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“What is more immoral than war?” (Sade). The Vietnam War was a bloody and gruesome war that affected many people in the United States and Vietnam. The war lasted 21 years, from 1954 to 1975. The war started as fear grew that communism would spread from Vietnam to nearby countries. The Vietnam War severely impacted many soldiers and their lives in negative ways. Many of the soldiers came home with severe physical deformities, and many also came home with mental injuries such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Examples of this can be shown by author Tim O’Brien in his two pieces “The Things They Carried”, and “Where have you gone O Charming Billy”. “The Things They Carried” is a novel about the Vietnam War, which tells many stories based on O’Brien’s first-hand accounts of the war and it also has secondhand accounts from other soldiers he had known. Where have you gone O Charming Billy is a short story about what the terrors of war can do to someone, and the fear it provokes in people. Both of these pieces also illustrate the many decisions made by soldiers in a war scenario. By looking at the decisions made by soldiers in Vietnam, the immorality of war becomes evident, and this is important because it shows how war can negatively impact a soldier mental health and caused them to make unjust or radical decisions that ultimately lead to the immorality of war.
Many young American Citizens did not want to fight in the Vietnam war but due to social standards they were forced to fight in a war they did not believe in. One of these people was Tim O’Brien. O’Brien believed that the war was unjust and immoral but he joined due to the shame he felt for not wanting to go. O’Brien became a soldier and experienced many different atrocities and hardships of war. He wrote about the decisions of himself and others that showed how war affects soldiers’ mental health. The book The Things They Carried shows typical examples of how the mental health of soldiers changed from a good state to a bad state due to the conditions of war.
In one part of The Things They Carried, O’Brien realizes himself. He realizes that the war has been changing him, negatively. He knows that the person he went into the war as was not the same person he was during the war, or even after. He says “I’d come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person, a college grad, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, all the credentials, but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight of the simple daily realities. I’d turned to mean inside.” (O’Brien 200). O’Brien had known that war wasn’t going to be good for him, and he acknowledged that he had turned mean. This change in O’Brien was not for the better of O’Brien’s Mental health. This proves how war can not only change one person but it changes everyone and affects everyone’s mental health negatively.
War can be a terrifying thing for many soldiers. It can play and mess with people’s heads in numerous ways. In Tim O’Brien’s piece “Where Have You Gone O Charming Billy” the story is told from Paul Berlin’s Perspective. Paul Berlin describes an experience he had with another man in his unit, Billy Boy. In this Paul Berlin says “A funny war story that he would tell to his father, how Billy Boy Watkins was scared to death. A good joke. But even when he smelled salt and heard the sea, he could not stop being afraid.” (O’Brien 16). In this Paul Berlin tells about the death of Billy Boy. Unlike most deaths in a war setting, Billy Boy died due to the fear he had. The fear that war brought about in Billy Boy was from the horrors and atrocities he had seen and experienced, which caused his death but ironically it was his fear of being killed by these atrocities that killed him. This shows how war can negatively impact a soldier’s mental health because it provokes intense fear in soldiers and the immorality of war can be shown through the atrocities that provoke this fear in the soldiers.
Many soldiers leave the war they fought in a very different person due to the brutality and terror of it. Soldiers had become mentally ill after the war, this has been proven throughout history, especially in the Vietnam War. As said in a study about the Vietnam War, “For some of them ‘ the terror of their battle experiences or their physical disabilities have shattered their lives.” or “Vietnam veterans who experience PTSD have a feeling of helplessness, worthlessness, dejection, anger, depression, insomnia, and a tendency to react to tense situations by using survival tactics.”( Hochgesang). This is talking about the aftereffects of the Vietnam War on many of the soldiers, because of the terror of their battle experiences many change and become different people. Most of these changes are negative and impact the soldier’s mental health. These negative changes show the immorality of war because of the way it leaves soldiers after they are done fighting.
One thing that is evident about war is that there can be a significant death toll on both sides. One of the things that can cause soldiers to become mentally impaired or have mental health problems is exposure to the violence of war. Witnessing death and destruction can only negatively impact a soldier’s mental health. ‘The normality of violence can make it so soldiers believe that the atrocities they may commit are justified due to the fact it is normal in a war setting’.(Macmanus) The reality of the matter is the belief that violence can be justified in a war setting can cause a mentally stable person to become mentally impaired. This shows the immorality of war because exposure to violence can severely impact a soldier’s mental health in negative ways.
Many wars throughout history have been very gruesome and bloody. The Vietnam War was no exception. By looking at the death toll of the Vietnam war it becomes evident. “The death toll was approximately 2 million civilians, around 200-250 thousand South Vietnamese soldiers died, around 1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers died and 58,200 American soldiers died.”(Vietnam Embassy). Because of this high death toll, many soldiers became mentally damaged due to all the violence they had seen and caused. The radical decision to kill someone shows how a soldier’s mental health can change negativity and show the immorality of war.
In another one of O’Brien’s war stories, he shows how the war had mentally affected another soldier that he knew. This story was written in The Things They Carried and it is about a soldier named Rat Kiley and the day his best friend Kurt Lemon died. It said “He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn’t to kill; It was to hurt. He put the rifle muzzle up against the mouth and shot the mouth away. Nobody said much. (O’Brien 79). In this O’Brian is explaining Rat Kiley’s reaction to his best friend’s death, in Kiley’s fit of anger and pain he brutally makes a baby buffalo suffer by shooting it in nonlethal parts of its body. Rat Kiley has been mentally damaged because of his best friend’s death and it causes him to act in a brutal unforgiving way. This decision shows how his mental health was negatively impacted and ultimately shows the immorality of war.
The immorality of war comes from the negative change to a soldier’s mental health which can cause soldiers to make unjust or violent decisions that show the immorality of war. The point O’Brien was trying to make in his two pieces was that war was immoral, and he was showing how war was immoral by talking about the decisions of himself and others that he experienced throughout his service. He was also trying to show how war can mentally change people and how they make negative decisions which help lead to the immorality of war. These pieces also hold much significance to America and they show us that the wars we fight in cause more harm and damage than any benefit. Both of O’Brien’s pieces and historical evidence prove the immorality of war.
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