Comparing O Briens The Things They Carried and Ninhs The Sorrow of W

Comparing O Briens The Things They Carried and Ninhs The ruthfulness of contendfare Bao Ninhs The Sorrow of struggle is a contrapuntal reading to American literature on the Vietnam War. But rather than stand in austere contrast to Tim O Briens The Things They Carried, The Sorrow of War is strangely similar, yet different at the same time. From a post-colonialist standpoint, one must take in aim both works to get an accurate image of the war. The Sorrow of War is an excellent counterpoint because it is truthful. Tim O Brien writes . . . you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. (O Brien, 42) Bao Ninh succeeds in this respect. And it was for this reason that the Vietnamese government initially banned The Sorrow of War. A thorough textual and historical examination of both the war and post-war ingest of Vietnam reveals that its experience was similar to, if non worse than, that of America. unrivaled of the more remark able counterpoints of Kien/Boa Ninhs war experience is his view of American soldiers. For him, they were horrific, powerful, and inhuman. To American soldiers, the war was a journey into a strange world where snipers hid behind any bush. North Vietnamese soldiers had already fought for fifteen years and keep an eye onn the country ripped apart. at once they were to go up against hundreds of thousands of fresh troops from the worlds technological superpower. A weeny more frightening. This historical aspect is reflected in the text. For Bao Ninh, the enemy was non eternally a man that could only kill other men. The diamond-shaped grass change was piled high with bodies killed by helicopter gunships. Broken bodies, bodies blown apart, bodies vaporized. (Ninh, 5) How... ...sided fashion, one in which we have no sorrow for the communists. But what we see is that Vietnamese soldiers were not fighting for communism, they were fighting because the government ordered them to. The ones who loved war were not the young men but the others like the politicians, middle-aged men with fill out bellies and short legs. (75) Repeatedly The Sorrow of War reveals the deep suffering of Vietnam. One can not say, however, that American soldiers returned unscathed. The most important thing we see when we read the two aforementioned works is not the differences, but the similarities. War is hellish and unnatural for both sides. In the aftermath, our common humanity becomes homely in universal suffering. Works Cited Ninh, Bao The Sorrow of WarNew York Riverhead Books 1993 OBrien, Tim The Things They Carried New York Penguin Books 1990