Intro to The Things They Carried

The Vietnam War

Vietnam

• South Vietnam and the U.S. tried to prevent North and South Vietnam from being united under communist leadership.

• After the First Indochina War, Vietnam was partitioned to separate the warring parties until free elections could be held in 1956.– Ho Chi Minh's popular Viet Minh

party from the north was expected to win the elections, which the leader in the south, Ngo Dinh Diem, refused to hold.

• Fighters who were trained in the north (the Viet Cong) fought a guerrilla war against the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese forces;

• The Tet Offensive of 1968, in which the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese attacked 36 major South Vietnamese cities and towns, marked a turning point in the war. Many in the U.S. had come to oppose the war on moral and practical grounds, and Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson decided to shift to a policy of “de-escalation.”

Statistics• 1955-1975• At the height of U.S.

involvement, there were more than half a million U.S. military personnel in Vietnam.

• More than 2 million deaths from the war– About 58,000 American

deaths– About 1 million were

civilians• Over $2.5 Billion spent by

the US

Uncertainty

• Foreign land• Cause that most

people didn’t understand or supported

• Vietnamese communists: guerilla warfare

Trauma• American soldiers

endured deaths, injury, physical hardship, and emotional trauma.

• The American people watched footage of combat scenes on TV which prompted protests at home.

• My Lai Massacre The villages of central Vietnam known collectively as My Lai have been stamped by history as places of horrific acts of war. More than 500 people, many of them women and children , were slaughtered here by American G.I.s on March 16, 1968. On that fateful day the angry and frustrated men of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, American Division entered the village of My Lai.

Tim O’Brien• Drafted as an infantry man in

Vietnam for 14 months• Wounded and sent home• The Things They Carried focuses on soldiers’

responses to the fear and confusion in Vietnam and the memories that haunt them after war.

• His novels are not just about war; his writing is “the exploration of substantive, important human values.” He’s concerned if readers care about what’s right and wrong and about the difficulty of doing right.

The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

1. What do you know about them?2. Compare and contrast these wars with

the Vietnam War.