Originally published in (Re)Collecting the Vietnam War, special issue of Asian American Literary Review 6.2 (Fall 2015): 140-145.
On True War Stories
Viet Thanh Nguyen
War is hell. Like many Americans and people the world over, I enjoy war stories that depend on what seems to be a disturbing idea. I have a personal stake in such stories, having been born in Vietnam but raised, or made, as it were, in America. A war brought me from over there to over here, an experience I share with millions of my fellow Americans. Sometimes I wonder whether my circumstances, or what my parents endured, can be called a war story, and how that story can be told. In “How to Tell a True War Story,” from The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien says,
War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. The truths are contradictory.
I have only experienced the half of war that is not any fun. Perhaps that is why thrilling war stories captivate me, the ones with “gore galore,” in the words of art critic Lucy Lippard. But as good as those war stories are, perhaps they are not actually true.
One of my early encounters with a true war story was reading Larry Heinemann’s Close Quarters, which shocked me when I was perhaps eleven or twelve. Near the end of this Vietnam War novel, the young all-American soldier who is the narrator puts a gun to the head of a Vietnamese prostitute named Claymore Face. He gives her a choice: blow him and his friends or get blown away. The novel renders no judgment on this rape, leaving me alone with my feelings, without the comfort provided by the author telling me that this was wrong. I could not forgive Heinemann for scarring me with such an ugly scene until I wrote a novel myself decades later. This is when I realized that some things are so nasty the writer should simply show them as they are. The ugliness is, and must be, unforgettable.
Still. It did not matter if Heinemann’s sympathies might lie with Claymore Face, because the story belonged to the American soldier. I dimly realized a few things that would take me years to articulate. First: better to be victimizer than victim. That’s why America’s Vietnam War stories, which often dwell on the bad things that Americans have done, depend on turning the Vietnamese into bit actors. As any movie star will attest, it is preferable to take center stage as antihero than take to the wings as virtuous extra. This is why bleak Vietnam War stories still do well in an America that sometimes does its hardest to deny its sometimes nasty behavior. Americans applaud these stories and successors like Zero Dark Thirty, for even if they depict Americans torturing others, their audiences know it is far more interesting to torture than be tortured. Or, as Milton’s Satan observed, better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
The second thing I learned from Heinemann: rape was hard to account for in a certain kind of war story, the one that audiences call “good.” If, in a good war story, war makes you a man, does rape make you a woman? If women are unmade by rape (as are the male victims of rape), Close Quarters shows that the kind of man made by rape was not the kind anybody wants around. That’s why Americans welcome home their soldiers without wanting to think too much about what they might have done over there. Killing is not the problem. No one is concerned that Clint Eastwood can celebrate, in his latest film, an American sniper who killed one hundred and sixty people in a rather intimate way, seeing their faces through his scope. But rape? Look away. The other side does it, not us.
The last thing I learned from Claymore Face was that she did and did not have my face. She was Vietnamese and a gook. So was I in the eyes of some Americans, like John McCain and a host of Hollywood screenwriters and directors who had killed nearly as many Vietnamese on screen as had died in the war. And yet I was also an American. People like me, the Vietnamese who fled to the United States after the war’s end, were living proof of the success of one of America’s greatest desires, to win the hearts and minds of others. America’s ability to do so was the central message of John Wayne’s propaganda movie set in Vietnam, The Green Berets. The wrongheadedness of this desire is inadvertently shown in the infamous final shot. Wayne, the American soldier, walks into the sunset with a young Vietnamese orphan in need of his paternal benevolence. The sun is setting in the South China Sea, but that sea lies east of Vietnam. Americans cannot see straight sometimes, which is why many thought that Iraqis would treat their invaders as liberators, even though Americans themselves would never do any such thing.
I heard a different kind of war story as I grew up among Vietnamese refugees. There was the one about a man who held up a mom-and-pop shop in a small Vietnamese town with a hand grenade. Or the one about a mother who fled that small town when the communists arrived, taking her sons but leaving behind her adopted teenage daughter to take care of the shop, believing she would soon return. Mother and daughter would not see each other again for twenty years. Or what about the time that mother and her husband opened another shop in San Jose, California, and were shot on Christmas Eve in an armed robbery? Or how they cried when they received letters announcing the deaths of their parents in their now lost homeland? Or how they worked twelve-hour days every day of the year except for Christmas, Easter, and Tet?
Those were my parents. Their stories are typical of refugees, although when I mention them to other Americans, an uncomfortable silence usually ensues, since these things did not happen to most Americans. But are not these stories also war stories? For many people, and according to O’Brien’s definition, no. There is nothing fun about losing home, business, family, health, sanity, or country, some or all of which happened to so many of the Vietnamese people I know. You don’t get a medal for these kinds of things, much less a belated parade or memorial, and hardly ever a movie. What you get are war stories told about the soldiers who came to your country to save you from communism, just as we are now getting war stories about the soldiers who went to Iraq and Afghanistan. Heinemann’s novel was part of a whole wave of stories that refought the Vietnam War on page and screen. These stories are how most global audiences know this war, the first war in history where the loser gets to write the history for the world. While the Vietnamese have written history, too, their stories stand little chance against the shock and awe of the American military-cinema-industrial complex. But as novelist Gina Apostol says of this complex: “Does it not suggest not only an economic order but also a psychiatric disorder?”
This disorder thrives on the excitement of good war stories, which, like O’Brien, overlook at least two things that war happens to be. First: war is profitable. Few storytellers want to discuss this because the fact that war makes an enormous amount of money is either disturbing to most Americans or not disturbing at all, due to the aforementioned disorder. Second: war is a bore. Photographer Tod Papageorge’s book, American Sports, 1970: Or How We Spent the War in Vietnam, shows how trivial the war was for many Americans. The photographs simply capture Americans playing in sporting events or watching them. Only the last photograph of the War Memorial in Indianapolis acknowledges the war, with these words on the facing page: “In 1970, 4,221 American troops were killed in Vietnam.” Even as American soldiers died abroad, life went on at home. So it is with America’s wars in the Middle East, akin to a sporting event for those Americans not directly involved, which is to say the overwhelming majority. Papageorge’s photos are true war stories of life inside the war machine for civilians, most of whom are not paying much attention, if at all, to the wars fought in their name. What is most disturbing about his photos is the implication that if war is hell, then this is what hell looks like, Americans enjoying seemingly innocent pastimes.
Being acclimated to hell is part of our disorder. But listen carefully. Can’t you hear the dull hum of the war machine we live in, the white noise of a massive mechanism oiled by banalities, bolted together by triviality, and enabled by passive consent? In “The Brother Who Went to Vietnam,” from her book China Men, Maxine Hong Kingston writes that
Whenever we ate a candy bar, when we drank grape juice, bought bread (ITT makes Wonder bread), wrapped food in plastic, made a phone call, put money in the bank, cleaned the oven, washed with soap, turned on the electricity, refrigerated food, cooked it, ran a computer, drove a car, rode an airplane, sprayed with insecticide, we were supporting the corporations that made tanks and bombers, napalm, defoliants, and bombs. For the carpet bombing.
From carpets to carpet bombing, war is so woven into society’s fabric that it is almost impossible for a citizen not to find war underfoot even at home.
For many, this is not a good war story, but a bad one they would rather avoid. This story says that all war is, in a sense, total war. Opening a refrigerator is a true war story. So is paying one’s taxes. Complicity is the truest war story of all, which is why a blood-drenched movie like Apocalypse Now tells only half the true war story. It is about the heart of darkness over there, in the jungle where the white man discovers that he, too, is a savage, the heart of darkness beating within him. But the other half of the true war story would show that the heart of darkness is also where we reside, over here, all around us. Americans do not wish to confront this domestic horror directly, which is why they substitute for it stories of zombies and serial killers and the like. Fictional violence and monstrous horror are easier to stomach than understanding how opening our refrigerator or watching a football game connects us to war, which is not thrilling at all. The true war story is not only that war is hell, a statement that never prevented us from going to war but has always gotten us to run to the movie theater or pick up a book. The true war story is also that war is normal, which is why we are always going to war. War is boring, a bad story most people do want to hear. War involves all of us, and that is more discomfiting than any horror story over here or blood-and-guts story over there.
The fact that my family of refugees has become living proof of the American Dream is also a true war story, my parents wealthy, my brother a doctor on a White House committee, and myself a professor and novelist. To many Americans, we are evidence that the war was worth it, since it gave us the chance to be better Americans than many Americans. But if we are a testament to the immigrant story, we are only here because the United States fought a war that killed three million Vietnamese (not counting the three million others that died in neighboring Laos and Cambodia during the war and immediately after). Filipinos are here because of the U.S. war that killed a million people in the Philippines in 1898. Koreans are here because of the Korean War that killed three million. We can argue about the blame, but the list goes on, as Junot Díaz also understands. In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, he tells us how
just as the U.S. was ramping up its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched an illegal invasion of the Dominican Republic (April 28, 1965). (Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq). A smashing military success for the U.S., and many of the same units and intelligence teams that took part in the ‘democratization’ of Santo Domingo were immediately shipped off to Saigon.
Many Americans forgot or never knew this true war story. If Americans think of the arrival of Dominicans to America at all, they most likely think of it as an immigrant story.
But what if we understood immigrant stories to be war stories? And what if we understood that war stories disturb even more when they are not about soldiers, when they show us how normal war is, how war touches and transforms everything and everybody, including, most of all, civilians? War stories that thrill may be true, but they only make war more alluring, something that happens somewhere else, over there. Another kind of true war story reminds us of something much more uncomfortable, that war begins, and ends, over here, with the support of citizens for the war machine, with the arrival of frightened refugees fleeing wars that we have instigated. Telling these kinds of stories, or learning to read, see, and hear boring stories as war stories, is an important way to treat the disorder of our military-industrial complex. Rather than being disturbed by the idea that war is hell, this complex thrives on it.
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Nguyen writes hear that many people all over the world enjoy war stories and especially the more gruesome and disturbing ones. This clearly shows that it’s become a common part of our society today to trade war stories amongst one another as though they were fairy tales rather than the truly horrific events they are. Wars bring death, sadness and atrocity yet we welcome it’s stories. I find this to be very disturbing but very true for a majority of people worldwide—especially those in America. We make War into novels and movies and use colorful pictures in our history books and always making excuses and saying that these wars are all started for good and that we are fighting for pure righteousness. War is nothing like that. War only takes, it never gives and it’s quite a sad thought to see people smiling and laughing at tales of war. We have become so desensitized that we no longer realize the true weight of war. Most people only know war as higher taxes and higher gas prices but not as mass murder, genocide, rape, the things that are truly war. It does not help when a lot of soldiers who come back from wars often understate it’s true horrors: about how two of their friends were killed, one lost his legs and another is so mentally traumatized he can barely leave his house. These are what war truly is and I do not think people in today’s society understand it’s true weight.
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I agree Nguyen accuratley depicts an American society that mislead and obsessed in regards to war stories. Using contemporary films as examples, Nguyen allows readers to go more in depth with the content within these war stories. The comparison between Claymore face and American Sniper depicts a mislead society. A society in which rape and murder are accepted and tolerated as soon as it is in the environment of war. Controversial topics as rape and murder are no included into the norms of society. This is the moment that Nguyen depicts a society that has become desensitized to war and its cruelness.
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While I agree that there is a serious issue in the United States with the romanticization of war in general, do you think that the majority of the population shares this view? I think that the media, such as movies, songs, and T.V, tends to portray war in a more positive than negative light, I don’t believe that this is a view that the general population of the U.S. shares. With regards to movies, I believe that there’s a bit of a suspension of disbelief; in other words, if we see war portrayed in film, we tend to pass it off as “just a movie,” whereas many people do have some sort of an idea of the tragedy and horror of war. While I’m not saying that this disconnect from war in media is necessarily a good thing, I just think it’s important to make the distinction that for many people in the U.S, war IS hell, and they do have some sort of understanding of how truly awful war can be. It does beg the question though, to what extent should we/do we disassociate “movies about war” from “actual war”?
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I think this is very accurate and reminds me of the novel 1984 by George Orwell. In the novel the proles, or the regular people, do not even notice that the adversary is constantly changing because infinite war is the same as infinite peace. It becomes a policy not an act.
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My take on what Nguyen is trying to communicate in his essay is that when you get to the bottom of it war makes us forget what it is to be human and basically brainwashes us to see the other humans we are fighting not as humans but as targets, as enemies. It is because of this that war is the way it is, why it is so brutal, why soldiers don’t acknowledge the wrongs they are committing when they are being committed. Because in the end we are all human we are all one why should we kill one of our own?
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Nguyen’s perspective on war, which informs his entire essay, is summarized in the first line of his third paragraph: “I have only experienced the half of war that is not any fun.”
Nguyen’s argument is that war stories need to be more inclusive and that they need to include the boring. Without the “boring” and mundane realities and repercussions of war, the viewer of a work of media is falsely persuaded into only seeing a theatrical rendition of war that fails to capture the long lasting repercussions.
Nguyen utilizes the example of the Vietnamese post-war immigrants as a case example into this reality. He asks a fair question: isn’t the immigration of his family to America from Vietnam a direct result of the war, and thus a war story? He suggests that the answer is yes. And he also suggests that his story is equally valuable if not more valuable than glamorous stories with explosions and weapons.
Nguyen himself is a professor of English, and he studied ethnic studies and English. Interestingly enough, this essay seems to be very interested in the ethnically relevant outcomes.
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The glamorization of war has always been something that has bothered me immensely. It’s easy to forget that terror and bloodshed stem from the heroism which we so praise when said terror is not being inflicted upon our own homes and families. Nguyen does a nice job of reminding the reader that war has more than two sides- that it has is million faces, a million facets. Isn’t it easy, to simply see black and white? The good guy and the bad guy, the hero and the enemy? Every shade of gray, every civilian and child and family caught in the in-between folds of glorified slaughter, must be recognized as well.
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Nguyen’s insight on how America views war and profits from it, shows how people are more willing to be entertained than do what should be right. American people tend to focus on what is appealing rather than what is true when it comes to war. With Hollywood films depicting American soldiers as the heroes, we tend to root for the men of our homeland and disregard their actions for the sake of war. This is how the American military-industrial complex is able to brainwash people into believing America can and will defeat anything that stands in its way. They make us believe we won the Vietnam War, when in reality America was defeated and partly responsible for millions of deaths. People don’t want to focus on the depraved things humans have done to each other, instead they want to create a good vs. evil scenario where its obvious who is playing who. We tend to forget that war is not something to be romanticized, rather it should make us as humans uneasy with the way we could treat other human beings. The fact that many American immigrants were the result of the U.S.‘s involvement in war shows that people were forced into an American life that they couldn’t see any other way out of. Though Nguyen tells us that his family has done well since moving to America, it wasn’t exactly something they initially felt was the right thing to do. A false representation of war is what allows people to misconstrue patriotism with reality. People would rather believe that their country’s involvement in war is for the greater good, when in most instances it causes destruction in humanity. War is hell and no flashy Hollywood studio could ever compare to the real thing.
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War can be seen as a plethora of good’s and bad’s because of the way different sides warrant or criticize it. Nguyen’s statement “Americans cannot see straight sometimes, which is why many thought that Iraqis would treat their invaders as liberators” shows that the war is usually viewed as all things good and necessary because of a lack of understanding on one side’s part and the urge to impress their beliefs on others is enticed (paragraph 10). This isn’t to say that most Iraqis, and other groups in similar scenarios, were happy with their situation but to use war as a means to fix a problem seems completely anti-productive. Saving people from their supposed subjugation by killing them until their reason for oppression is eradicated is completely illogical and ends up doing more harm than good. One side is always quick to see the good war will bring for the other side, it’ll free these people from cruel dictatorships or harshly enforced religion, all while ignoring all the bad that it also brings, such as innocent lives lost or taken advantage of, forced migration, loss of property and loved ones. The intensions of war can be good and maybe even the outcome but only after everything has settled and the majority has stopped caring about all the ramifications war brought about. The good is felt only by the people who think they helped, the bad happens to the others.
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numerous individuals cheer the individuals who take an interest in the amusements of war. War is comprised of numerous occasions that are not generally positive. Nguyen a displaced person from the war says “exciting war stories enamor me, the ones with violence aplenty.” These sorts of minutes show how despite the fact that you can be in an extremely uncomfortable and in a grisly situation your valiance assumes control to offer you some assistance with getting through it.
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I feel this passage gets a handle on the idea of war consummately. For each fighter, each armada, and each gathering going out to war there is blended feelings. In some cases you may feel the pride and respect of battling for your nation, and different times you feel the torment and languishing of battling about what you accept. There is no right meaning of war or no synopsis of what every individual perseveres regularly.
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Nquyen writes about how Americans and other individuals across the globe take interest and enjoyment in war stories. Although war is terrifying and brings death and sadness, our country tends to only look at the good that comes out of it. Our society has accepted war as a common thing. I believe that our country has experienced war as an everyday occurrence and as a way to cope with the mess it makes, and the media portrays war in a positive light. The author also mentions how various war stories get left out. America has never really experienced war as a whole. Every battle is everywhere but our backyards. As a result, we can’t understand the harsh experiences and effects refugees or immigrants go through as a war story, yet these are the true war stories. We need to see how gruesome war is when it hits home and how awful it can be to have the ability to move masses of people out of their country.
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“War is hell” and for that same reason, society is interested in these stories; they are seen like fairy tales. A story about a soldier surviving hell on Earth sounds like a great story but the facts are unpleasant, yet people embrace these stories and glorify them to make them sound like legends. One story that was glorified and made into a movie is the “American Sniper”, a story about a sniper that kills its targets during conflict. For the viewer it’s a thrilling experience to see, yet the fact that its his job to hunt people down isn’t so colorful. Just like Nguyen’s experience reading “Close Quarters” by Larry Heinemann. Nguyen read about the narrator threaten a Vietnamese prostitute to blow him and his friends or die. That was part of his war story and it’s not right. Personally I embrace these war stories; they are from people who decided to put their lives on the line in order to make a change. There are people who don’t embrace these war stories; explaining that war is horrible and that they shouldn’t be glorified. I agree that they shouldn’t be glorified but they should be heard because its the life experience of every soldier and neglecting them outright isn’t right either. War glorification is wrong but hearing them isn’t because they really make a interesting story, sad, but yet entertaining.
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Nguyen explains heroes soldier Army is a contradictory story, compared that experiences in Vietnam. Heroes “US Army”, is a fake opinion. The military troops spread afraid between people. American society is descripted by Nguyen as “victimizer”. To USA people is better to be victimizer than victim. The author explains the reality of the war result a cruel fight with catastrophic consequences. The war causes emotional maladjustment and psychiatric disorders to the victims, such as PTSD and depression. The other side of the story, Americans enjoyed the war movies and stories of war like pastimes. the Americans do not know the horror and scared circumstances that the war produce.
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War has a positive and negative point. The positive points are people from war become independent from other countries. Also, younger people get an experience and they work as a union. On the other hand, the negative points are many innocent people are killed and some of them lose their family, country, job …etc. Also, the country is survival by population but country by war lose their people. Reading the war history brings many lights to the future people, even though it is the most bitter experience.
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This kind of lecture shows the writers to see the realistic side of war. By the contrary, media shows up the “good side” of war. Nguyen describes how war could be affected in society and how this focus is destroying people and and why war is terrifying by his own experience.
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People only wants to hear the blood spill and glorification of the war. They don’t connect the war with their own reality. They only fantasize about how the war’s trilling effects and not relate to the their contribution to the war like taxes. People only want the excitement of the war like battles, but they don’t necessary acknowledge small details of the war they are involved in. For example, they don’t want to address their indirect participation, but rather talk about how many people a soldier killed and how the battle was fought.
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Throughout this essay, Nguyen offers many different activities, states, feelings, and histories that are created by and/or perpetuate/create war. What are some other aphorisms that either Nguyen posits or that you can create on your own? Try to use his examples in the text, but feel free to bring in your own as well. The point of this activity is to rethink what war “is” and how the legacy of the Vietnam War continues today in hybrid and multiple ways.
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The little things people do in their every day lives somehow contribute to the war. It is crazy to think that even if you don’t mean to take a side, you do. Buying a carpet for your house or opening a refrigerator supports the large companies they come from. By supporting these companies back home, unintentionally you are also supporting their efforts in the war overseas.
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Throughout the text, Nguyen provides evidence about how war affects so many people in so many different ways, both on the battlefront and back home (in this case, America). She explains how the Vietnam War provided many with jobs, both during and after the war, and how some people were completely unaware of their contributions to the war. The legacy of the Vietnam War continues today. For example, in my class (AAST233) at the University of Maryland, there are many students whose parents and grandparents came to America as refugees to start a new life. One student suggested in his presentation how it is their duty to acknowledge their heritage and the memories of their parents/grandparents from the war, as well as to be thankful for the opportunity to receive such a quality education in America.
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Many people applaud those who participate in the games of war. War is made up of many events that are not always positive. Nguyen a refugee from the war says “thrilling war stories captivate me, the ones with gore galore.” These types of moments show how even though you can be in a very uncomfortable and in a gruesome environment your bravery takes over to help you get through it.
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Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote “On True War Stories”, and it was based on the reality of war. He was describing war being destructive and a place you wouldn’t want to be in. Nguyen would say how war is hell, and when he was twelve he experienced the Vietnam war. What war meant to Nguyen was that his experience living in Vietnam and being here now in America was terrorizing by making Vietnamese into bit actors. Americans would take advantage and would only please themselves. That’s why Nguyen meant war is like hell.
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Do all people love to hear war stories? In Viet Thanh Nguyen’s essay, it seems that he expects most people do. With entire industries banking on the response of the American population towards war, it seems he might be in the right. The action figure “G.I. Joe” has been successful for several generations. Comic books became popular at the height of the second World War – just as there were soldiers overseas, Captain America was beating up Nazis. But is that what the American people really want to see? Or is it instead that what people seek is just an escape from the boring – the very thing that the author suggest war might just be?
Perhaps what the American people are looking for is not a good war story: it’s a good story of moral triumph. When the American military is painted as being always in the right, there is something comforting about the idea that a story about a soldier will feature the defeat of evil. What’s more, it’s the defeat of a certain enemy in the real world. War stories seem to be the fantasy of good triumphing over evil in the modern day.
People don’t want to hear about the boring because they already live through it. They don’t want to hear about the rape which occurs, nor the number of women who are fighting for their nation and are raped by fellow soldiers as a result. They don’t want to hear about the duality of war, and how even “heroes” are not free of sin. It isn’t because they seek a good story of war: it’s because they seek a good story, one where things sort themselves out. The world is a complicated place where it seems chaos reigns. People like to hear war stories where, in the midst of that chaos, human beings are able to fight their way towards “order.” That’s why the stories aren’t boring or angry or uncertain: people need to think that everything is okay in the end – even if, on a grand scale, it really isn’t.
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Throughout history, we have documented the horrors of war in a multitude of creative ways-including books and movies. However, these stories have been misconstrued and created into what we want them to be-more heroic and more exciting. This is shown through Nguyen’s idea that he was “made” in America, and not just raised. In creating the sense that he was created into something different than what he originally wanted to be because he was raised in America, he symbolizes how Americans create and shift stories to fit the mold of what they want people to fit. In relation to the war stories, Nguyen realizes that he enjoys what he was told and taught to enjoy, not the actual stories of mystery and terror that he later touches on.
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I find this paragraph to be the perfect definition of war. War is a period of growth for many countries and for the people involved. Thousands of innocent lives have been lost to war but can war be avoided? On one hand, war is what has made our country grow and learn. Different countries have banded together and made alliances but at the same time, they have made enemies with other countries.
War can provide for resources and provide jobs for people who are in need of such.
During World War II, when all the men were at war, there were many job vacancies that had to filled or else the economy would collapse. As a result, women started taking over of jobs that men originally occupied. This created a chance for women to fight for equality and take a step into an area that was previously unavailable. However, at the same time, war brings the guilt and trauma of having blood on the hands of the soldiers. Children have perished at a young age and weren’t given a chance to live their lives. This is a very unfair life for kids who have done nothing to deserve such a thing.
There are many views and debate on war but I think this paragraph summarizes everything that war offers into short and concise sentences.
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I think that this paragraph grasps the concept of war perfectly. For every soldier, every fleet, and every group going out to war there is mixed emotions. Sometimes you feel the pride and honor of fighting for your country, and other times you feel the pain and suffering of fighting for what you believe. There is no right definition of war or no summary of what each individual endures on a daily basis. It is hell, it is mysterious and most definetely terrifying.
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I agree that soldiers will have mixed feelings when entering into war zones for the first time. Yet I feel as though Viet Nguyen is making the argument that the adventure. courage, and holiness that we many war stories tend to focus on is not only contradictory, but it is blissfully ignorant. Both og the first two paragraphs, from Tim O’Brian and Nguyen himself state it clearly, war is hell. Fighting for what you believe in a great motivational saying, but war is still hell. So depicting it as something which can give you glory and self discovery, is how writers try to engage their audience patriotism, and entertain, rather than inform
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When I first read this paragraph I was confused for a brief moment. Was is fun? war is holy? But after a few seconds I realized that these are all emotions and realizations that someone who was a victim or fighter in any war could possibly feel. To the viet cong who were fighting against the Americans, they believed that they were fighting for their own country and that their reason to go to war was both courageous and honorable. War could be holy if it was in the case of Joan Arc’s “holy war”. One could also feel longing and love for their loved ones back at home who are wondering if they are going to make it back to them. War does not just bring sadness as an emotion but could bring many other contradicting feelings. Courage was found in the actions of Long from “The Journey of the Fall”. Although he knew that he would be arrested for his military affiliation to South Vietnam, he was determined to stay in the country and die for it if he had too. War brought despair to the people who were escaping by boats such as the Bolinao-52. War brings out love such as when Mai from “The Journey of the Fall” realizes how much she misses her husband but has to believe he is dead for her own sanity. Seeing her son growing without his father and struggling to adapt to American society brings her despair. War is not always one sided when it comes to the people it makes contact with. Some people may embrace war. Fear it. What this paragraph is saying is that war cannot be interpreted in one way but could be interpreted in many different ways depending on the person and their own experiences.
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Just to stretch this out a little bit further, it might be worth thinking about how all of these individual feelings and notions about war come together to create the collective war experience. While each person has their own reaction to war, whether it be fear, despair, or even love, when these get grouped together, societies begin to have similar viewpoints on war. Eventually, when many different view on war come together, and one can stand back and merely observe all the moving variables, war might be understood from multiple sides, not just one of personal feeling.
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It is interesting that the author described war as being a myriad of adjectives. At first glance it does not really make sense. How can war be described as fun? But when you think about all sides involved, indeed one see it as so. I find this especially intriguing because although many might have a similar war story but each individual have their own journey and destiny. Hence their own story. In addition, the lives of individuals that are affected by war also have a carryover effect. Meaning, it holds space in memory that can be contradicting or flawed. As an result, the truth in their hearts are justified by the events that they endured and not necessarily facts.
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I feel like the different adjectives were used in order to emphasize the different motivations people have for going to war. Some go to war because they don’t have a choice, to protect their people, others have gone to war in history for not-so noble reasons. However, I agree with your notion of every one having their own war story when they come back from it — war does inevitably effect countless lives, with war being viewed in different lights based on who you end up asking. But I suppose that beg’s the question if a majority of people saw war as “good”, should it be considered “good” in spite of the costs?
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This perception of war, which is certainly a prevalent one, identifies a gritty, energized image of war. Some of the descriptors in this quote aren’t even necessarily negative qualities. War, to some, is a thrill, granted a dirty one. However, what we do not see in this paragraph is anything that would suggest war is subtle, invisible, or calm. So, considering that these are common attributes associated with war, the silence on U.S. soil does in fact deter people from thinking about the war. The silence could easily be considered to be intentional. For example, we had invaded Vietnam before citizens of the United States knew, suggesting, the silence is strategic. Silence perpetuates the military industrial complex. Even in newscasts of war, one sees soldiers firing, carrying out actions, but not real exchanges of fire or casualties. In this way, the real impacts of war, the external impacts are silenced.
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If you replace the word ‘war’ in this sentence, with the word ‘life’, you get a saying about life that i’m sure we’ve all heard. Life is a plethora of mixed emotions and experiences, ranging from all kinds of varying descriptions. I don’t see war as being about longing, or love, but often media and movies represents it in a romanticized way. This perpetuates perhaps a dangerous idea that war is just a part of life, perhaps even essential. Things such as rape are glazed over and instead we are directed to focus on the romance, the courage, the “fun”. War should not be naturalized in this way, and instead should be used to educate those on the real life consequences of war, some of those being mentioned in the rest of this article, rape, abandonment, gore, and oftentimes pointless violence.
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“War is hell” claims Viet Thanh Nguyen. This article examines the different impacts war has on those it directly affects as well as those watching from a distance. This article also teaches us that not all war stories are bad ones. “The fact that my family of refugees has become living proof of the American dream is also a true war story” says Nguyen. This article really makes you think about modern day immigration. We claim that immigrants come to our land to have a better life, and we view this as them just wanting better financial success. This is rarely the full case. The majority of immigrants who leave their home land are often not only fleeing poverty, but unsafe and dangerous territory that threatens them and their family.
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This is how Viet Than Nguyen sees war through the lens of society. The author explains how there are two or more ways to look at war. If you are victorious you will see war as glorious and as a sacrifice, and even as a necessity for a greater good. But on the other hand if you lose everything in the war it will become a living hell. American society can look at war like a thrilling and full of adventure real life tale. But in reality war is hell as the author has stated before. I can explain this idea that many American have by criticizing the media that sells war as an amazing thing where stories of courage and honor are forged. The reality is that there is no good way to look at war. Not even if you are the one who gets to end it.
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In this sentence, Nguyen is explaining the complexity of war. It is somewhat of an emotional roller coaster with highs, low, and many mixed emotions. Most obviously, war is hell. When the ordinary person thinks of a war, they think of bloody battles, fighting, casualties and brutal times for those in battle. However, there is much more to this. It is mystery because of the unknown outcome and adventure and courage because of the bravery it takes to put one’s life on the line to fight. However, even with all the hardships, comes longing, holiness, and love. People who fight in wars have extreme pride, beliefs, and love for what they are fighting in which brings joy and a feeling of accomplishment to them. War is extremely emotional and its complexity can be seen in examining all the emotions that come with it.
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Throughout this essay, Nguyen presents a sense of sensationalism that comes with the telling of war stories. War is portrayed solely as a necessary, heroic gesture meant to save people of an impending evil. However, the many realistic details that constitute the majority of war and its business aspects classifies war as less ideological and more mundane. Nguyen argues that looking at those seemingly mundane details is a more accurate description of the trauma caused by war.
This kind of dramatization of war alludes to the dramatization of white Americans as “saviors from the modern Western world” who have come to help the “weak, ancient, and crumbling Eastern world.” It references the idea of the racialized “Other” and the belief that he requires to be saved from a force that is different from that of the Western world.
Although not necessarily war-related, this exposition makes me think of white feminism and how previously those white feminists believed that they need to alter the cultural dress of Eastern and Middle Eastern women in order to fit this idea of Western feminism. This is not an accurate representation of all feminists, obviously, but it contributes to an important conversation about Western entitlement. Nguyen mentions that the Vietnam war focused on making Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans into “better” Americans than white Americans, which references the false belief that cultures must be Westernized.
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The article “On True War Stories” by Viet Thanh Nguyen is about how the war affected Vietnamese Americans. It is about how Americans portrayed the war for them but not the real way it occurred. They speak on war stories as if they were fairy tales, rather than the terrible events they ACTUALLY were. No matter how gruesome, they were told as simple stories. Personally, war is not just a story. In my family, a few of my uncles, as well as my father, were marines. They told me themselves, “War is the real deal.” They told me of all the tragedy that happens and how war is portrayed much differently to the public. I felt that I really connected with this article because war is just told as stories and not for what it truly is.
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I often do not read war related literature outside of class. So the majority of my knowledge of war lit. comes from in-class requirement. I’m very aware of the fact that they’re not the only war literature out there. However, they are some of the most influential ones, a reason why our education requires us to read it. Often these books come with the common “horrors” from the war and its influence on one’s psyche- of having to kill, having to face cruelty, loss (whether of love ones, of pride, of moral), powerlessness, etc… And they often revolves around death. Death is a fascinating thing to talk about. It’s mysterious. It’s seductive. The closer it is, the more it grabs our attention as readers. The moment we think of war, we think of death. We probably even view war lit as a part of the beauty of death, as a way to figure out its reasoning that we over analyze repeatedly with the “killing bad”, “killing good”, “justified/unjustified actions”. War lit. take us all the way to the war front to take a small glimpse of it so that we can experience that thrill and that mystery of the cruelty of war. And we forget that war takes on many different forms without the “gore” away from the war front itself without the “fun”
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Because war is often glorified or romanticized through the media, I think that we’re conditioned to not think about the consequences of war or that the story may not simply be a true good guy versus bad guy narrative. In Nguyen’s reading of “Close Quarters,” he’s appalled by the young American soldier’s actions and his willingness to take a life for sex. In typical war story fashion, Americans were the saviors, or the good guys really. An American who embodied that image for Nguyen, but was actually a horrible person, upset Nguyen’s expectations, especially as he was probably conditioned to side with the Americans and become a “grateful refugee.”
I think in this paragraph, Nguyen may have had a conflict with his identity. He’s an American, but his family is Vietnamese. Who would he side with? That’s a lot to take in as a 12 year old.
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While reading this I recalled all the age specified material we have through out the world and it seems that this disproves these for history materials or True War Stories. But my rebuttal to this is that should we allow this?
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The two different views of war he provides fascinates me. Though he wondered if war is truly as gruesome as it is made out to be, he later understands that it is, and as an author, one should leave such details in even if they seem intangible. The rape scene he offers the reader is an unfortunate, but realistic aspect to war. It shows the cruelty of war without having to be a complete gore fest.
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I was surprised when I read the 7th paragraph about the boy being 11 or 12.He was reading “Close Quarters” by Larry Heinemann, a true war story as Nguyen said. Nguyen talked about reading toward the end of the book and a scene where the narrator of the book was an American solider who put a gun to a prostitute’s head named Claymore Face. And he gave her an option to “blow him and his friends or get blown away”. The thought of this boy reading and understanding or learning about the scene is interesting because it’s like taking his virginity away.
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This paragraph makes a connection to the research we did last week on comfort women as well as the novel we read, “A Gesture Life”. Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses her reaction to reading about a rape that occurred in Larry Heinemann’s Novel “Close Quarters”. An American soldier held a gun to a Vietnamese comfort woman’s head and forced her to perform sexual acts on him and his fellow soldiers or “get blown away”. Initially, Nguyen was shocked and had wished the scene was not included in the novel. However, after some time she realized how important it is to include the reality of war and the events that surround it. War can make people crazy and mentally ill, and it can drive people to do things they wouldn’t have dreamed of doing in a million years, both on and off the battlefield. This is similar to how some people reacted to Chang-Rae Lee’s depiction of K and the other comfort women in “A Gesture Life”. Yes, it is absolutely repulsive, however it’s a piece of history that we as a society can learn from. Before this class I had never heard of comfort women and what they went through. I was having a conversation with my parents over the weekend regarding the subject, and it was the first time my mother had heard of such a tragic side effect to WWII and the Vietnam War. Everyone knows what happened to the victims of the European Holocaust, however not as many are aware of the young Asian victims who were tricked or sold into forced prostitution. I think it’s important for people to be made aware of such terrible side effects that war can bring about, so that we can learn from the mistakes of past governments/militaries and how they responded to war, again both on and off of the battlefield.
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I think the author makes a great point here. War favors the victor, often regardless of their methods. While his focus is on America, it does transfer well to other conflicts in history and most likely to we’ll see in the future. But what really stood out to me here was his interpretation of America’s glorification of war. That even though we know what is being shown to us is horrible, that in the end it was better for us to be committing the act then to be the victim. However, I think that the reason we glorify these stories is not because we know that it is better to be on top, but rather because at the end we want to see that image of the soldier walking, as Thanh Nguyen puts it, “into the sunset with a young Vietnamese orphan in need of his paternal benevolence”. I believe that the audience wants to know that for all the wrong that we had done, there was something from it that we could hold up as a difference that we made for the better.
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This statement by Nguyen is a sad reality for any war. It is always better to be the victimizer than the victim. When a country is victim of a war, it suffers the biggest losses and damages, its population dies and the economic system starts to fall apart. The victimizer has the power to make independent decisions and not care about future consequences that they can have. During the Vietnam War, the victimization of the island of Guam is a great example of how it is better to be the victimizer than the victim.
When the U.S. Army took over Guam to use it as a strategic point for bombing raids over Vietnam, they started to destroy the island’s natural resources and forced people out of their homes and factories. By the end of the war, the beautiful island was left with nothing but unemployment, poverty and pollution due to Agent Orange gasses. The story of Guam is just one of the infinite war stories that can support Nguyen’s statement about how it is better to be victimizer over being victim.
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That is a great example of how important it could be to be the victimizer rather than the victim. In the case of Guam, of course it is a shame to have to essentially destroy a society, but it was necessary for the Americans to gain a stronghold in the area. War is a life or death, win-lose situation. It is unfortunate, but at the end of the day, you have to do whatever it takes to win, even if what you are doing is negatively effecting others. That is why the story of Guam is such a great example of how sacrificing the lives/land of innocent people could be necessary for your success.
Additionally, in the case of Zero Dark Thirty, I believe it is okay to turn torture into “a good war story” because although it is “nasty behavior,” it is still helping the cause of the American Army.
However, that does not mean that you should be able to do inexplicable acts that does nothing to help your cause. In the case of Guam, the United States was gaining access to a very strategic position to help them with performing bombings in Vietnam. But in the case of raping a Vietnamese prostitute, there is no reason- and no justification- for this behavior.
There is a difference between being the victimizer for a cause or for no apparent reason.
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How does the government do this?
Nguyen-Vo states in “Forking Paths” that the empire builders are constructing a new universal-ism by historical amnesia. In other words, the complex and contingent history of the Vietnamese people must be forgotten so that the success story can be retold. Additionally, Vo states that when Vietnamese Americans reprise their history in the U.S., only those of the most simplistic, anti-communist, and pro empire views can come out. These are just two of the many ways the American Government has made efforts to appropriate the history of others or how Viet Nguyen wrote, turn them into bit actors for America’s Vietnam War stories.
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Yes the movie Zero Dark Thirty was a successful movie but why? We are applauding a movie based on war and death. We would witness people die and being tortured yet, we are applauding this movie. Why? We saw how these soldiers tortured people to get information but why do we not see it as a bad thing? Is it because it benefited us as a country? We want to see ourselves as the heroes but, how can we see that as we watch our soldiers torture people. If the roles were reversed we would not like the movie. If we saw the Americans being tortured and being seen as the enemy we wouldn’t like it. Nguyen even says “their audience know it is far more interesting to torture than be tortured.”
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This is the thought of many americans not only in the war, but in the US as well. It is a mindset that you just want to prosper and be on the winning side of the battle. Rather than doing the right thing “Heaven” it may take more time to get to your final destination. Taking shortcuts that may mean the wrong thing “hell” may get you to a state of prosperity sooner. Many would think why do the right thing if I can get what I want sooner.
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I think this is a really good point. In fact, I’d say that mindset governs Americans not only on the subject of war but in most things nowadays. The easy way out is commonly accepted and commonly utilized. The consequences, however, don’t always endorse such a mindset.
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The war is about sex, this sex include both raping and gender issue. During the war, there would be a lot of dirty things happen. Raping became a big issue. But we want to have heroes. So we won’t try to know what all these soldier did over there. We know we might get something we don want to know. We still treated those soldiers as heroes regardless their evil history during the war. They seem get forgiven, but for those women unmade by these soldiers, their sin will never be forgiven.
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I think that its not the issue where we just want to have heroes, but its the ability that the government has over propaganda on the matter of any war. I do not think that the government would focus on the negative aspects of a war due to the fact that it would take away people’s patriotism because of the negative connotation it has. They would instead turn it around on that one individual and use it to say that they are weeding out the problem people of the military. This is just one example of many on how the government manipulates information flow to the people. Yes bad things happen and some/most may go unnoticed, but that just comes with human nature. Both sides may have these problems but that just comes with the history of war. Throughout time we have become more civilized with rules of engagement and such, but there are still people who do not abide by these rules. Until that day comes, which I highly doubt, war will be a dirty thing which includes all the rape and such.
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Usually when I learned about war stories in history class or watched moves depicting war, many were told from the perspective of young men. People only focus on the victimized men characterizing them as young warriors returning from war. It is easy to lift up the voices of our American men as victims of war but the women’s voices fall silent.
In the reading Nguyen mentions the true story by Larry Heinemann “Close Quarters.” In one poignant scene in the story, Nguyen mentions how a soldier puts a gun to the head of Claymore Face, a prostitute, and gives her the choice of having her “blow him and his friends or get blown away.” It is presented as choice but with a gun to her head; either way she loses with either decision. In another part of the reading, he mentions the book The Things They Carried. I remember reading the story in high school, and being drawn to the character of Mary Anne, one of the only girls who is focused on in the story. One of the chapters in the book documents her tragic mental decay, but she is brushed over and left by the men. These women are victimized through these male power structures, and it is rarely addressed. There stories are never told and if they are they are left unfinished.
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i think this paragraph was the most interesting to me. Its interesting to think about our soldiers coming home and no one wants to think of the cruelty and evil things that could have happened over seas in battle.
I think its more about understanding the pressures and harsh conditions our soldiers have to go through. No one knows what war is like unless you’re in it. No parent of a soldier wants to think their child is over across seas doing horrendous stuff. they wouldnt believe it even if it was true. Nguyen says “The other side does it, not us.” i agree that a lot of citizens of the U.S think this way but i also think EVERY COUNTRY thinks this way. No one wants to think our troops are doing tings wrong over seas; but what it comes down to is the depth of these war stories.
When Nguyen talks about the movies and how those war stories are told; obviously certain details will be left out. Its for hollywood; even in real life people try and downplay the details of the truth of the war stories because sometimes its too painful to remember. My grandfather could NEVER talk about WWII without crying. No one ever knows what war is like until youre in it; no story is 100% accurate and no one wants to believe the cruelness some soldiers do (on both sides) in the heat of being in a war. True war stories are too painful for anyone to hear; one can only witness it. This is what i got from this essay by Viet Thanh Nguyen
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This paragraph discusses the issue of rape that can commonly be found but often ignored in wars. It is alluding to the fact that during war, women are often objectified and use merely as a means to satisfy primal sexual urges that men won’t be held accountable for. An extremely interesting fact within this paragraphs is how Viet Thanh Nguyen admits that within many war stories, audience and listeners often have no problem with the killing and massacres in it, deeming it as a necessary part of the ‘war’ and being a good soldier and man within the war. However, when it comes to rape, everything must be kept on the down low and ignored as much as possible. This questions the morality of both the audience and the general public and prompts us to ask why we view killing in wars so much more acceptable than the rape and how while the deaths are often depicted within the stories, rape is kept a secret, hidden and ignored.
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As I was reading this paragraph, I was thinking to myself how people could actually think that war makes a man. Not only did that make me rethink what I was reading but also it got me mad how there can be people who think that rape can make a women. Thinking about how many people out there have actually been in a situation like this where they have been standing alone for all that they have been through, and not only have overcome it but have shared their experience and have helped other people. Families who have family members that are in the military, and/or army, know what it is to have someone out there fighting for their lives not knowing if they’ll come back. You have to worry more about the person than what they might have done.
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Nguyen depicts the role of the author to simply state the facts as they were. He found that war was an excuse to overlook some atrocities. He found that Americans only wanted to look the positive parts and they always try to avoid the negative aspects of war. Rape is obviously a huge issue that occurs, but people outside of the war zone don’t want to imagine that a soldier could do this because it doesn’t fit in with the idea of being a “hero.”
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War is sex. In terms of wars, people tend to concern about the justice, loyalty, refugees, expense, political trends, etc. but not sex, which is actually the residual product of wars. People move themselves and think that they already learned the lessons from the wars. However, in fact they are not, or at least not comprehensively. A specific part was curtailed from the whole story of the war in order to protect the glorious image of those loyal and brave soldiers. They create the game videos, films, documentaries. All of them illustrate the brutality of wars to some degree,for example they can show how American soldiers torture or kill people. However, people make up these excuses and stories. Furthermore, it is forgivable. They are manipulated by government, it’s not their willing, and they have to defend themselves. Killing is not a problem. It can be rationalized. But sex? No. It’s to dirty to talk when it concerns to the great war. Male soldiers become heroes because they protect their countries and experienced many vicissitudes of life. They are reliable and trusted so that people choose to ignore the possibility of what really happened in the real battlefield. The rest part, those comfort women or men, whom always missed in this area, is a time bomb for those welcomed soldiers. Thus, the public bury this bomb deep in the land. Once they hide the part shadows of the war, they are not introspective enough.
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Killing is the government with war. But, the operation of rape is purely individual. No one is telling the solider to rape an innocent women but, someone is telling them to kill the “enemy.” The question is why is rape occurring in war?
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I disagree with the part that refers to killing the people in an “intimate” way. He didn’t want to kill people if he didn’t have to. As this movie was based off of a true story, you have to realize that during a time of war, someone has to do that job. The people that take up that job are statistically proven to suffer from PTSD after their deployments from wherever they come from. Did they kill someone through the scope that they were looking in from? Yes. But can a person that was not there say that he intimately killed one hundred and sixty people? I disagree. This is just an over sensationalism caused by the media in order to portray a situation that would garner the attention of most of the audience. This goes back to first sentence of this reading, “War is hell.” People get killed in war and many hope that they don’t have to resort to killing. Although that is the case, killing is part of a reality in war. People can try to make war stories pretty and enjoyable, but it will have its differences from what it is in real life.
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I Agree with Timothy because I felt that while the movie did portray Chris Kyle as a hero for the most part, which could be problematic, it also showed some of the ugly truths of war. I put myself in the shoes of Kyle in the scenes where he had a moral dilemma, and thought about how someone could rationalize killing an innocent child, who does not understand what is going on. The movie also did a good job portraying the war that goes on at home for people who have loved ones in the military. It may seem on the surface that Kyle’s wife was hanging out at the house and doing things like watching a football game while there was war going on ,but there was an inner conflict. So I don’t think O’briens point that Nguyen references about “hell being Americans enjoying seemingly innocent pastimes” is the strongest. I agree that the Vietnamese experience of the war was more traumatic, and that the stories of refugees should be told. Also, I agree with his point that we should understand our role in the war as Americans even if we are not directly involved the fighting. However, I disagree with him about this particular movie, and some of the other American movies that have been made about war because they do offer some truth. We as viewers need to be more savvy and understand why the movies were made, and who they appeal to ,but also shouldn’t dismiss an entire film for some of its flaws. American Sniper was very cinematic and at times probably sensationalized like Timothy said ,but it did show the complexity of war.
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This is a really good point that Nguyen makes. We want soldiers to be heroes, which rapists are not. We have this cognitive dissonance, which is a good thing in and of itself. Our problem is not that we don’t care about women. However, instead of resolving our cognitive dissonance by changing our view that all soldiers are heroes, we just ignore the problem and pretend it isn’t there. After all, soldiers can still be heroes as long as they aren’t rapists, so let’s just pretend that “the other side does it, not us” so we can carry on with our fantasy. Rape is so horrific that no one wants to think about it or even acknowledge it, which results in stories like those of comfort women. They will never get a formal apology because no one will admit that it happened. This refusal to acknowledge their truth is perhaps worse than the trauma itself.
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In addition to Hannah’s comment, rape is something people try to steer away from discussing and acknowledging because it is something that they didn’t volunteer for. for someone to state that another does it and that they don’t, that is irrelevant because you never know exactly what is going on but you have some sort of idea of what occurs. it was an action they chose to perform. killing many people is something they had to do because if not that soldier will be killed. in a sense, when your back is against the wall, your instincts kick in and it could be a fight or flight situation. with rape, you are not being forced to commit that. that is a selfish choice some make. stating the other side are raping people and “not us” is irrelevant because not everyone makes good choices in war. whether they were forced or they just did what they wanted.
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This paragraph exemplifies the United States’ desire to be the savior, the rescuer. Refugees, specifically “good refugees” that succeed in the U.S. socioeconomically are used by various mediums (media, government) to justify the militarized presence of the U.S. in Southeast Asia. The successes of refugees like Nguyen and his family are virtually the only visibility of refugees in the dominant narrative that war is good, war is necessary that the military industrial complex thrives on. Nguyen points out the U.S.‘s white savior complex with the ending of “The Green Berets” in which Wayne saves a young Vietnamese orphan “in need of his paternal benevolence.” This shot that once again exemplifies the U.S.’s desire to be the friend and savior of Vietnamese people. This reminds me of Bee Vang’s essay regarding Gran Torino where there is no father-figure and thus, Clint Eastwood must step in to be the paternal guidance, to show Thao the “ways of manhood.” Nguyen ends this paragraph with an interesting comparison to the relations in the Middle East. The U.S. is clearly blinded by an incessant need to save the oppressed all around the world, thinking that the U.S. MUST save everyone when in reality, the people that supposedly need saving view the U.S. as invaders rather than liberators. The military industrial complex thrives on this need.
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We are most certainly not in an era of post-colonialism but rather of seemingly infinite coloniality; everywhere we turn, we see the effects of retired imperialism, and how such colonialism carries on both physically and fiscally. The critique of hypocrisy and of lacking empathy that follows this sentence is crucial to proving the idea of perceptual American exceptionalism true. “Patriotism” (see: nationalism) has left citizens of the United States with a lingering air of superiority.
In this sentence in particular, I find the use of “but” rather powerful in a close reading. The sun sets in the South China Sea, and that sea does lie east of Vietnam. A simple “which” could have sufficed, but I am convinced that the word “but” was chosen for a reason. Nguyen’s powerfully contrasts matter-of-fact nature with the same backwards logic utilized in critiquing American exceptionalism. The American soldier “walks into the sunset with a young Vietnamese orphan in need of his paternal benevolence.” There is both a patriarchal foundation and an agenda of American exceptionalism left lingering before this sentence, which—while simple—is powerful, and certainly felt lasting.
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War stories come from different directions. War described by the communist side of Vietnam would be different from war described by the anti-communist side of Vietnam, which would also be different from war described by the Americans who fought in it. Nguyen, who grew up among Vietnamese refugees, heard a story about a family who owned a store in Vietnam, in which the mother eventually left the war-stricken country with her sons and left her daughter to take over the store. The mother and father opened a store in California, and later finds out that their parents in their homeland have passed away and starts to cry. This story is different from the American movie that portrays an American soldier who "walks into the sunset with a young Vietnamese orphan in need of his paternal benevolence. American war stories are seen as heroic while Vietnamese war stories are more realistic.
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When you think of a small mom-and-pop shop, you don’t associate it with violence and hand grenades. People usually think of a quiet, serene place with a tight-knit community and everyone knows one another. So this particularly stuck out to me. This shows how dangerous it was to live in Vietnam at the time where a small Vietnamese town had to prepare themselves just in case they were going to get attacked. Refugee stories often go unnoticed by others and don’t gain a lot of publicity. These war stories are usually portrayed as the minor details in major war films.
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The winner of the war is the most powerful side, what they did may as cruel as the losing side, or even worse. The history is written by the winner, so the story that good people people beat the bad evil bastards, and protect this country seems like a sarcasm.
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You make an excellent point: the winners of wars are the ones who write the history books, which is why you don’t see a lot of Native American accounts of the colonization of America. Likewise, with the Vietnam War, we only consume the information about it that the American government wants us to consume, unless we go out of our way to search for the stories of refugees, which are going to be very different from the war stories of the perpetrators and soldiers. It’s really important to seek out the stories of the victims of wars, because they give a much more accurate picture of what really happened.
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Coincidentally, my mom and the rest of my aunts, uncles, and grandmother were on a bus heading to a helipad a few days after the Fall of Saigon that was also held p by a man with a grenade. Rather than hijacking the bus outright, he just wanted to ride the bus to the evacuation point. My point is that the real stories of refugees are easy for me to relate to, because I have a connection. But many of the atrocities of war are so foreign for many to relate to because they have not been exposed to those horrors. Even veterans and refugees that have experienced them often have trouble telling their stories. Vietnamese often joke about how escaping was for them. But unless a story can be given a face that is as identifiable, as iconic on a large scale as the likes of Apocalypse Now, or other war movies, it is hard to have the uninitiated truly understand these stories.
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It is interesting how you have relatives that you can connect to so that you can somewhat directly relate to this situation. Just like you said how the atrocities of war haven’t been exposed enough, I also agree that the magnitude of the whole refugee situation is completely underrated. And because it is underrated, the story is not identifiable and people are not able to comprehend how relevant the war stories in Vietnam are.
On a side note, I find it ironic how the Vietnamese can joke about their escape even though it was a traumatic experience for them.
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Yes, living in the was is not easy. It is about what we are wearing today or what we are eating today but it is the matter of living today or die tomorrow. When Viet Nguyen says this to his fellow American and they are silent afterward, we can understand that it is not easy for both Viet and his American friends to accept it. Refugees had to suffer a lot: survived in the war, patiently waited to be moved into the US, worked for a living. Everything has to be started from zero and his friends definitely feel lucky about it when they did not have to do the same.
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Many people who live in more developed or stable countries never have to experience the brutality or the effects of war. Being a refugee makes a person go through unimaginable trials that people can only have nightmares about. The silence that ensues after the mention of these issues are often because these privileged folk have only gone through first world problems. It is very difficult to sympathize with a group of people who have a completely different lifestyle, culture, values, and even image. However, the silence that follows is also an indication of deep thought or even guilt about the privilege of not being part of a war torn country.
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“Their stories are typical of refugees, although when I mention them to other Americans, an uncomfortable silence ensues, since these things did not happen to most Americans.”
Most Americans simply hate recognizing the harm their country has caused to so many people around the world. I feel that Americans have a sense of guilt for the actions of their country and thus try to distance themselves from it and feel uncomfortable confronting it.
However, I don’t think that is the only reason Americans are distanced from the war/wars. Since the American Civil War, essentially no battles/wars have occurred on American soil. How could the American people possibly relate to the brutality and reality of war without ever experiencing anything even close to it. Most Americans have never seen a war, or even see any direct effect of a war on their lives. The closest they come to seeing a war is on the movie screen and in the newspapers. On the contrary, these Vietnamese refugees have literally lived through war and through the hardships of immigrating to another country as refugees. They know what it is like, but that is not the case for most Americans.
Additionally, according to an article by Mona Chalabi (link below), only 0.4% of the American people currently serve in the armed forces, and 7.3% have ever served at some point. Clearly a majority of Americans not only have never actually experienced war, but don’t even know anyone who has. Those number show that very few people in the country actually have a direct connection to the war.
Yes, Americans try not to think of the horrors that their country is involved with, but how are they expected to relate to them with no direct connection?
Link to article:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-percentage-of-americans-have-served-in-the-military/
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In society, you often hear war stories regarding soldiers separated from their families, the displacement of locals who found better lives in the states, and the achievements accomplished abroad. In other words, things to be recognized, commemorated, all alluding to a positive outcome. Rarely does the government nor writers want to portray the raw, dark, anecdotes of war. The ones in which families never do find their way back together, where many innocent locals end up dead, and where the soldiers are committing questionable acts overseas. This article, and this sentence in particular, is trying to highlight the fact that people only know and are presented with the congratulatory, upsides of war. Many people nowadays are unable to recognize and understand that there are other, more traumatizing events that fell upon innocent victims as a result of the war that we so casually disregard in our ‘safe haven’ homes away from the physical war, and will never fully acknowledge or learn about these events unless the presentation of war is changed.
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In the U.S media, the Americans are always painted as the hero, the savior, the good, even if they lose. A prime example is the Vietnam War. The war stories tell that, even though the United States have retreated, they find a way to make it a positive thing by saying that they have rescued and taken in many refugees into the country.
In turn, the refugees are expected to be eternally grateful for this gesture even though they are struggling to make enough to support themselves. In the documentary about welfare for Southeast Asians in Brooklyn, NY, we learn that families has signed up for welfare to help them and to enroll in work programs to learn. However, welfare is barely enough for these families and are struck in an endless cycle.
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Wars such as the Vietnam and Iraq wars were wars that did not necessarily need to be fought. I think they expect the refugees to be grateful because the US wanted to get something out of it for going into the war. They don’t care about how the refugees are faring because that was an unintentional consequence of the war they fought.
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This story is yet another example of American exceptionalism, where the stories of others don’t matter. We try to hide the horrors we have contributed to others. We try to tell people all around the world that we are their savors. But, when do we ever talk about the history of other people? We want to see a good movie in the cinema based on the facts we believe & know to be true. The facts that are not as well-known, we don’t want to know because it will tarnish our perception and how we see our own country. Our media helps us hide reality well and continues to further develop this idea of American exceptionalism. We have hidden the stories of rape during war; and we have hidden the stories of Vietnamese refugees. This idealist view that we have of America during the Vietnam War is hidden under the crimes we have committed; and to this day, our distorted truths continue to let us believe lies.
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I believe that this paragraph makes some very important points— “war is profitable” and “war is a bore”. Many American’s ideas of war come from what they see on the screen— brave men doing heroic things. The message that war makes a huge amount of money will never be portrayed by these movies. That knowledge could jeopardize the valor that we see in relation to war. The economics of war is simply portrayed as something boring so that not many people would actually look into it. This is also because, as Nguyen says, “the fact that war makes an enormous amount of money is either disturbing to most Americans or not disturbing at all, due to the aforementioned disorder”. The boring aspect of war is also disturbing. While horrendous acts are happening elsewhere, life goes on for the majority of Americans. Nyueng articulates this well, comparing it to a sporting event for those not involved. If all we see is “good war stories”, then the market of “bad war stories” is nonexistent. This can be blamed on the ‘American military-cinema industrial complex’.
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This segment of the essay touches on what I think is an important part about any war story. The causes. Causes of war are rarely touched upon, usually relegated to a title card at the beginning of a movie, or an opening paragraph. Complexity, unless it’s one of the main themes, is usually unwelcome in war stories. This has its basis in reality- when people are knowledgeable on the causes of a war, it’s hard to whip them into a nationalistic frenzy, or get them to root for a hero. To this end, causes tend to be ignored, glossed over, or distorted in the quest for a just battle.
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The thought that war is occurring at home, even while our soldiers are off on the front lines, is something that most people, including myself, have to force themselves to think about. When people do say that “war is hell”, they usually have that unsaid meaning that it is hell for the soldiers. But why should it not be hell for us too? As the China Men excerpt from paragraph 15 says, we contribute to the bombings, the napalm, the tanks. We are indirectly building these weapons of destruction, and yet the outside seems so perfectly content and utopian. But the reality is that this is hell. When you think of hell, you think of tortured souls being tormented by demons. If we are not the demons, having fun while those we send tanks against perish, then who are? We watch the war as if it were a sports game, completely detached from any kind of consequence, simply hoping that our team would win. Is this not hell? Treating the lives of our countrymen and those abroad as a game? But it all is unnoticed, as Nguyen puts it, “Being acclimated to hell is part of our disorder”.
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“Being acclimated to hell is part of our disorder.” When reading this, it is interesting that term hell is used as a term of camaraderie.The point that each experience of the Vietnamese war victim, whether that be a soldier, refugee, or even first generation American all have the same idea of their experiences being hellish. That all their pain and toil was brought upon within one common experience. Then the point being made that the “white noise of massive mechanism” is therefor keeping this reaction going. To be Vietnamese American is to endure the lasting effects of war, and that is the hell in which they all live.
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The American military-industrial complex that dominates US culture drives this country forward whether we like it or not. Here, Nguyen questions whether the American populace can even begin to grasp just how pervasive it truly is. As Nguyen goes on to explain in the subsequent passage, the most simplistic of everyday actions and aspects of US consumerism are still cogs in the grinding wheels of the “war machine” Each and every US citizen, regardless of their beliefs of war, regardless of their perspectives or experiences still ultimately contribute to the “dull hum” that Nguyen describes. Is it then up to us to individually stop our gears from turning, or is it only the total simultaneous destruction of every cog in the machine that will bring down the military-industrial complex?
Another question Nguyen pokes at here is whether or not the ignorance of the average American is a choice. The “passive consent” he describes strikes at the heart of it. The “consent” points towards a conscious decision to be ignorant of the far-reaching consequences of their everyday actions and their part in the perpetuation of war in the US. While it’s obvious most individuals do not actually decide to be active contributors to the clunking, destructive hegemony of US society, it is in the vast majority’s apathetic tendencies that their ignorance stems. The “passive consent” then derives from this apathy, rather than the surface ignorance. So in a way, the US citizen is in fact faced with the choice of ignorance. However, it is not their decision to be oblivious but instead their decision to not care enough in the first place that concretes their “choice” before they are really even offered it.
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I never thought everyone was involved in the war. Yes, the soldiers are physically involved, and there are rations and propaganda at home. However, I never really thought the total general public would be involved. It does make sense that using the resources such as electricity, buying groceries and paying taxes all go to support the government and businesses that support the war. We are all involved in the war. So, when there is someone that opposes the war, he/she cannot really do much to not get involved once the war has begun. In a way, war is forced into our daily lives. There isn’t really anyway to escape the war and not take part in it. This is another part of war stories that are told only subliminally.
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The quote Viet Thanh Nguyen uses here, from Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men, is engaging with the factory of American Capitalism in combination with complacency as consent. The American military depends on government funding which depends on taxes which depends on the American people buying goods and services. When it comes down to it, simply by living their lives every civilian is inactively agreeing with the U.S.’s military decisions, for example to carpet bomb Vietnam. To actively disagree with the military one had to go out of their way to not support these implicit forms of stability built into the system. This brings a darker relatability to the phrase, “if you’re not with us you’re against us.”
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To say “complicity is the truest war story of all,” is no exaggeration. All the activities surrounding the preparation for World War II helped drive the United States out of the Great Depression. As the excerpt Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men suggests, every action we have impacts the war effort. However, there is that dissonance between war being all around us and what we as ordinary citizens can digest. Entertainment and the media are huge influences on the lives of people of all ages. Yet what is constantly on the TV are fictionalized, dramatized, and sensationalized accounts of violence, with just a few brief exceptions. Are we unable to handle the truth of war? We have a thirst for action and violence and the hellish characteristics of war. However, we, being so detached from the real action and engaging in the war effort through more passive actions, such as “cleaning the oven” and “running a computer”are incapable of facing reality. We choose to watch “zombies” and “serial killers” because we know that’s not real; it takes place in a completely different universe from us, it will never become “personal.” Real war, however, is personal. Because of that, we feel uncomfortable tackling the topic.
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This line truly resonated with me because when I think “war is hell” I don’t think of the thousands that die in every war that takes place, nor the geopolitical ramifications that wars have. When someone says war is hell I get an image of some ambiguous Hollywood figure who says the words in a traditional soldier outfit before flicking his cigarette to the side. As a society we have come to accept war as the constant state of our world and thus it has become nothing more than entertainment. While many people think immediately of movies, it can’t be overlooked that anymore the news is just another form of entertainment. Shock and Awe stories are told to the masses that will do nothing more than stare open mouthed at the incomprehensible horrors of war. War is only a business, like the rest of the essay says, because we have grown numb to so much gore and only the thought of unadulterated death can stir us from the consuming coma that we have fallen deeply into.
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It’s interesting to think that a person’s actions indirectly support what his/her country of residence is doing. This means that during war time, even if someone does not support the war, by remaining in that country that person is indirectly supporting the war. The author brings into focus mundane daily tasks such as making a phone call or washing with soap, that force the reader to investigate their own conscience as to what their everyday actions are indirectly supporting. The situation is relevant to far more situations of daily life than merely those of war. All of us can consider and reflect upon our choices, and what effect our consumer transactions have on the bigger picture. With the regular purchases we make on items such as chocolate and coffee, we indirectly support problems such as child labor and slavery through our sponsoring corporations that utilize such unethical business practices. This reality means that the need is greater than ever before for modern responses such as the Fair Trade movement.
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I don’t think any war story is a good war story. Whenever you hear about a war story you hear about how people get killed and traumatized. They aren’t able to adjust properly to society and they have to live with things they don’t want to and it eats away at them.
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The connection of trivial acts and feeding the War Machine seems to us to be a sort of exaggeration. “Opening the refrigerator” does not constitute a true war story since you are merely supporting a business in an unrelated industry. You could argue that by opening your refrigerator and consuming you are supporting capitalism, which is in turn feeding the War Machine, however we reject this connection of such trivial acts with such large ends.
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Nguyen emphasizes that, with war, it is the subtlest and least recognized stories that can be the most profound and influential. American society prefers to overlook its role in the war from an individual perspective and simply perceive it as an overseas occurrence, isolated and unrelated to the average citizens’ life. The media assists in masking this deeper truth by employing violent “true” war stories.
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As a society, we mask our individual feelings. Sometimes it is hard for us to see what we are doing in the media. We do not always realize that not only are we not acknowledging what we have done to others, but we create fictional stories in order to make ourself feel just a little better. We try to believe we are acknowledging the problem by substituting the story with zombies and serial killers. As Nguyen said, it is much easier for us to accept fictional horrors instead of accepting that we’ve actually committed similar horrors. This is where the inconsistency of our history comes-in. We sometimes believe we have the truth; but rather, we have already pre-determined that some parts of this historical event are not needed.
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Nguyen states that Americans would rather confront stories of fictional horror than confront the “domestic horror” of how the individual is complicit in acts of war when their country is at war. I think that this fixation on fictional violence, like the that of zombies, vampires or serial killers, comes from the desire for having a clear distinction between good and evil or hero and villain. Having these strictly established binaries is comforting to an audience because there is a clear force with which to ally oneself and a clear force in opposition. This seemingly clear-cut binary then serves as justification for the use of violence to enact domination of one group over the other. Because fictional horror functions in terms of the good vs. evil binary that we so desperately want to be true, it is easy to accept.
In contrast, the “domestic horror” described by Nguyen does not function within a binary at all, but is complex in its relation to the system of capitalist America. It is difficult for individuals to accept their complicity in war through consumer spending because there is a disconnect between intention and result that also does not function within a binary. While spending and consuming are motivated by individual needs, the collective effect of these individual needs is supporting industry that ultimately supports war. Our individual intentions are good (or at least neutral), but the results are somehow evil. In this way, the inability to accept responsibility for promoting war as a capitalist consumer comes from the disconnect we feel between our intentions and the collective end results.
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Genuinely, when one hears about a war they sympathize with the ones unwillingly enduring the sufferings that follow. However, in our modern society, although a person may compose of sentiments as described above, the person doesn’t refrain from watching movies or reading about a war.
It is the action-packed dramatic nature of artistic works that draw a person’s attention. The mere reality of going to war is shadowed by the author. The irony is that even though one may not personally support war, that person tremendously contributes to war efforts. On one hand, a person sympathizes with the victims of a war, whereas on the other hand, the person promotes the artwork produced after a war. It is saying as if “you shouldn’t go to war” but “I will purchase books about war”; an idea that rather promotes war for economic reasons. This is why war is confusing. We know that war is hell, but we never fail to promote war due to our inability to stay away from books and movies about war. This is also an example of how war is woven into the fabrics of our society.
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I think the idea the author presents here is very powerful. Most people living in the United States aren’t affected by war and conflict in a concrete, visible way in their day to day life. Rather, they are involved indirectly, as their daily tasks and routine often support the system that allows war to occur. While some people are aware of this, it is easier for most people to push these thoughts away. We see war through a Hollywood lens, the way it is portrayed in movies, as a conflict that involves soldiers, not civilians. The thought that we might actually indirectly support war is one that is hard to stomach, so we choose to disconnect ourselves from these thoughts.
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Continuing on Andrew’s comment, authors, filmmakers, media, etc. typically portray war from different points of views. When we label populations as belonging to the heroes of war, we label the militia, their government, their allies, and the other contributors, which we often include citizens as. The citizens that include those who took on the jobs that were left unmanned by the soldiers of the war, who supported their families, donated money, resources, or volunteered/participated in the war. Yet when we label villains, we like to pinpoint exactly who they are, more specifically than we do so when labeling heroes. The villains are the leaders of the enemy army, the villains are the opposing militia, their government, and their allies, but surely not the entirety of the associated citizens? The citizens are seemed as innocent, more so than the militia, who most feel more comfortable describing as being brainwashed. The citizens are seemed as innocent, as only attempting to be patriotic in their contributions, not encouraging, funding, or driving the war. Readers labels themselves as citizens, as everyday people, and it makes it more so discomforting to associate oneself with being a villain.
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I think the use of the phrase “immigrant story” is interesting here. It begs the question of how romanticized the tale of immigrants venturing from war-torn countries and finding success. Has it been sensationalized to “justify” acts of war, thaty have left people to speak in the samer manner as this sentence? Even though immigration has undoubtedly lead to some finding a prosperous life in the States, most were not so fortunate and I feel like their stories did not recieve as much recognition — at least not in the past. This truly makes the immigrant story a type of “double sided coin”.
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I think it is really interesting that Nguyen write the idea this way. Nguyen’s family came to the United States as refugees of the Vietnam War. They came to the United States in escape of the fate of death, but they came to the country that is essentially the cause of their escape. Also, when they came as refugees, they have abandoned their identities and had to start anew in the U.S.. But as the family settle in the new environment, they start to accumulate their savings, they achieve better socioeconomic status “than many Americans”. They are doing better than the Americans. They became better Americans. They became Americans. At the same time, they are constantly reminded of the sufferings that they could have gone through or their people were going through. Also, like any Americans, they open the refrigerator to get food and they waste away on the couch watching games. By becoming American and by assimilating into the culture, they become part of the population who supports war more or less.
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Nguyen writes about how war stories use horrific images as a way to entertain more. Most often authors or storytellers of wars use vivid images of what happened, because it’s something they can’t ignore, and by doing this for some reason the story is more intriguing; however, I think it’s interesting how he also describes the results of war, mentioning that war may be bad, but people can overcome these events and so do a positive change with it. For example he mentions how war was worth it because his family had a “chance to be better Americans than many Americans” through education, becoming wealthy and creating their story. Also this means that he’s taking his original roots and identifying himself as an American.
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I think this contributes to the model minority myth. Despite the hardships that Asian-Americans face here in the US, they will inevitably “make it” and become successful. Though many Asian-Americans do succeed, how about the many other Asian-Americans that still struggle in poverty and a lack of education. Their stories are barely heard or acknowledged. I think this ultimately stems from white supremacy. Asians who “make it” are crowned with “honorary whiteness” while the stories of other Asian-Americans who pale in comparison are ignored.
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I agree that the number of Asians overcoming hardships is a reason for the “model minority” myth. However, I’d like to further expand on this point. From my personal experience, the people I know tend to think of more Eastern Asian individuals, specifically the Chinese, as “model minority.” I think oftentimes the many Asians who do succeed but are from Vietnam or from the Philippines are often sort of “put to the side”by Americans. As you said, there are many stories of Asian-Americans that are essentially ignored. Perhaps some of the reasoning is that, like Tien says in a few comments below, many of the Vietnamese and Philippines immigrants are victims stuck in poverty. They don’t have nearly as many resources as many of the wealthier Chinese immigrants who are coming to America. Also, because of the sheer unpopularity of the Vietnam War in America, the Vietnamese might not be given as much opportunity during their time here, because their very presence is a reminder to US citizens of what the United States did during the 1960s. This whole concept of “model minority” should, in my opinion, be gotten rid of. There are people of every race who succeed on a large scale, but those few should not set the terms to what an entire, incredibly broad group of people is stereotyped as.
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This sentence sums up one of the main themes Nguyen makes throughout the essay that war is incredibly complex and cruel creating circumstances where fair or unfair, some individuals can persevere while others cannot. Her description of her refugee family living the American dream is a story of perseverance through the obstacles of war and surviving and living a fulfilled life. However, war unfairly creates circumstances where many families cannot escape the violence and others are stifled by unfair societal disadvantages that come with being a refugee, unable to get the lives on track. Although Nguyen’s family lives the American dream, many refugee families do not. This is an example of the unbalance and un-stabilization that comes from war.
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Agreeing with previous commenters, although the author can portray his family as a successful “American Dream” is a true war story, where in fact this is only one sided. Many results of the war from people point of view are still stuck in poverty even having been the victim of the war. Or shall a say a result of the war. The author’s parents being wealthy probably gave him and his brother more advantage of being in the position where they stand today dude to less struggles of finance in which is a lot of people problem leading up to the road of success. Although many people were in similar term with the authors’s family conditions, one else might not have the same opportunity to advance in to jobs and school due to certain limitations and discrimination. The author’s story of how he and his family have “made it” is probably one out of the few, because having to be an immigrant to the U.S. myself, my family is still struggling to make ends meet to have me in school. And yes, I am apart of the “True War Story” portrayed by the author.
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Many Vietnamese refugees have fled their home country to evade the harsh realities of communism and start a new life of freedom in the United States. Some refugees are stuck in unfavorable programs that offer the bare minimum of survival while others, like Viet Nguyen’s family, reached the “American Dream”. Nevertheless, only through the help of the West could Vietnamese refugees have the “opportunity” for a new life. However, the US also has a begrudging perspective of support. In “Toward a Critical Refugee Study: The Vietnamese Refugee Subject in US Scholarship”, Yen Le Espiritu argues that massive influx of Vietnamese refugees has become a “refugee crisis” in the West’s eyes. She claims that the “self-appointed US role as a rescuer” constructs and represents the Vietnamese as passive recipients of generosity, which ends up creating and sustaining this label. Furthermore, the American public pushes for assimilation. As if the struggle for survival in a new country where language is a barrier isn’t enough, Vietnamese refugees are also pressured to assimilate to the “American way” because it will be more rewarding. Thus, they have become the “model minority”. Espiritu describes the US’s reasoning as “the civic duty of the individual to reduce their burden on society.” Therefore, achieving the “American Dream” is brought on by the US’s “support” and expectation of upholding the idea of the “model minority”.
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This sentence shows that wars not only have victims but also have beneficiaries. Although Nguyen’s family suffered a lot in refugee camp, finally they live a successful life in United States. People always focus on the crimes and victims in war, and ignore positive affects of war. In human resolution, war is unavoidable. It is a ways to weed out weakness and develop the society to a better group. In the case of Nguyen’s family, Vietnam war is an ordeal and springboard. The tough life in refugee camp teach them how to live, inspire them to fight for their own and cherish time and lives. They grasp the opportunities wars give them and create better lives than most people in America. This is the merit of war.
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I think you bring up some interesting points, but I respectfully disagree. I do not think war is an “unavoidable” part of human society as you say. I also find it concerning that war should be seen as a way to “seed out the weaker people and better society”. That kind of Social Darwinist thinking is dangerous and gives rise to an “us” v. “them” mentality that leads to endless war and genocide. There is no reason why wars need to be fought and I believe a world without war is possible in the future…
I also do not think that the way their refugee story shaped their lives is something that is inherently good. Sure, there was regeneration that came out of destruction, but is that what they would have wanted? I think they were victims of circumstance and I think being in a refugee camp is a terrible tragedy. Yes, people are resilient so they turned out okay, but such an experience does not “teach them how to live or give them opportunities.” I disagree with your chauvinistic depiction of the “merits” of war. I do not think war has any merit and I disagree with your fatalistic conclusion that war is an inevtiable part of our nature that is beneficial because it eliminates weaker individuals from the equation.
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Refugees that came to United Stated because of the Vietnam War, they have to come, but most of them don’t want come. Since they had to come United States, it encourages them to pursue a better life by having less opportunity than most Americans. Also, they choose to remember the war is worth, and they are the evidence of war. Just like the author stated, how “his parents are wealthy, his brother is a doctor, and himself a professor and novelist.”
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The Americans like to justify the war with the narrative of the grateful and successful refugee. Contributing to American society, Americans posit that the war was actually worth it, since invaluable members of society-refugees-were gained as a consequence.
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I agree that the war can be justified as “worth it”. More than just the refugees, advancement in technology, and a sense of unity was created. But it also brings death, poverty, and all the negative outcomes. Just to bring it to discussion, does the good side or the bad side weigh more from war? is it really worth it?
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http://sincronia.cucsh.udg.mx/dominican.html
This invasion was told to protect the lives of Americans, when in fact the US military was going into the Dominican Republic in fear of the rise of Communism.
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War has duplicity. Good and evil coincide, creating death, and simultaneously creating opportunity. If America never invaded Vietnam, Nguyen would never of had the success his family endured.This is the true horror of war- that good comes out of it. That, whether we are aware or not, we support war every day.We all have blood on our hands.
America was the first loser in war to determine how history will look at it. We see Dominicans as immigrants, when their homeland was uninhabitable from American imperialism. Immigration is a choice, and these people didn’t have the choice- it was leave or die. The American war-cinema-complex takes destruction and makes a creation out of it, giving the illusion our intentions are only to spread democracy, ignoring the enormous profit war generates.
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This passage strikes me personally because my parents and family came to United States as refugees as a result the U.S’s bombing of Cambodia which sparked the war. Speaking of the consequences of war in general, there are consistently unintentional hardships for those that emigrate to other countries post-war. Those brave enough to leave their homeland, venture into the world, into the unknown and restart life faced in a culture and way of life foreign deserve respect. Nguyen comments in the previous paragraph that his family has achieved success in the United States is living proof of the American dream, but also a war story. We sometimes forget what constitutes a war story. I and My family’s existence here in the United States are war stories like Nguyen’s. The perception of the American way by other countries is considered peaceful and liberating – truly the best way a population could thrive is by mimicking the American way. This is propaganda; the peace we as Americans observe is the result of war and the hardships for Americans and the countries it engages in conflict with could never be advertised. To reach a sound conclusion of whether or not the wars we participate in are considered just or unjust is incalculable; there is no yes or no answer. Many of my parents’ friends, and families were left behind and died because of the wars cause in the Southeast Asian region. I cannot imagine the pain repressed within the hearts of my family members because of the war losing precious loved ones. I would presume as an immigrant of war that Nguyen has considered this too; I would presume any immigrant as a result of war has pain deep within them similar to mine and Nguyen’s family. I continue living this war story. What can I the child of a first generation of Cambodian American descent accomplish within his life? I wonder if I can be as successful as Nguyen because its been hard to find my place in society. I live on as evidence of the United States conflict in Southeast Asian that occurred forty years ago.
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Noam Chomsky put it like this – “support our troops is nothing more than a public relations slogan.” It’s something that the establishment wants the American people to truly believe, with blind faith, that way no one ever questions anything. Supporting our troops, that kind of blind patriotism – it is a distraction from every other messed up thing that this country does. Some other true war stories: the US destabilized Afghanistan as a Cold War tactic, helping in the formation of the Taliban, which we then went to war against. Drone warfare today in Yemen and Pakistan kills many innocent children by using unmanned robots – scary stuff, but people say it’s self-defense. The idea of true war stories is taking responsibility for the actions of your nation – above all else. Only the true series of events should matter in war.
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The anecdotes and historical examples provided by the author show how war affects people in different ways. Viet Nguyen describes himself as having experienced the captivation of the “fun” stories of war, while observing that he only “experienced the half of war that is not any fun.” The truth is, war is not just about soldiers and their struggle. It is not just about collateral damage and the opportunity to start a new life. War, like life, is filled with contradictions and layers, and affects every individual differently but similarly as well.
War is thrilling for many, horrible for most. Many Vietnamese did become Doctors, wealthy, or adjusted in the U.S; many are still finding their way and are feeling their own residuals from the war. What matters however, is that the stories of those whom people may deem as “boring”, need to be heard. That war is not just an event to market stories and heroic fantasies around, but a very real event that touches and transforms (for better or worse) the lives of anyone who comes in contact with it. It is through the boring stories in which we find how disturbingly normal we treat the idea of war.
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I am glad Nguyen clarifies that the stories that thrill may also be considered true stories alongside the more day to day stories of war. I don’t think anyone would profit from dismissing the “gore galore” accounts of soldiers. But I agree that war is over-sensationalized, especially in American media and television, and we need to have a clearer understanding of the fact that our actions and indifference alike affect every war we’re in and sometimes even those we’re not. I think Nguyen also get at the idea that we sensationalize these stories in order to dissociate ourselves from the war; we tell the stories that are so different from our ordinary lives so that we cannot possibly think we have or will ever experience something like that. But the truth is, war is everywhere and the innate ability to do horrific and immoral things is present within everyone. So we allow ourselves to think that this “war” is something we will never experience, but, as Nguyen points out, we live it with every mundane purchase we make and are participants whether we like it or not.
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The relative privilege America has in the world allows for our people to choose to ignore the reality of the grind of our war-machine in far off places in the world. Our deluded sense of exceptionalism makes many people think that:
1.) We have some divine right to intervene militarily wherever we see fit.
2.) That our wars are fought for the betterment of others
3.) There is no need to pay attention to the effects these wars have on people, countries, cultures, etc.
This is something we see with the Middle East. Our excessive military involvement there first gave rise to groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and when “the chickens came home to roost” in such an awful way we decided that we should get further involved in the region by invading Iraq. Now we have the Islamic State. It seems to me that we have not learned our lessons from Vietnam because the people don’t connect the dots between our lives in America and the wars we fight abroad. According to National Geographic, only 18% of Americans are able to point out Afghanistan on a map. That is just plan upsetting and highly indicative of the fact that we, as a country, are incredibly apathetic towards war even though we are addicted to it. I feel like it boils down to the idea that Americans tend to believe (subconsciously and culturally) that they matter more than everyone else, which gives them the arrogance to not care or not speak out and allow such atrocities to continue.
We need to check our privilege and put our exceptionalist rhetoric to sleep if we are to have an legitimate chance at reigning in our military-industrial complex/machine.
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America, the so called savior of the world, has made its role apparent when reflecting on the Vietnam war. Nguyen writes about how stories told about the war practically glorify it, the perception of the war focusing on the victor rather than the victim, with the people who suffered as merely side characters. However, are the lives post-war not true war stories? Nguyen writes about how the Vietnam war caused her family to relocate to America, where they did end up successful. Due to their successfulness, their story was rewritten to depict an inspiring immigrant family. The author gives plenty of examples of “immigrant waves” due to war, yet the stories don’t come across as war stories. I personally believe post-war survivors’ stories should be deemed as true war stories, as war tears people up physically and emotionally, forever changing them.
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Growing up in America I’ve watched many movies, and read many stories of American wars. Wars that are glamourized, and used as propaganda to make Americans patriotic, and proud to be an American. This is all that Americans know when it comes to wars. They don’t hear about the children being killed, people being forced from their land, and the many other atrocities. Life in America goes on. The wars don’t affect us as Americans, because they aren’t taking place in America. So all that this country knows is what is on the T.V. or in a book. I too was like this, it took me reading books, and doing my own research to learn about what really goes on. Many Americans are blind to what really goes on in a war, It takes stories like this to turn the light on in peoples head, to make people really look at the truth. Millions of people are killed at the hands of the U.S. military and because of all the propaganda Americas are fed, they are proud of it. America does a good job to devalue the life’s of people who aren’t America, so when we see victims of war we don’t see them as fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, or anything else. We see them as what we were taught to see them as our enemies.
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I believe that Viet speaks on how outsiders interpret war stories. They basically disconnect themselves from the war by creating what happened into a story / fairytale. I think that Viet is completely right; for example, this whole situation with the new president Donald Trump has the whole world shaken up. We have to realize that enough of us voted for him and now that they see how much corruption he has brought to the world just by winning we feel guilty. This is just one example. As a child, I was never taught how much wars impacted the people. I was only told about how we either won or lost and it was always for the greater good. Till this day, I still feel as if I was cheated from learning my history and the little history I was taught was extremely biased.
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Nguyen points out how war is thought by most to happen abroad. This attitude makes it easy to distance ourselves from war, and that distance somehow allows us to rationalize and absolve ourselves of our responsibility/ involvement—however minor—in the war effort. He argues that war not only happens “over there” but “over here” also. By being consumers, we are, in essence, funding the war. No matter how far we percieve war to be, it is actually closer to us than we think—we’re involved with the war on a day-to-day basis, as we go about opening our fridges and watching our war movies.
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Even as I write this down, I have to watch how carefully I critique the American Image of War and of Vietnam because there is only so much we can take as Americans. When you look at how things like Agent Orange, War Crimes and Racism during the Vietnam War were presented then and now, there’s always been a mixed message. As Americans, we want to believe ourselves as spreading freedom, democracy and meritocracy throughout the world; only hinting at the worst of war only to maintain a self-righteous image of sacrifice and martyrdom. For our military complex, everything that was done and is done for the history of the Vietnam War is to perpetuate the American War machine and support it.
When it comes to the reality though, we remain blissfully ignorant of what really happened and those Vietnamese Americans who suffered and are still suffering from the war are rarely given attention aside from anything that can be used to support the United States cause. Vietnamese-American racism and Agent Orange, whose affects are still affecting those generations today are never given any spotlight. Many people even deliberately avoid such topics because of a sense of patriotism. It’s sad really…
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He points out that the military-industrial complex benefits from presenting war as exciting. In fact, it is quiet the opposite, with a lot of suffering, especially on the part of refugees.
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The essay touches upon many different aspects of what a war story means to people and how they are portrayed. In a particular part of the essay Nguyen talks about another story Close Quarters, which talks about how women were raped by American soldiers and the concept that it was not considered rape. The fact that the author did not show any pity towards the women made the reader realize the point of view of the American solider.It was presented as the plain ugly truth that nobody wanted to realize. The idea that these soldiers were still looked at as heroes because they were protecting their country as sickening because their character was being hidden by their identity as a soldier. Others were considered narrow-minded because they only wanted to see the good in the soldiers and disregard everything else that disapproved that.
Another interesting point in the essay is the reflection upon the American Dream. The author states that her family of refugees was the typical proof of the American Dream because they were wealthy and stable. This idea of being able to achieve the American Dream for them is big because it shows that they were able to provide a better life for themselves and this would have not been possible if it was not for the millions of Vietnamese soldiers who fought for their rights. They still to this today are greatly appreciated. Overall, we understand that there is no one way of looking at war because everyone has their own interpretation depending on what they want to understand.
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My junior year of high school, I, like many other high schoolers, discovered Tim O’Brien’s transformative and multi-faceted novel, The Things They Carried. I had never read a “war story” that even remotely resembled its structure, narrative, or evocative emotions. I had never read any novel that so completely intertwined philosophy and emotion. I thought it was brilliant. So, when I saw that this essay referenced it, I was thrilled. However, as I read, I began to see new perspectives and dilemmas in O’Brien’s book—perspectives that hadn’t occurred to me before. Throughout Nguyen’s essay, I found myself wondering: have I been glorifying O’Brien’s story for four years now? More importantly, if I have, what are the implications of this unwarranted glorification? Who have I, and presumably many others, left out of our views on war stories?
One reason I was particularly concerned with my oversight is that I have spent a lot of time considering the nature of war stories for World War II refugees, but this recognition of their stories somehow never carried over to my thoughts on refugees from other wars. In other words, the concept that refugee stories are war stories has been in my mind for years. Yet I still never questioned O’Brien’s version of a war story, or his declaration of how a war story can be defined.
My oversight speaks not only to the forgotten nature of many refugees, but also to the complacency and “passive consent” (143) that Americans give regarding war. As Nguyen says, there is a naturalness to war. I didn’t notice my oversight until it was essentially pointed out to me—the view I held seemed natural and that naturalness seemed right. So, I’m left to ask: what would make something so horrific (i.e. war) seem natural? Long-term exposure and widespread adjustment to horrors would do that. Therefore, Nguyen’s assertion that war affects every part of Americans’ lives makes sense. The only way for war and its consequences to seem natural, the only way Americans can appear so nonchalant about war is for it to be a permeating aspect of our culture and lives.
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I believe the main point Viet Thanh Nguyen wants us to take away from his essay is “war stories disturb even more when they are not about soldiers”(145). Oftentimes in American culture, war is glorified into star-spangled blind patriotism with very little insight into how it affects the citizens of the countries we invade. Americans have never experienced life as a war torn country—they are always a movie screen, a newscast, a book away from the action. They do not live in a war torn country, and because of this there is a disconnect and inability to understand the true effects of war on the infrastructure of a culture and country. He argues that Americans realizing that a lot of immigrants in America now living the American dream are the product of “millions” of deaths of people from their homeland is not a good war story to tell because it is coated in the reality of war instead of the movie version of war. Nguyen is attempting to show us that we need to add the human element back into war and realize the impacts of what we’re fighting for instead of glorifying it and coating it with a Hollywood glean.
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The essay “On True War Stories,” comments on several aspects on war such as p.o.v, money and ethics. Viet Nguyen states that Americans or anyone in the wrong will portray their side and even though “war” or the example he used of rape is bad it is glorified because of point of view. He displays that telling a story from the person being victimized or tortured is boring and that no one wants to be that person so that story is shunned. Also states what is never talked about in these “war stories” such as how it is a business and how much war cost. They say war has been normalized and most people do not understand the repercussions that it ensues on those being hurt. At the end of the essay Nguyen makes a point that the reason why so many people came to America as immigrants is because of war and because America chose to “bully” or “spread democracy”hurting other countries. It is a fair argument that we never hear the tortured side but that point that it is boring is also true. What side of the story should we listen to?
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