ipl-logo

Dispatches Chapter Summaries

769 Words4 Pages

The book Dispatches paints a vivid image of Michael Herr’s time in Vietnam. Herr reports about the day-to-day events of a soldier’s life in Vietnam with clarity in one of the unearthly events of time. The book focuses on two major battles: the Battle for Hue during the Tet Offensive and the Battle of Keh Sanh. The chaos and intensity of the war and surreal dementia of life in a combat zone are revealed. Herr tells Marines’ stories, some peculiar and other sentimental with a sense of respect and appreciation for what the young men do in a foreign country that is full of danger. The author also recounts the propaganda of the Vietnam war with despise. Herr wrote of the fears and pain of the young soldiers. He explains his overall experience at …show more content…

Throughout the reading, Herr explains how much him and the other soldier had to endure. The book is written in first person point of view by Michael Herr. The book is a non-fiction novel, it is not like any other reading, it allows the reader to paint a picture in their brain, while they are reading it. It grabs a person interest throughout the book. The writing kind of moves back and forth in time, but mainly focuses on two main events: the Battle for Hue during the Tet Offensive and the Battle of Keh Sanh. The book is easy to understand for a high school student, it does not include heavy vocabulary or punctuation. Michael Herr never really introduces characters but he uses broad names to describe his colleagues like Grunts, Lurps, Cav, Marine officers; however he introduces two characters around the end of the book: Sean Flynn and Page. The book is not a history of war, so it is necessary to have some background knowledge about the Vietnam War before reading this book. One unique characteristic in this book that gets readers hooked is Herr treats the reader as his friends, which is why he uses many slang and pop culture references. Even though the book is about war and it is expected to have a serious tone; Herr still manages to add some humor to it. Herr gives the reader a comic

Show More
Related
203 Words | 1 Pages

Voices from Vietnam is a collaboration piece between two authors that is a detailed and very deep book about the conditions of Vietnam and gives a first person view of the warfare by quoting veterans from the war about their time in Vietnam. The two authors Richard Burks Verrone and Laura M. Calkins are Oral Historians at The Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University and both have Doctorate degrees. This book describes the tragedy, the harshness, and the lifestyle of combat in Vietnam. The veterans talk of the weather and the land and describing them both as harsh and dreary. They also speak of their opponents and the methods they used.

Read More
145 Words | 1 Pages

In his novel, Redeployment, Phil Klay immerses his readers into the minds of a variety of different characters with one thing in common, they are men of war. The novel is divided into twelve short stories with each one focusing in on a Marine or Soldier and their particular struggles. These men vary in age, rank, specialization, and where they are in their lives with some of them being active duty in Iraq to others being back home in New York. While some moments in the novel are heavy and almost too real, Klay captures the Marine’s sarcastic and often crude banter showing the glimmers of light in their war torn lives. With the humor comes quite a bit of the military lingo which can be tricky at first for civilians but by the end of the novel

Read More
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
937 Words | 4 Pages

In A Viet Cong Memoir, we receive excellent first hands accounts of events that unfolded in Vietnam during the Vietnam War from the author of this autobiography: Truong Nhu Tang. Truong was Vietnamese at heart, growing up in Saigon, but he studied in Paris for a time where he met and learned from the future leader Ho Chi Minh. Truong was able to learn from Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ideas and gain a great political perspective of the conflicts arising in Vietnam during the war. His autobiography shows the readers the perspective of the average Vietnamese citizen (especially those involved with the NLF) and the attitudes towards war with the United States. In the book, Truong exclaims that although many people may say the Americans never lost on the battlefield in Vietnam — it is irrelevant.

Read More
936 Words | 4 Pages

Choice Novel Assignment The Vietnam War was a very brutal war where many of the American soilders were young men with a bright mindset of serving their country. Even though many Americans forget about this war. Many veterans do not forget about the harsh expirence and how it effected them. In ¬Fallen Angels, Walter Dean Myers accurately describes the young American soldiers experiences in the Vietnam war on how it effected them mentally and physically.

Read More
280 Words | 2 Pages

I find Ho Chi Minh’s letter far more persuasive than Lyndon B. Johnson’s. Using ethos, pathos, and logos, he forms a solid argument that supports Vietnam’s stance on the war. He appeals to one’s emotions by expressing the injustices faced by his people, writing, “In South Viet-Nam a half-million American soldiers and soldiers from the satellite countries have resorted to the most barbarous methods of warfare, such as napalm, chemicals, and poison gases in order to massacre our fellow countrymen, destroy the crops, and wipe out villages.” Words such as “massacre” and “barbarous” highlight the severity of these crimes, and invoke feelings of guilt and remorse in the reader. Chi Minh uses ethos to support his logos, or logical, views on the

Read More
834 Words | 4 Pages

In the protest play “The Buck Private” by Luis Valdez argues that the vietnam war was an immoral thing ; he uses a humorous and ironic narrator, Death, to show that he Vietnam War killed many young men. Valdez supports his argument by telling a story about a soldier who enlisted into the United States Army and later died while fighting for the U.S. Death tells the story using flashbacks. The author’s purpose is to show the audience the life of so many families to give emphasis on the harsh reality of war. The author writes in humorous and serious tones for the audience to understand the horrors of war. Johnny is mostly a tragic hero, because he is a good man with sincere character who dies because of it.

Read More
1285 Words | 6 Pages

The book is written mostly in first person. The story is about O’Brien and his experience as a soldier in the Vietnam War. He was drafted into the army in 1968, when he just got out of college. At first when O’Brien was drafted he was hesitant, but fearful of being ridiculed by his friends and family back on the Prairie where he live he decided to join. Another factor that helped to push him to join the army going to Vietnam was that his father was a Veteran from

Read More
732 Words | 3 Pages

I have never wanted to be out of a place more than Vietnam. The place filled me with dread and I have never known the kind of fear I felt there any place else.” (The Vietnam War: A History in Documents, Document

Read More
508 Words | 3 Pages

I have to admit I had very little knowledge of WWI before I read this book, except for the bare minimum of how it started and how a great many young men died in the war. I also don 't normally read books with many battle scenes and with war as the main theme, but once I started reading the story of the war, I just couldn 't put it down until I reached the last page. What moved me most was the detailed description of the tension in the anticipation of the attacks (i.e., Battle of the Somme), the horror of being trapped in tunnels thirty feet underground in no man 's land, and the psychological effect of the sheer brutality of the war on the soldiers, which was unimaginable and destructive to say the least. The last chapter about the war was this truly remarkable story of endurance, bravery, survival and humanity that makes me admire the talent of writer. I also found the parts about tunnel digging very interesting to read as well.

Read More
1747 Words | 7 Pages

Michael Herr's non-fiction book Dispatches is a memoir of his experiences working as a war correspondent in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Herr uses rich images and metaphorical language to describe the events he saw in his impressionistic writing style. Dispatches isn't your typical combat memoir; instead, it's a collection of Herr's impressions, anecdotes, and discussions from his time in Vietnam. The book recounts the conflict, but it also delves into the nature of war reporting, the connection between the military and the media, and the psychological effects of war on those who participated in it by fighting and reporting on it. Dispatches is a unique document in the history of the Vietnam War since it is a literary work that captures

Read More
376 Words | 2 Pages

For ten years Quan and his unit fight on the frontlines. Only 12 men are left alive at the end of the war. The book ends with the fall of south Vietnam and Quan’s unit takes a prisoner. The prisoner turns out to be an American journalist as U.S. armed forces had left 2 years earlier. All the stands between certain death and living for this prisoner is Quan.

Read More
688 Words | 3 Pages

He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

Read More
247 Words | 1 Pages

Bruce Dawe's 1968 dramatic anti-war poem 'Homecoming' exposes the dehumanising perspective of conflict, by revealing the devastating amount of insignificant slaughter of soldiers and the lack of identity and humanity during the Vietnam War. ' All day, day after day, they're bringing them home,' Utilising repetition, Dawe establishes to the audience that war is futile and effectively a waste of human life in an unending conflict. The constant use of the pronoun 'them' implies the worthlessness of the soldiers' identities and illustrates that war has stripped them of their humanity. The word 'day' is repeated to depict how days after days it is all the same monotonous routine of packing up unknown dead bodies. ' They're bringing them home, now,

Read More
971 Words | 4 Pages

From he who endures the most deepest of sorrows, we hope to hear, “He returned time and time again to his love, his friendship, his comradeship, those human bonds which had all helped us overcome the thousand sufferings of the war” (233). In The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh, Kien was a North Vietnamese soldier who fought courageously during the Vietnam War. He faced death and the hardship of losing each of his fellow comrades along the way. Upon returning home, Kien was a struggling soldier trying to rid his mind of the sorrow of war through writing. The novel not only introduces the sorrows brought on by war, but it emphasizes the importance of life.

Read More

More about Dispatches Chapter Summaries

Related Topics

Open Document