ipl-logo

Comparing Brian Mockenhaupt's The Living And The Dead

518 Words3 Pages

Authors Brian Mockenhaupt and Chris Heath write stories about living with PTSD and how having PTSD turned into suicide. Mockenhaupt’s “The Living and the Dead” talked about a man who went to war and came home only to deal with PTSD. In Heath’s “18 Tigers, 17 Lions, 8 Bears, 3 Cougars, 2 Wolves, 1 Baboon, 1 Macaque, and 1 Man Dead in Ohio”, he talks about a man who is a Vietnam Veteran, who committed suicide. Both essays have various nonfiction elements in common with one another. Brian Mockenhaupt and Chris Heath both suffer with PTSD from war and explore the theme of traumatic experiences by using the nonfiction forms characterization, biographical sketch, and sense of place.

Brian Mockenhaupt and Chris Heath both utilized characterization. In Mockenhaupt “The Living and the Dead”, he writes about a Marine named Tom Whorl. Tom was a Sergeant in charge of searching for IED’s. His main concern was stepping on an IED. Mockenhaupt wrote, “The worst is not knowing when your last step will be. That’s what takes a toll on your brain.” In Heath’s “18 Tigers, 17 Lions, 8 Bears, 3 Cougars, 2 Wolves, 1 Baboon, 1 Macaque, and 1 Man Dead in Ohio”, he describes Terry as a good child growing up. Terry went to war in Vietnam and came back home suffering from PTSD. When Terry returned home, he was described as a wild guy who enjoyed his exotic animals. He had a different attitude from being drafted to war. He had no care or …show more content…

Mockenhaupt writes about Tom Whorl’s time when he was a kid, went to war, and returned home with PTSD. He focused on the time Tom spent in Afghanistan. Tom suffered from PTSD from all of the traumatic events that he was involved in while at war. Heath focuses on the time that Terry spent in Vietnam. He tells about him pulling other soldiers in the helicopter, sometimes cutting fingers off in the door. While in Vietnam, Terry befriended a monkey and that began his love for exotic

Show More
Related

The Theme Of Loss Of Innocence In Walter Dean Myers 'Fallen Angels'

110 Words | 1 Pages

War is the graveyard of innocence for boys who become men through the loss of humanity. The book “Fallen Angels,” by Walter Dean Myers, is a story about Richard Perry, a young man who mistakenly joins the Vietnam War to avoid the shame of not going to college. As the book goes on Perry discovers his mistake and in the process, not only loses his innocence, but also his humanity. Wars will always be the dark parts of our history and no war is devoid of horrors that can strip anyone of everything they are, and in war soldiers must use coping mechanisms to deal with these very apparent horrors.

Read More

A Summary Of Philip Caputo's A Rumor Of War

1500 Words | 6 Pages

Men went through so many tasks during the Vietnam War physically and mentally. The beginning chapters focus on training for war and being prepared for the worst. For example, when there is a sergeant in a room with the marines. The sergeant walks to the chalk board and writes “AMBUSHES ARE MURDER AND MURDER IS FUN” (36-37). The

Read More

The Ghost Soldiers Tim O Brien Character Analysis Essay

844 Words | 4 Pages

This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him. This chapter also contain a lot of psychological lens. From the way Tim O’Brien felt when he was shot and separated from his unit to a new unit to when he wanted revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost “killing” him.

Read More

The Soldier In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

990 Words | 4 Pages

The lives of soldiers, Norman Bowker and Curt Lemon, illustrate how the war pressures the human spirit to a standard it can’t resemble. The pressure and responsibilities of lost friends and lost acts of courage heavily weigh Norman Bowker down,

Read More

Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: A Literary Analysis

1292 Words | 6 Pages

Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

Read More

Soldier From The War Returning By Thomas Childers Summary

560 Words | 3 Pages

In Soldier from the War Returning, Thomas Childers writes that “a curious silence lingers over what for many was the last great battle of the war.” This final battle was the soldier’s return home. After World War II, veterans came back to the United States and struggled with stigmatized mental illnesses as well as financial and social issues. During the war, many soldiers struggled with mental health issues that persisted after they came home.

Read More

Jeffrey Lucey's 'Death Of A Marine'

248 Words | 1 Pages

In the New York Times article Death of a Marine, Bob Herbert discloses a story regarding a young man who participated in the Marines. Jeffrey Lucey of Massachusetts enlisted in the army instead of going to college. Despite his parents’ disapproval, he still joined. When Jeffery turned 22, his unit was one of the first to mobilize in the Iraq War. The damage that impacted Jeffery in Iraq included, explosions “just short of blowing out your eardrums”, damaged nerves, nightmare hallucinations and above all else, PTSD.

Read More

PTSD In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

1504 Words | 7 Pages

The novel focuses on coping with the death and horror of war. It also speaks volumes about the true nature of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the never-ending struggle of dealing with it. In the

Read More

Fiction And Reality In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

1413 Words | 6 Pages

Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way

Read More

Psychological Warfare In Tim O 'Brien's The Things They Carried'

772 Words | 4 Pages

The tribulation the soldiers have to endure with all the violence in O'Brien's novel brings a tremendous slap of psychological trauma in their lives. This psychological trauma has been

Read More

David Mclean's Short Story 'Marine Corps Issue'

765 Words | 4 Pages

For years, he has avoided his past, keeping it locked away in boxes. As a result of Johnny’s search, readers now understand that Sergeant Bowen’s damaged hands are a result of “bamboo splinters under the nails... beating of the knuckles...being strung up by the wrists” (634). His avoidance of these memories is a major indicator of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Sergeant Bowen’s condition affects his family members as they try to protect him by not bringing up his service.

Read More

War Wounds That Time Alone Can T Heal Analysis

556 Words | 3 Pages

In Jane Brody’s alarming article, “War Wounds That Time Alone Can’t Heal” Brody describes the intense and devastating pain some soldiers go through on a daily basis. These soldiers come home from a tragic time during war or, have vivid memories of unimaginable sufferings they began to experience in the battle field. As a result these soldiers suffer from, “emotional agony and self-destructive aftermath of moral injury…” (Brody). Moral injury has caused much emotional and physical pain for men and women from the war.

Read More

Slaughterhouse Five Research Paper

1282 Words | 6 Pages

Accompanying these weapons was the first emphasis on war trauma-related mental illness, with soldiers returning from battle with PTSD, misnomered and misunderstood as ‘shell-shock’. Rates of PTSD climbed steadily after World War II and the Vietnam War as weaponry became more and more advanced, reaching 12% of soldiers who saw direct combat in the Gulf War being diagnosed with PTSD afterwards (cite). Clearly, there is a strong connection between advanced weaponry and mental illness in soldiers, proving that violent weaponry negatively affects those who are forced to encounter

Read More

Thesis For The Things They Carried

999 Words | 4 Pages

The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.

Read More

PTSD In The Things They Carried Essay

809 Words | 4 Pages

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in The Things They Carried During the turbulent times of the Vietnam War, thousands of young men entered the warzone and came face-to-face with unimaginable scenes of death, destruction, and turmoil. While some perished in the dense Asian jungles, others returned to American soil and were forced to confront their lingering combat trauma. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried provides distinct instances of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and reveals the psychological trauma felt by soldiers in the Vietnam War. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD for short, is the most common mental illness affecting soldiers both on and off the battlefield.

Read More

More about Comparing Brian Mockenhaupt's The Living And The Dead

Related Topics

Open Document