Vietnam Assignment
Jordan M and Tyler J
Summary of "The Man I killed" and "Song of Napalm
In the text "The Man I Killed" the author talks about the man he killed who was a young man fighting for the Vietcong. He gives disgusting details about what he looks like after he shot him. Also, he imagines what his life was about and what it could have been if he didn't kill him.
In the poem "Counting Small-boned Bodies" the author describes how there are people sitting behind a desk knowing that there are a lot of young soldiers dying out there. Many innocent young people are dying in the war. They also don't know the purpose for fighting, yet the higher military officers don't care.
Important Passages
"If we could only make the bodies smaller, maybe we could get a whole year's kill in front of the desk." Shows how the people knew what was going but they still let many young soldiers die. "He had a whole life ahead of him". This is important to the whole reading because it shows that if these people weren't dying they would have a whole long life ahead of them to experience and its not fair that they should be killed. Its the theme of the war that most of the people being killed were young.
Discussion Questions
The author is trying to show that the war is killing many teenagers everyday who have a long life ahead of them to experience. The war impacts people because their families will be hurt forever. Also the war impacts the soldiers that make it out alive because there going to have flashbacks about the war causing them to be depressed. The war is taking away many innocent lives, yet the people sitting behind a desk don't care.
Remembering Vietnam
The picture shows how the soldiers are going to be depressed for the rest of their lives because all their brothers died. We discussed in class that many of the soldiers may have PTSD and the man in the photo possibly looks like he is having some depression. The soldiers that were there with them will never forget all the names on the memorial.
Vietnam War - Combat Footage HD Quality
Vietnam in HD
This shows that the war is very tough and the soldiers have to see their own brothers dying. Many of the young soldiers had never seen so many deaths before so it was hard for them to fight with all that happening. In class we watched letters from Vietnam and in some of the letters the soldiers talked about seeing lots of people dying. Also the video shows the conditions they had to operate and live in which were uninhabitable. There were many bugs and the tropical weather was hard for them to get used to. There were diseases spreading around the villages killing many of the soldiers.