Effects of War Live



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Effects of War

            Sean Huze and Tim O’Brien are two gifted authors who wrote about wars.  They have different takes on war but they cover some of the same situations.  Both talk about how the war affected the soldiers they were close with; more specifically how death affected them.  There are many examples to chose from.



PTSD



            A good monologue from Huze’s play is Private First Class Weems’.  Weems had to look for survivors after a massive attack that ended in the destruction of a town.  At first Weems acts like a typical hardened soldier.  He only complained about the smell saying, “well let’s just say it wasn’t exactly potpourri” (Huze 13).   Then he tripped on a foot; a foot with no leg or body attached.  It struck a chord in him and he got lost in a trance in which he desperately had to find the owner.

            Huze wanted to show the human side of the soldier.  He did this by giving Weems a sense of right and wrong.  It was so important for Weems to find the rightful owner of the foot that he “kicked bodies over and around” and attracted the attention of his sergeant (Huze 13).  He felt that he could make things right if he could find the body.  He had a moment where he realized all the people they were killing and that it was wrong.  Huze wants the audience to see that death and war do affect soldiers and that they aren’t completely desensitized.  Through those few moments of Weems’ breakdown, Huze achieves his goal.  The line that really connects me to what Weems is going through was, “he yelled again and I held up the foot, thinking he would see it and understand” (Huze 13).  That line puts this image in my head of a soldier standing next to bodies with the foot raised high like everyone is seeing the same thing, trying to right the wrong like he is.  He is remorseful.

war cry

            O’Brien’s short story, “How to Tell a True War Story”, is another good example of the effect of death on soldiers.  This story mainly talks about Curt Lemon’s death and the way it affects his best friend, Rat Kiley. At the beginning of the story Rat writes this wonderful letter to Lemon’s sister about how great he was.  He really put a lot of feeling into the letter and he “almost bawls writing it” (O’Brien 67).  O’Brien then continues to tell you how Lemon died and then into the story about the baby buffalo.  Rat went from offering the buffalo food to shooting it all over.  He took his pent up feelings and took them out on that baby buffalo.

            He couldn’t handle the death of his best friend. After all, Rat was only 19. He had to make something else feel the pain he had. Shot after shot went into the buffalo and Rat wouldn’t stop until the creature couldn’t get up or even be recognized as a buffalo.  He then went off to cry by himself. O’Brien then talks about the other soldiers reactions, “we had witnessed something essential, something brand-new and profound, a piece of the world so startling there was not yet a name for it” (O’Brien 79).  It was absolute grief.  That was a way for Rat to express the loss he just had.  The other men had seen nothing like it because not many people just let go and violently express themselves like Rat. 

            O’Brien likes to jump around in his short stories and this one is no different.  It goes from Rat to the truth about war stories to Lemon’s death back to the truth again.  As he does this he gives you many different views on what happened, whereas Huze only focuses on one soldiers view with a narrator interjecting occasionally.  Huze chose to use rough language and O’Brien has a softer tone.  O’Brien likes to reflect on what happened and take us back to present time and then throw us back in the war.  Huze sticks to recalling a story and only from one person’s point of view.  

compassion

            They both effectively got their points even with different methods.  They also had similarities.  They both put their characters in a trance where they did irrational things like look for a leg or shoot a buffalo multiple times.  It makes them seem more relatable to the reader.  The use of detail to describe the ordeals they went through really put you the reader there.

            Huze and O’Brien took their experiences and turned them into great stories that help people see and understand what really happens overseas.  They show that the war affects soldiers on a deep level and sometimes it comes through the hard exterior.  They use excellent examples with amazing imagery to put the reader there.  Their goal of showing how the war affects their fellow soldiers was met. They depicted war and death well but it still is hard to make it comprehendible to civilians.  It’s like O’Brien says, “war is hell…war is nasty; war is fun…war makes you a man; war makes you dead” (O’Brien 80). 

Soldier

Works Cited Page

Huze, Sean. The Sandstorm. New York: Susan Schulman Literacy Agency, 2004. Print.

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. 1990. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2009. Print.