No Longer an Abstraction

The beat poets were a growing group of intellectuals that experimented with drugs, made art, wrote, and were great conversationalists that wanted to spark change. They were firm believers that school is not required for thinking, and that words are one’s best weapon. Beat poets urged their readers to do the same, along with also breaking traditional writing by changing syntax and the format of their poems. The beats rejected what the standards of their time were, and were determined to show what living conditions were really like. They explored different religions and spiritualities, rejected materialism and welcomed in conversations of stimulation and change.

Ferlinghetti, a poet, painter and activist who co-founded the City Lights Bookstore, urges his reader to use words as their weapon of choice in his poem, Poetry as Insurgent Art. “You can conquer the conquerors with words....” Words are how they stayed stimulated- they thought that boredom was a choice, as they broke tradition and fought social climates with their pen. Poetry for them was not an abstraction- they were writing their ideas about events. Ferlinghetti says, “If you call yourself a poet, don’t just sit there. Poetry is not a sedentary occupation, not a ‘take your seat’ practice. Stand up and let them have it.” Ferlinghetti uses this as an example of how poetry and art should be used to take a stand against social, economic and political adversaries, and shows how just words are able to spark change and ideas into the heads of the readers of the poems that they wrote. Each of the poets were determined to give notice through issues through art- whether it was painting, writing, music, etc., the desire to spark change and be intellectuals without institutionalized education was a want they shared. Ferlinghetti thought, for the most part, that poetry could spark conversation and change the world. He asks his readers to use it, and to not let their words be “Write living newspapers...Your poems must be more than want ads for broken hearts”. This would stray away from the Poe’s of the world and lean more towards the Thoreau’s and Whitman’s, using their pens and words and thoughts to speak about what other’s may not want to hear. Ferlinghetti says, “don’t let them tell you your poetry is bull-...Don’t ever believe poetry is irrelevant during dark times.” Ferlinghetti and the poets of Greenwich village and City Lights indeed changed the world and lit a match that changed American literature and the country itself.

The Irony of Norman Bowker

In response to Speaking of Courage from The Things They Carried

Norman Bowker was a character in the book overtaken by the guilt of being apart of the Vietnam war. Early on, just like the rest of the characters, O’Brien introduces what he carries: “Norman Bowker carried  diary” (O’Brien, 3) and “Norman Bowker lying on his back one night, watching the stars, then whispering to me, ‘I’ll tell you something, O’Brien. If I could have one wish, anything, I’d wish for my dad to write me a letter and say it’s okay if I don’t win medals. That’s all my old man talks about, nothing else. How he can’t wait to see my goddamn medals.” (O’Brien, 35).

Norman got his medals, seven of them, although it’s up to interpretation whether or not he was awarded the Silver Star. Even though he came home with them, he questioned the validity and meaning of them: why was he being awarded for killing people and destroying their homes and villages? On the Fourth of July, Norman found himself aimlessly driving around the lake where his friend drowned before the war, thinking about what he would say to his old high school girlfriend and his father. When asked about what was going on, he couldn’t speak; he couldn’t tell his story, even though he so badly needed to tell someone what his experience as a soldier was. The irony of Norman Bowker is that he carried a diary; it’s never clear whether it’s his to write in or his to read, but he carried a tool that people used to deliver their personal stories. In the following chapter, Notes, we see Norman begging Tim O’Brien to tell his story because he was unable to. Norman could not coexist with the Norman that lived by the lake before the war and the one that found himself circling it afterwards.

The irony of Norman Bowker is that he was not welcomed back with parades and as a hero, and the chapter takes place on Fourth of July. He drove around a lake where his best friend drowned, thinking about how his fellow soldier, Kiowa, drowned in a field of waste. The reader has known Kiowa to be very religious, and instead of clean water bringing him rebirth, murky water is the subject of his demise. Norman Bowker ends the chapter by submerging himself in the water, and standing up to see the celebration of freedom in the sky.

The irony of Norman Bowker is that he could never cleanse himself from the terror he experienced or have any feeling of catharsis, so that not even clean water could save him.

A soldier as America

In response Church, Stockings and Style  from The Things They Carried

Henry Dobbins is like America because in this chapter, his conversations with Kiowa show that he characterizes America’s ambition, and they’re questioning of the place in the war. At this part they are staying in a pagoda, where seemingly coy Vietnamese monks brought buckets of water each morning. After a few days, it seemed as though the monks got used to their presence. “Though they were kind to all of us, the monks took a special liking to Henry Dobbins. ‘Soldier Jesus,’ they’d say, ‘good soldier Jesus.’” It’s then that Dobbins says he could join them, even though he wasn’t smart enough to be a minister, and Kiowa points out how wrong it was permissible for the monks serve them in a makeshift church when they’re all there to ultimately fight a war. This could be a metaphor to how wrong the war was in the first place. They were fighting an ideology, a war that wasn’t at all Americas’ to fight. It was questioning whether or not America should’ve sent people to Vietnam in the first place. Then you have Dobbins, who was this rough looking man, who was actually a really nice guy, that is also there to kill people but states, “All you can do is be nice. Treat them decent, you know?” to end the chapter. This is the strongest parallel to America; both appear strong, and courageous, but in the end America sent out its army to fight an economic and social ideology that they were afraid of.

At the end of Stockings, we can see that in Dobbins when he continues to wear his girlfriend’s stockings after she had broken up with him, “No sweat...the magic doesn’t go away.” The stockings were his comfort, his home away from home, the item he clung to and carried throughout his time as a soldier and blatantly showed to everyone around him. Despite his ruggedness, he was scared, just like the United States were, although he never seemed to admit it. He still clung onto hope, and he still fought despite his philosophy of being decent to people, because he had the moral and disillusionment and ignorance that America did.

In Style, the men observe a Vietnamese girl dancing after her home had been burned down and her family had been killed. Her hands were against her ears-possibly to block out the ringing sound of the war- as she danced among the wreckage. Later, Azar provocatively ridiculed her until Dobbins threatened to drop him in a well, “Henry Dobbins...took Azar from behind...over to a deep well and asked if we wanted to to be dumped in. Azar said no. ‘All right then,’ Henry Dobbins said, ‘dance right.’” We see this as the United States, as well, attempting to respect and know what other cultures and countries want, and trying to save them from “the bad guy”, even when sometimes, America is the bad guy.

Words Have the Power to Change Us

In response to Elliot Erwitt's "Segregated Drinking Fountains"

You must write about the things that you cannot speak about.

You must give yourself a voice,

                                                                somehow.

But when you cannot write,

How will you be heard?

You want to be refreshed.

You want cold water running down your throat.

                                              But this water is warm.

It hurts.

Crowds of people gather to hear words for change,

They gather around men.

             One that’s gentle,

And kind.

             One that’s strong,

But scary,

Both with fire in their eyes.

There are children here.

They don’t understand.

                                       Why they can’t get cold water,

While all the other kids can.

The one’s outside choose to ignore others,

Even when they’re so close they could touch,

                                                                       They can hear,

But they can’t listen.

They can’t see.

                                                 Where is the damage that they’ve done?

Non existent to them.

They can’t see.

                                                  They strip us from our innocence,

We can only grow so tall,

Before we’re tired,

We’re hurt,

And we just want cold water.

A Generation Against War

In response to: John Kerry's Vietnam War Speech

A popular piece of propaganda against the Vietnam war (above) showed the mentality of America towards the war. John Kerry is the 68th Secretary of State for the United States of America, and he shared this view of the Vietnam War. His view wasn’t groundbreaking; many people in America felt the way he did. The Vietnam war was the first war televised, so that people could see what was going on and how the soldiers were fighting. Kerry says “I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans...which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia.” In this speech to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1973, he explains that the American soldiers stationed in Vietnam committed war crimes while in Vietnam. This included raping others, cutting off body parts, blowing up bodies, shot random civilians, killed animals and other crimes that Kerry describes as having the men “...relive(d) the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.” Kerry blames America for what the soldiers felt as though they had to do, because they drafted the boys that were too young to go, and too inexperienced to know how to actually fight and deal with the details of war. Kerry continues to say that the unspeakable actions they committed weren’t the crimes themselves, “but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....” The American Soldiers were embarrassed to have partaken in such a war. They were decorated, and given medals, but they were not welcomed back as their fathers and grandfathers were in wars before this. They found that they were not fighting a tangible enemy overseas; they were fighting an ideology, and their dehumanized enemies were people that did not know what the difference was between communism and democracy. They were men that wanted to work without interruption, and were willing to side with whatever Army was available-they just wanted to survive. Since this was the first war the public could see, “We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism...”. Kerry is standing up to Congress, saying that this war was not started by Communism, or the need for protection that Vietnam supposedly needed. He pointed out that they were attempting to make Vietnam the bad guy, “we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong”, when it was really, in fact, America that was wreaking havoc on a country and its people to fight an idea. “We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.” America wanted to seem like the heroes and the saviors that would ultimately help Vietnam realize that Communism wasn’t what they wanted-because the United States knew better than they did. They glorified the war, their soldiers and the decisions made by people in power to go in and fight a war that wasn’t ours to fight. “We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point...” America refused to accept defeat, because of the competitive spirit and Patriotism that has been treasured for so long. Kerry ends with the point that his Native American friend and soldier came to the realization that he was doing to the Vietnamese what the Americans did to him and his people, and how the Vietnam war had not been viewed the same way under the name of protecting what the Vietnamese wanted. His concluding sentence is, “And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.”

Innocent or Warrior: The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

In response to Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Mary Anne Bell was brought to Vietnam by her longtime boyfriend Mark Fossie, who was a medic. She is described the way the reader would think a “sweetheart” would be; innocent, beautiful, young and girly. Mary Anne is fresh out of high school, only seventeen, and had packed cosmetics and wore the style of the day. She joined Mark and the boys at a medical detachment, because Mark assumed that it was safe for her to stay with them there.  Mary Anne connected with the nature of Vietnam; she accuses Mark and the soldiers of having a sheltered view of the land, because they were in the medical detachment. She had compassion for the Vietnamese people, even the one’s that were seen as the enemy. “It did not impress her that the VC owned the place. ‘Listen, it can’t be that bad...they’re human beings, aren’t they? Like everybody else?’”. Mary Anne never dehumanized the men they were fighting; she instead, saw them as equal to the American soldiers. The Sweetheart placed in the minds of the men was soon replaced. Mary Anne “wasn’t afraid to get her hands bloody...She didn’t back off from ugly cases...In times of action her face took on a sudden new composure, almost serene, the fuzzy blue eyes narrowing into a tight, intelligent focus.” They expected her to be scared, and to hate the gore and the blood of the war seen at by the medics, but Mary Anne seemed to embrace it. She soon abandoned the makeup, cut her hair short and ignored hygiene. She took up the ways of the men she was living with.

One night, she was gone. She had left with the Special Forces men on an ambush, fighting alongside the men, who seemed to respect her more than the medics. Although Mark got angry with her, she left again with Special Forces, this time for three weeks. When she returned, she sticked with the Green Berets, as they were called, and the medics came to the realization that she was no longer the bubbly “sweetheart” that first arrived. She had gone from an innocent to a warrior.

Mary Anne changed because she saw Vietnam differently than the men did. She never dehumanized the Vietnamese, and she saw the land as a place to explore. She realized that, enemy or not, these were still people, and she had compassion for them. She wanted to learn about their culture, rather than ignore it to make them easier to fight. Her change symbolized the change all of the men would face; she came, young and innocent, a “sweetheart”, and came back from the three weeks so different that she wore a necklace of human tongues, “[with] no emotion behind her stare, no sense of the person behind it.” Her drastic change represented that the boys that went off to war would not be the same boys that would return from it.

In regards to asking whether it matters that she is a woman, I believe that for the sake of the story, it does. She represented their innocence, and their loss of it. She represented the way they saw women, and how it changed. “You got these blinders on about women. How gentle and peaceful they are...You got to get rid of that sexist attitude,” is written after Mary Anne returns from her three-week ambush. It is realized, here, that no matter what gender they were, they were going to be affected by the the war and the land itself. Mary Anne went primitive, and her change was more drastic than the boy’s, but they all did transform based on their experience with the war. I think O’Brien made her transformation the most obvious on purpose, because of how women are stereotyped, but the symbolization of her change was meant to be applied to all of his characters.

Neutral or Aggressor?

In response to: Has there ever been a case in which our country was the aggressor in war? Is it always true that “we” are innocent and “they” are guilty? And Faces of the Enemy

History is written by the winners. History is written by those who are paint themselves as innocents, who fought for the freedom from the enemy or aggressor. For example, in the Revolutionary War, the American Colonies could have been considered the aggressor from the perspective of the British, but when studied in class, I have always learned that the American Colonies were Patriots and Freedom Fighters, determined to win freedom for their country. This is the same for any war, discovery or story taught in any History class. Christopher Columbus “discovered” America, but brought with him diseases and illnesses for the previously residing Native Americans to catch and die from. Hernan Cortes did the same for the Aztecs in Mexico, and in every war that has been taught in an American History class, the United States has been written as the hero of the story and the innocent bystander or victim that got involved to protect themselves or someone else that could not protect themselves without help.

The US will never paint itself as the enemy; all of our intervention in different wars greatly depends on “why” we are putting the ourselves in the middle of it. However, I do believe that the US has meddled in wars and events that they could have stayed out of or handled without immediately putting up propaganda against another country. For example, the United States entered the Vietnam War to fight Communism, which is a social and economic ideology.  Vietnam was fighting against itself; North Vietnam was fighting for Communism, because they wanted to get away from France’s rule, while South Vietnam wanted to stay under France as a Republic. The United States had such a big fear of Communism, that they were willing to go overseas to Vietnam to fight the Vietcong (North Vietnam) and ally themselves with South Vietnam, but what exactly were they fighting? This was not their war to partake in. The US presented themselves as heroes, voluntarily giving up the young men of their country to help fight against the evil aggressor that would soon take all other Asian countries if it were not stopped. The propaganda of the time showed Vietnamese soldiers as skeletons, men fighting in the name of American Patriotism and Capitalism, and elaborate art of the American flag burning because of Communism. North Vietnam posed no direct threat to America, yet the need to intervene felt by the United States caused a 20 year war.