Saigon Is Gone Analysis

In the chapter March, we read about two people. The first, a girl from Vietnam who is being ruthlessly bullied by her schoolmates, because of her ethnicity and race. The second, the school lunch lady who sustains a grudge against the refugees from Vietnam, because her husband who was killed in cold blood by a Vietcong soldier. But the lunch lady 's attitude changes, when she witnesses the young girl from Vietnam being relentlessly, tormented by the rumors that were spread throughout the school like the plague. This is

In its initial years, the Vietnam War had huge amounts of help originating from US citizens. We thought that the war would not take long at all and would make new American Casualties. Their thoughts started to change once they understood that the legislature had sugar coated how "well" the war was going when in actuality, it wasn't looking good. Major offensive attacks were launched by the Viet Cong on major bases. It was a decision of good or bad for the administration, their decision was constantly awful.

Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

In The First Betrayal Josan, a man who works in a lighthouse finds himself in the midst of a violent storm. Consequently the disheartening storm threatens to destroy the light in the tower, causing the ships to crash into the rocks. In the passage- The First Betrayal, Patricia Bray’s use of harsh diction and vivid imagery creates a mood of suspense. For instance, the author’s use of word choice illustrates a tone of fear.

David McLean’s short story “Marine Corps Issue” includes a beautifully vivid scene of Sergeant Bowen, the narrator Johnny’s father, “sitting on the edge of our elevated garden, black ashes from a distant fire falling lightly like snow around him” (620). While this scene is powerful by itself, it can be appreciated even more by understanding the symbolism and allusions embedded in it, as well as the psychological state of the father as he sits “on the edge of the garden with his head down and his eyes closed as if in prayer” (634). This is why McLean’s readers should use literary criticism: it enhances their appreciation for the story’s impact. Prior to the climax, Johnny has spent weeks researching the Vietnam War. The location in which he

Vietnamerica by GB Tran is a graphic memoir about GB Tran’s complex family history during the Vietnam war. The death of his maternal grandmother motivates him to find out his grandparents’ and his parents’ experiencing living in Vietnam during French occupancy. The story shows a theme of how migration, war, and trauma affect not only the people who lived through it by the later generations as well. Throughout the graphic memoir, GB Tran uses color to help set the mood for readers, as well as, help readers understand transitions through the panels. An example of this is shown on pages 78 and 79 where page 78 has a black background to create a bad memory of Tri Huu Tran being captured and questioned about his father.

Much like the Narrator, his parents were born in North Vietnam and immigrated to the south in 1958. This was because catholic priests convinced them that the Viet Cong would commit atrocities when they took over. When the communist reach spread to the south, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s mother fled alongside him and his brother, leaving his father and sister behind in Saigon. This was unintentional, as the author describes; “My mother can’t communicate with my father, so she takes our lives into her hands and decides to flee the town on foot”. Luckily, his father had the same idea and through happenstance, they ended up leaving on the same barge.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the author retells the chilling, and oftentimes gruesome, experiences of the Vietnam war. He utilizes many anecdotes and other rhetorical devices in his stories to paint the image of what war is really like to people who have never experienced it. In the short stories “Spin,” “The Man I Killed,” and “ ,” O’Brien gives reader the perfect understanding of the Vietnam by placing them directly into the war itself. In “Spin,” O’Brien expresses the general theme of war being boring and unpredictable, as well as the soldiers being young and unpredictable.

Regret is a powerful emotion that has the ability to scar someone for the rest of their life. Moments of regret can come from relationships, self-made decisions and life changing events. The idea of regret also applies to “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh and “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien. Although these two literary pieces are very different in many ways, both authors describe the experience of the Vietnam War as a time of regretful decisions that negatively impacted people of both the American side and the Vietnamese side. Both authors tell a story about a character that recalls of flashbacks of the war, where they grieve over the past decisions that have affected them for the rest of their life.

In the chapter when he describes the man he kills, he talks about the state of the dead body by saying, “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole…the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him” (O’Brien Chapter 11). This brutal and horrifying imagery displays an irrefutable element of truth to O’Brien’s writing. Not only does this imagery highlight the truth to his writing, but it also sheds light on the brutal truth about the war in Vietnam. By using imagery as such a strong rhetorical device in his writing, he gives the average person a taste of just how barbaric and cruel Vietnam felt for the people who experience the war first hand on either side of the fighting. Tim O’Brien gives a very detailed and intense description of his time fighting in Vietnam during their war with America.

As Grandmother Chung aged with time, Hoa was forced to carry the burden of all the household chores with no help whatsoever. Despite this especially large burden, along with caring for her own two children, Hoa complained little and persevered through this time of hardship. Out of love and respect for Grandmother Chung and the rest of the family, Hoa put her family as a priority, caring for them from dawn until dusk, so that the house could function and run smoothly during an already rocky time in Vietnam. At times, Hoa fell into a depression due to the exhaustion and pressure of this backbreaking and demanding work; however, she was motivated by her respect for family and continued to work through hardships, especially those within her own self, in order to care for those who lived in the same

She faces racism, discrimination, loneliness, and, over time, a growing sense of love for her new home. Ha’s life is turned “inside out and back again”. Before Ha had to flee Saigon, she was headstrong and selfish, but she was also a girl who loved her mother and couldn't wait to grow up. She wanted to be able to do something before her older brothers did it, and do it better. But most of all, Ha wanted to fit in, to be liked.

The soldiers in the Vietnams war were there for different reasons, some soldiers were forced against their will and some were there by choice. Because of that, each soldier has their own thoughts about the war, O’Brien has interpreted that “The twenty –six men were very quiet: some of them excited by the adventure, some of them afraid”. This clearly shows how the men

Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist that led the Civil Rights Movement, and other movements until his assassination in 1968. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, “Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence” addressing the Vietnam War. The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. Due to the Vietnam War is that plenty of individuals, both Americans and Vietnamese were killed.

Nhat Hanh also saw that people were having a difficult time which government had paid little effort to take care of public lives and welfare during the Vietnam War. He founded that there was a necessity to