The Situation:
Your English class is studying autobiographical text of men who have served in war.
For your project, you have decided to write a report about the effects that war have upon
the individual. In preparation for writing your report, listen to an account by Tim O’Brien. Then use
relevant information from the account to write your report.
Iths
Steffy Zambrano
September 29, 2007
Assignment: “Ambush” By Tim O’ Brien
Ms. Hyde Period 6th
How War Affects An Individual
When a war is fought people believe that it is two countries fighting, but when those soldiers finish fighting those wars they have to fight within themselves. In the autobiographical text “Ambush ” by Tim O’ Brien he has fantasies about the war he once fought in. After a soldier fights a war h is life is changed forever, and he has been affected by this war. If the people that are not fighting in the war are not affected and hurt, imagine the people that are fighting and that have to live with that trauma forever . Sometimes families and friends try and be there for you but it’s hard for you because you know that no matter how hard you try to erase that memory its going to be impossible because what you experience is not easy to forget. They say “that time heals all wounds” but what if the wound isn’t external, but an internal memory that keeps replaying.
As a result of the war, that narrator fought in the short story “Ambush,” all he wrote about was war. He’s daughter once asked him if he once had killed someone. “I told her of course not, I hope one day she asks again... I wanted to tell her what had happened”. He was so afraid In telling because she was only 9. But yet “as a little girl she was right,” she knew that he had killed someone because he wrote about war. The narrator hadn’t recovered the fact that he had killed someone, because he had fantasies about him, the guy he killed. “Shoulders stooped, head titled,” is how he describes him in his fantasies. War affects you so much that when you happen to kill someone to protect yourself and other people who are putting their life in danger for you. It’s just like the narrator said “I threw the grenade before thinking I should throw it” you don’t kill someone because you like them it’s just because sometimes your fears take over what your really thinking. “ I didn’t hate the young men, I didn’t see him as an enemy, I didn’t not ponder...”
That is why war affects everyone because that moment that you once experienced is so hard to get through because it’s in you and you cant even tell your one child. The effects war has on an individual are different because Kiowa from the autobiographical text told the narrator “it was a good kill and that I’m a soldier and I need to shape up.” Kiowa saw it as if it was nothing, but meanwhile the narrator didn’t. War does have affects and a lot of them but just that everyone has a different prospective on the consequences. Even when you all have been through the same experience.
In other Words this short story “Ambush” is a War story and not a Anti- War story because the narrator does about war, the affects of it, how he can’t forget about what he went through. Meanwhile a Anti- war story is when an individual Is opposed to war. The narrator is not opposed to war because he writes stories about wars. How he was afraid of the young men, afraid of something, and how he just wanted to scare him off.
In Conclusion, as you can tell by this Short story autobiographical text War has big impacts on your life, and not only for you but for your family and friends. Different people take it in many different ways some might say that’s what’s suppose to happen and some might see it as a big mistake in life. War might cause Fear or strength but mainly it causes Fear because for the first time you feel like you made a huge mistake and for some reason it won’t go away.
No comments:
Post a Comment