilize to heal himself from the scars of the war. After reviewing the focal aspects of “The Vietnam in Me,” it is clear O’Brien’s driving motivators in this text are the guilt he feels over his involvement in Vietnam, the inherent conquest to seek love at the cost of accepting his draft notice and finally the understanding that the love which is haunting his past is necessary for him to continue with is present. Through this contextual analysis, the message that O’Brien stresses to convey is that the memories and impact of Vietnam that live inside him are based in love. While it is true that the fear of losing love caused O’Brien to accept his tour in Vietnam, the forgoing of loving others during his time at war is what caused the internal conflict of seeing the devastating effects of misdirected love. By redirecting his focus on love and practicing the emotion in its truest and most unselfish form, O’Brien uses his narrative to show that he will conquer the memories of Vietnam left in him. Works Cited Encyclopedia of the New American Nation. The Vietnam War and Its Impact – American Veterans. 2011. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. O’Brien, T. The Vietnam in Me. The New York Times on the Web. 1994. Web. 27 Nov. 2011. Sitikoff, H. The Postwar Impact of Vietnam. Modern American Poetry. 1999. Web. 27 Nov. 2011. Titan, S. The Emotional Effects of War on Soldiers. Health Guidance. 2011. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. Read More