The Vietnam Reader (92 page)

4. Continuing issue: How are the heroes of these narratives similar to those we’ve seen in other Vietnam books? How do they differ from standard American heroes?

5. How might the authors’ relationship to the Army influence their view of the war? Think of the authors in terms of our categories of soldiers—damaged vet, psycho killer, professional, reluctant draftee, protest vet, frontier hero, etc.

6. These works focus on very different events and operations to represent the Vietnam experience. Discuss the emphasis each writer has chosen, and possible reasons for that choice.

7. What implicit critiques of American tactics and strategies do these narratives contain?

8. How America chooses its war: Glasser published his book in 1971, Downs in ’78, Mason in ’83, Lanning in ’87. Keeping in mind
that the antiwar movement was huge by ’68 and the Memorial was dedicated in ’82, explain how the political climate of the country may fit each text—that is, how the way the culture was seeing the war and the vet at that particular time may have matched what the author had to say.

9. Examine how the authors use atrocities or war crimes. Compare the treatment of VC prisoners in Downs’s and Mason’s work.

10. Examine the authors’ views of relations between Americans and the Vietnamese.

11. Compare these personal narratives with literary fiction from the war. Examine how different texts emphasize action over character or vice versa. What or whom are we supposed to be concerned about? How do these pieces of nonfiction conform to or explode the conventions of the heroic battle narrative or its twin, the protest memoir?

12. Recurring themes: Views of women, definitions of masculinity.

13. Critics often charge that American Vietnam War narratives—especially those written years after the war—focus on the personal or technical at the expense of judging the larger political and moral realities of our involvement. Do you find this criticism valid for these texts or not, and why?

10. Masterwork

1. Is this just a batch of stories strung together? A novel? Comment on O’Brien’s use of form. You might compare this fractured form with that of his own
Going After Cacciato.
Or, on a grander scale, you might look at how so many Vietnam narratives have nonlinear or exploded structures.

2. Fiction or nonfiction? At times, O’Brien interrupts, often to correct or undercut the effect of a story. Discuss this odd metafictional tactic and its effect on the reader. Also, comment on O’Brien’s use of himself as a (possibly fictional) character.

3. Examine the story “How to Tell a True War Story” in the context of the opening pages of Heinemann’s
Paco’s Story.

4. Explain the line “It
wasn’t
a war story, it was a
love
story.”

5. Discuss the different audiences O’Brien is telling his stories to
and what he says (or implies) about them. Compare this with Heinemann’s narrator’s view of Americans’ thirst for war stories.

6. Innocent kids or psycho killers? How does O’Brien view the American soldier, and how does this differ from the views of other authors?

7. Views of the enemy. Compare “The Man I Killed” with other versions of VC or NVA regulars.

8. The reluctant draftee kills the reluctant draftee: Compare “The Man I Killed” with O’Brien’s self-portrait in
If I Die in a Combat Zone.

9. Examine the reactions of other platoon members to O’Brien killing the man. How might these be read as allegories for the veteran’s reception by America? Look for evidence of this theme (views of the vet) in the other stories.

10. Discuss the significance of O’Brien’s tides.

11. “This is true.” Truth is such a loaded issue when it comes to Vietnam, yet O’Brien purposely and continually plays up the fact that he’s inventing what we’re reading. Contrast this with all the odd prefaces and disclaimers other authors have used to prove their authority.

12. The tall tale as a major Vietnam genre: Compare fabulous tales
(Paco’s
Story,
Going After Cacciato,
some of the more outrageous whoppers from
Dispatches,
parts of
The Things They Carried)
with scrupulous realism
(The 13th Valley, The Green Berets,
oral histories, and other supposedly objective nonfiction).

13. The kid with one leg and the chocolate bar: Throughout
The Things,
O’Brien uses ready-made and sentimental images and then finds a way to overcome them, put a different spin on them. Find examples and compare this effect with how he uses the reader’s conventional expectations against us.

14. Look at how O’Brien uses games and toys both to characterize the soldiers as children and to comment on how his choice of form (and the war) works.

11. Homecoming

1. What are these returned vets like? How do the authors’ characterizations fit into previous categories we’ve seen? Compare them with first-person accounts of life after service in Vietnam (oral histories, nonfiction). Have we seen these same traits from Hollywood films, TV shows, popular literature? Would you say they’re stereotypes or true to life—and how can one tell?

2. Paco in his rented room, Norman Bowker in his father’s car: How is the vet’s relationship with America (or his community) represented? How do the authors portray the vet’s view of America?

3. Look at all the instances of returned vets trying to connect with women. Examine their relationships.

4. A related question: Compare Paco’s (and the narrator’s) imagining Cathy having sex with Marty-boy and the gang rape of the captured VC. You might also look at the execution of the imaginary male VC.

5. Collect evidence of the gap between veteran and civilian.

6. How do the different authors and narrators (and characters) try to bridge the gap?

7. Flashbacks: Discuss how most if not all of these vets seem to be haunted by the past. Look at the many ways the authors show the power of memory and the mind.

8. My Lai: Civilians (read: readers) agree on the insanity and immorality of war, and especially war crimes. Comment on the authors’ use of atrocities.

9. The Ivy League English major ROTC lieutenant: Examine how Heinemann uses the character Lieutenant Stennett.

10. In “Speaking of Courage” and its companion “Notes,” examine vets’ views of other vets. Consider the position of the character Tim O’Brien looking at the character Norman Bowker, as well as Bowker’s thoughts in his letter.

11. “The town did not know shit about shit.” Compare Norman Bowker’s view of the town to O’Brien’s view of the actual Worthington, Minnesota, in
If I Die in a Combat Zone.

12. Note the emphasis: “After
Our
War.” Self-accusation: Find instances where these works force the American reader to look at America, to admit complicity. Is this a form of bridging the gap?

13. Analyze Bruce Weigl’s “Monkey” in the light of Paco, Norman Bowker, and Henry Lamartine of Louise Erdrich’s “A Bridge.”

12. Memory

1. Once again, examine the returned vets. How do they differ from other popular versions we’ve seen? In what ways are they the same?

2. Discuss the personae in Yusef Komunyakaa’s poems and their relationship with the Vietnamese—male and female, enemy and ally.

3. And again, the relationship of vets and women: Look especially at
In Country,
in which one vet, Tom (only briefly mentioned in these sections), is Sam’s impotent lover; Emmett is her bachelor uncle; and her dead father’s relationship with her mother was strained by her antiwar leanings.

4. Race and the military. Examine Komunyakaa’s portrayal of African American soldiers. Compare his versions with, say, Heinemann’s Jonesy or Del Vecchio’s Doc Johnson.

5. We see the gap from both sides in
In Country.
Compare how Sam and Emmett see it differently.

6. How does Sam try to bridge this gap?

7. How about the generation gap? Norman Bowker and his father, Sam and Emmett—or Sam and her lost father.

8. Is that you, John Wade? Is this me? How does O’Brien frame his character’s guilt or innocence in Thuan Yen? American innocence? How does he explain the evils of war, and how does this fit with Caputo’s defense?

9. Fact or fiction? Again, O’Brien is walking the line between documented truth and the imaginary, and includes a possibly fictional narrator/author. What effect does this situating of an overtly fictional story in a documented historical event have upon our unavoidably politicized reading?

10. Examine the position of women in
In the Lake of the Woods.

11. Discuss memory or conscience with respect to
In Country
and
In the Lake of the Woods.
How about complicity, denial, America’s historical conscience? Who does the war continue to affect?

12. Look at Emmett’s big emotional scene in
In Country.
How does this fit with stereotypes of the Vietnam vet? Examine Emmett saying, “It’s the same for all of us.”

13. How does Balaban use history and time in “Mr. Giai’s Poem”? What might he be implying about the consolations of memory? Of poetry? How might Tim O’Brien or Norman Bowker refute or agree with this view of the salvific power of memory? That is, does memory save us or condemn us? Include Kevin Bowen’s “Incoming” in this discussion.

13. The Wall

1. How do the veterans in these pieces view the Wall? The war?

2. In
The Names of the Dead
and Komunyakaa’s poems, examine the differences between generations and how they connect with the Wall and the war.

3. “I’m inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” Komunyakaa’s narrator says. Compare this with Larry Markham’s vision of himself and his son “looking out” of the Wall, and discuss how many of the vets we’ve seen have felt trapped or still caught inside the war.

4. Look at the mother’s mementos in “Between Days” and the offerings Larry Markham leaves at the Wall. How have veterans and civilians in these and other pieces chosen to memorialize the war—keep it present and with them? How might this relate to the number of books written about the war?

5. Consider “… framing the blackness.” Note the confusion both Komunyakaa’s narrator and Larry Markham struggle with, trying to place themselves and figure out what they’re seeing, where they fit in it, what it means to them.

Acknowledgments

Map of Vietnam

From
The Eyewitness History of the Vietnam War
by The Associated Press. Map by Alex Jay. Copyright © 1983 by The Associated Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Villard Books, a division of Random House.

Prose, Drama, and Poetry

The Green Berets:
Copyright © 1965 by Robin Moore. Reprinted by permission of the author.

If I Die in a Combat Zone:
Copyright © 1973 by Tim O’Brien. Used by permission of Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

Going After Cacciato:
Copyright © 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978 by Tim O’Brien. Used by permission of Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

One Very Hot Day:
Copyright © 1967, renewed 1995 by David Halberstam. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co. All rights reserved.

Obscenities:
Copyright © 1972 by Michael Casey. Used by permission of the author.

Sticks and Bones:
Copyright © 1969 by David Rabe. Used by permission of the author.

“Imagine” and “The Invasion of Grenada”: Copyright © W. D. Ehrhart. These poems appear in multiple publications of W. D. Ehrhart and are here reprinted by permission of the author.

“War Stories”: Copyright © Perry Oldham. Used by permission of the author.

“A poem ought to be a salt lick” and “The sun goes down”: Copyright © 1969 by D. C. Berry. Used by permission of the author.

“After Our War,” “In Celebration of Spring 1976,” and “Mr. Giai’s Poem” from
Locusts at the Edge of Summer:
Copyright © 1997 by John Balaban. Used by permission Copper Canyon Press, Post Office Box 271, Port Townsend, Wash. 98368.

Born
on the Fourth of July:
Copyright © 1976 by Ron Kovic. Used by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

Fields of Fire:
Copyright © 1978 by James H. Webb, Jr. Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster.

A Rumor of War:
Copyright © 1977 by Philip Caputo. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

Dispatches:
Copyright © 1977 by Michael Herr. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Nam:
Copyright © 1981 by Mark Baker. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow & Company, Inc.