Vietnam and the Popular Novel

 Many popular culture pieces were created about the Vietnam War, from movies, television series, books, novels, poetry, and songs, revealing our obsession with trying to understand the conflict. Some of these pieces, especially the novels written by Tim O’Brien, convey the inner conflicts of the soldiers involved in a questionable war, actually getting as close to realism as possible through fiction. Many people could not understand what the soldiers experienced in Vietnam, especially those of the older generation who had lived through World War II with its clear goal to stop the evils of fascism. Vietnam was different in this respect as the goals were misguided and the public was misled, even if unintentionally. 

          Tim O’Brien’s protagonist in If I Die in a Combat Zone he contemplates the idea of departing for Canada instead of reporting for duty when he receives his draft notice. From the first sentence, “The summer of 1968, the summer I turned into a soldier, was a good time for talking about war and peace,” we can see the conflict within O’Brien’s character beginning to build. O’Brien’s character is drafted this summer, and he is clearly against this particular war. Although he states that “since it [the war] was wrong and since people were dying as a result of it, it was evil,” he still doubted his own principles because there were no clear answers as to what Americans were fighting for and what the end result would bring for Vietnam, or America for that matter. He is, therefore, not just conflicted because he is being asked to fight in a war he does not support, but he questions his own values and ethics regarding this war. Summing up his internal conflict, O’Brien’s character states, “The war, I thought, was wrongly conceived and poorly justified. But perhaps I was mistaken, and who really knew, anyway?”

   

      Tim O’Brien also related the conflicts within the American soldier through his character Paul Berlin in Going After Cacciato. Berlin was sent to Chu Lai’s Combat Center, but he had “never heard of I Corps, or the Americal, or Chu Lai.” In fact, several times, Berlin admits he is “lost.” Although he was probably “lost” in the directional sense, it would appear he was lost in the emotional sense as well. Berlin seemed to be torn between being a member of the American public back on the mainland and being a U.S. soldier in a foreign country. “The homefront” as Berlin called it when he wrote to his father from Chu Lai, seemed to be “a nice unfrightened” place, a place he would rather be. He again repeats to his father that he is “a little lost.” Although he follows orders and learns from the Combat Center, it becomes obvious that Berlin is not entirely at peace with his being a soldier fighting a questionable war in a strange place.

         

Because this was a strange place, and the war was not fought on the traditional “front,” the war itself was confusing causing more conflicts within the soldiers, even those who had been veteran soldiers and defended their country in war without question. For example, Beaupre in David Halberstam’s One Very Hot Day found himself negatively comparing Vietnam to World War II. He found “the endless walking each day… with nothing done, nothing seen, nothing accomplished, nothing changed, just hiking each day with death, taking chances for so very little, wondering if he were going to be sold out, wondering whom you could trust” an extremely frustrating problem that he had not faced in World War II. This clearly causes conflict within Beaupre because he does not have a concrete moral sense as to the success or failure of each day within the context of the war. Beaupre sums this up with the statement, “Yes was no longer exactly yes, no was no longer exactly no, maybe was more certainly maybe.”

           

Even in the early, gung-ho literature of The Green Berets conflict was prevalent from the old style of warfare to the new, questioning morality and the American value system. Lieutenant Colonel Train was an officer in the Special Forces division, which engaged in an unorthodox warfare style within the early years of the Vietnam conflict. As a matter of fact, Robin Moore made a statement regarding the change in warfare style: “President Kennedy’s awareness of the importance of this facet of the military had made unconventional or special warfare experience a must for any officer who wanted to advance to the top echelons.” Train, although an officer in Special Forces, represents the more traditional value system of warfare, and “did not accept wholeheartedly the doctrines of unconventional warfare.” Moore's foil character, Kornie, on the other hand, embraces the Special Forces doctrine of unconventional warfare and even crosses the line in order to get things done. The conflict between these two characters easily represents the changes about to come in a new style of warfare in Vietnam and the difficulties soldiers, especially veterans, faced when immersed in the Vietnam War.

         

These are merely a few of many novels written in the wake of Vietnam, the most well-known of which is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which has become a new classic of sorts, read in high school classrooms, helping the public understand that what the grunts "carried" was far more than the physical equipment, but, rather, the conflict itself. The Things They Carried is a personal favorite and a must-read in order to understand the Vietnam soldiers' experience as much as possible having not lived through it ourselves.