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Thea De Guzman
Vietnam Reading Analysis
The Vietnam War is a war that can never be forgotten by many Americans due to the horrifying,
unfortunately situations that the soldiers had to face. The impact of the war caused great amount of
psychological effects on the soldiers. From the story The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien explains the
significant changes that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross goes through as he leads his group into the battles and
only to see the death of Ted Lavender. From the beginning, Cross leads his group and orders them
around to focus on battles while he day dreams about the girl he loves named Martha. At times he
would even imagine different situations every time he reads the “love letters” from Martha trying to
persuade himself that he loves her when he knows that she actually does not when he is supposed to be
leading his men to battle. So when Ted Lavender dies, Cross goes through a turning point and realizes
reality that he is in war and needs to lead his group. He eventually takes full responsibility for Lavender’s
death because of his lack of leadership and lack of involvement in the war because he was too busy
focusing on Martha. Martha was the girl who made this man feel a sense of home and love but he
eventually had to drop it for the sake of his men which create a psychological effect on him. The death
of one of his men was an eye opening to how easy it is to lose a life and how devastating it is for him to
realize that he could of prevented it from happening if he did not day dream about a girl who does not
even love him back.
From a different view point of the Vietnam War is from a man named Arthur E. Gene Woodley,
Jr. In his “Witnessing Atrocities on Both Sides,” he emphasizes on the physiological impact that he went
through during the Vietnam War. Just like Cross, he went through changes that caused him severe pain.
Woodley suffered from power and the sense of carelessness because he only had one duty which was to
finish his mission and to never be named as a soldier of failure. From what he saw in the Vietnam War
like the skinning of his comrade by the cold, heartless Vietnamese, he began to change to a soldier who
was willing to slaughter men just to fight the war. His overall message in his article was to show that the
Vietnam War impacted the lives of soldiers and how morals were forgotten throughout the fight. There
were several soldiers who committed the same crime he did which was killing without remorse and
suffering from it. In the end, he still suffers from regret and nightmares to what he did in the Vietnam
War. The Vietnam War was a hideous battle that caused psychological effects on the soldiers during the
war and after the war.