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In The Time Of The Butterflies

1232 Words5 Pages

Different voices and tones depict the various ways that characters in a novel suffer. Julia Alvarez, Tim O’Brien, Zainab Salbi, and Sebastian Junger illustrate the hardship of war, and how a war participant is shaped by the concept of war. All four authors/lecturers present a different perspective on war; however the four authors/lecturers are cohesive with the idea of war being complex. In Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, Alvarez parallels a historical event with fictional sisters who fight a war by not succumbing to the suppressive laws. Likewise, throughout his biography about himself as a fictional character, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried depicts O’Brien’s stories and tales of war, and how everything one hears about …show more content…

O’Brien who was drafted for the Vietnam War, questions why he is present in the Vietnam War, and how the wars form in the first place. “A war of national liberation or simple aggression? Who started it, and when, and why? What really happened to the USS Maddox on that dark night in the Gulf of Tonkin? Was Ho Chi Minh a Communist stooge, or nationalist savior, or both, or neither? What about the Geneva Accords? What about SEATO and the Cold War? What about dominoes?” (O’Brien 38). By O’Brien questioning the entirety of the war, he is asking questions that are answered indefinitely to this day. O’Brien proves that war members--civilians as well as combatants--are curious about the nature of war. Stronger than wounds or incidents in war, the complexity of war leaves a larger detriment on members of war. As shown, Sebastian Junger, a retired soldier, shows his trauma from attempting to understand the war. “I haven't been shot at in six years, and I was woken up very abruptly this morning by a nightmare that I was being strafed by aircraft, six years later. I've never even been strafed by aircraft, and I was having nightmares about it.” (Junger). As highlighted by his language and voice, the effect of trying to understand war negatively impacts these ex-war members, as they have instances like Junger, waking up in the middle of the night, in fear. All in all, war is not comprehendible, and in effect it leaves fear in the mind of post war

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