Illumination
round
“War” is simply
a term people read about nowadays; a term people know but do not comprehend.
Yet, only several decades ago, war is quite real for many people. There are the
Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the World Wars. Each one is a nightmare beyond
imagination: a nightmare not just physical but also mental. To help the people
living in the comfortable parts of this world to truly understand war and to
help reveal a little about war itself is why Michael Herr wrote this essay.
A former war
correspondent and a talented writer, Michael Herr wrote about his experience of
the Vietnam War. His words perfectly describes his feelings when he arrived, “…It’s
not real, it’s just some thing they’re
going through that isn’t real…”(Oates 328).
War is a
terrible thing; a terrible thing that not just take away lives but also people’s
humanity. Through anecdotes, imagery, a somber tone, and refusal toward euphemism,
Herr shows the readers just that. His writing with stories after stories of confused
soldiers and bloodlust shakes the readers’ soul. Furthermore, there is no
playfulness. He writes what the soldiers said, sometimes necessarily
inappropriate for children. He writes how a soldier married to a Vietnamese
woman commented in just months after their marriage that “[he] think [he is]
going to get out of there”(Oates 335); how a Marine lost his leg and cried, “you
lied to me, Father… you…sucker” (Oates 333), and how an major commented about
the blood and horrors of war, “I sort of miss them now” (Oates 341). These
experiences are not all necessarily tragic, but they are all abnormal to many
of the contemporary people enjoying long years of peace. Many families don’t
easily break apart, many people don’t get amputated, and many humans don’t grow
senseless. Yet, many do during war. Herr vividly hammers the image of “war”
into readers’ mind, and her serious tone makes the imagery she created ever so
convincing to many people, including me.
Guernica
Picasso
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