O'Brien's "If I Die In A Combat Zone", Hasford's "The Short-Timers", Moore's "The Green Berets", And O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato": Parallels
O'Brien's "If I Die in a Combat Zone", Hasford's "The Short-Timers", Moore's
"The Green Berets", and O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato": Parallels
The introductory readings, Obrien's If I die in a Combat Zone,
Hasford's The Short-Timers, Moore's The Green Berets, and Obrien's Going
After Cacciato, all share a common element - fear. An integral part of
each story is a sense of fear that helps to intensify the experiences being
related by the author; ie make the stories more realistic. Without the use
of fear, these stories would lose much of their impact. The entire
experience of Vietnam pivots on fear for many of the characters in these
stories.
In Obrien's If I die in a Combat Zone, the ...
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all this: I had neither the expertise nor
the wisdom to synthesize answers..." (Combat, 29), the character simply is
paralyzed by fear, and because of this, gets on the draftee bus without
really having made a decision.
It was an intellectual and physical stand-off, and I did not have the
energy to see it to an end. I did not want to be a soldier, not even a
observer to war. But neither did I want to upset a peculiar balance
between the order I knew, the people I knew, and my own private world. It
was not that I valued that order. But I feared its opposite, inevitable
chaos, censure, embarrassment, the end of everything that had happened in
my life, the end of it all (Combat, 34).
This quote best illustrates his inability to make that necessary decision,
and his failure to overcome his debilitating fear.
In Hasford's The Short Timers, fear is an underlying current to
much of the segment that we have read. From when the poges say, "Fucking
grunts...they're nothing but ...
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O'Brien's "If I Die In A Combat Zone", Hasford's "The Short-Timers", Moore's "The Green Berets", And O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato": Parallels. (2006, August 18). Retrieved May 23, 2025, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/OBriens-If-I-Die-Combat-Zone/50976
"O'Brien's "If I Die In A Combat Zone", Hasford's "The Short-Timers", Moore's "The Green Berets", And O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato": Parallels." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 18 Aug. 2006. Web. 23 May. 2025. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/OBriens-If-I-Die-Combat-Zone/50976>
"O'Brien's "If I Die In A Combat Zone", Hasford's "The Short-Timers", Moore's "The Green Berets", And O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato": Parallels." Essayworld.com. August 18, 2006. Accessed May 23, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/OBriens-If-I-Die-Combat-Zone/50976.
"O'Brien's "If I Die In A Combat Zone", Hasford's "The Short-Timers", Moore's "The Green Berets", And O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato": Parallels." Essayworld.com. August 18, 2006. Accessed May 23, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/OBriens-If-I-Die-Combat-Zone/50976.
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