Vietnam Assignment
By Kenna Elliott and Scott Lyman
Summary of Readings
The Man I Killed (Chapter from The Things I Carried) by Tim O' Brien
A soldier kills another soldier from the village of My Khe and cannot stop staring at the brutal scene in front of him. He couldn't help but look at the gruesome scene as the soldiers jaw was in his throat and his eye was completely gone, shaped like a star. He starts thinking about the kind of life this man had, how he had friends, a family, a wife, and how he had probably just gotten out of a university. He seems to be remorseful for his actions and it makes him think about the purpose of the war.
"Thanks" by Yusef Komunyakaa
A Vietnam veteran explains the conditions of being a soldier in guerilla warfare. The only thing that can help in the war is luck. He explains certain situations in which if luck didn't play a part in it, he would have died.
Important Passages
The Things They Carried- The Man I Killed by Tim O' Brien
"The nose was undamaged. The skin on the right cheek was smooth and fine-grained and hairless. Frail-looking, delicately boned, the young man wouldn't not have wanted to be a soldier and in his heart would have feared performing badly in battle. Even as a boy growing up in the village of My Khe, he had often worried about this." This passage is important to the reading as a whole because it relates back to how he feels about killing this innocent boy, he's describing how he looks and how the boy probably felt about going to war relating back to how guilty he feels and how he feels as if he knows him.
Thanks by Yusef Komunyakaa
"Thanks for the tree between me & a sniper's bullet. I don't know what made the grass sway seconds before the Viet Cong raised his soundless rifle." This passage connects to the reading as whole by showing how clueless the soldiers were. Any at given time a bomb could go off if they take two steps to the right, but if they go left everything would be fine. It explains why the soldiers were so stressed and worried all the time because they couldn't let their guard down.