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John Ford's The Good Soldier

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Recommended: The history of henry fords and his achievements

Ford’s career indeed was like a roller coaster. As soon as Ford reached success, something would bring him back down. Yet, everything Ford went through helped him get back in his feet. For example, the war experience from War World 1 helped Ford construct an amazing novel called Parade's End. This novel was based on his experiences he had on the war. Also, his personal life and the wars helped him write The Good Soldier. The Good Soldier was based on his relationship wife his ex wife which hurt and affected Ford tremendously. As a result, Ford wrote The Good Soldier based on characters and scenarios he went through. This novel written by Ford is well written because of the techniques used to describe the characters as different from what they …show more content…

This race was based on who could create the most deadliest weapons and the strongest military. The winner of this race would become a world power. Consequently, many countries got worried and began to form alliances. These alliances only made the atmosphere more tenses starting a war. This war introduced new weapons and warfares. The innovations only increased the casualties in the war. On the other hand, Ford fell in love with writing. He pursued a education in writing and began writing his first novel at a young age. Ford continued writing many novels throughout his twenties. Just before his thirtieth birthday, Ford suffered from a nervous breakdown due to the tense atmosphere he was under. Yet, Ford made the best out of his condition by recreating a character in the same hoes he was in. This novel helped Ford pull himself out of the hole he was in. Just before Ford once again reached his highest success, his personal life once again brought him down. At this moment, Ford decided to join the war in order to escape from his problems. In the war, Ford gained experiences that helped him write one of his best novels, Parade’s End. This novel brought Ford to success was again. Therefore, Ford’s career had many ups and downs that made his career look like a rollercoaster. This novel was based on characters that had titles because of their career or their family. Yet, this character's actions were different from what expected. The

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American soldiers stationed in Vietnam some had a purpose to fight but for the most part, most didn't know what there reason for was. While Richie is in Vietnam he experiences a lot of traumatizing horrors of war that affected him mentally and physically leading to why his purpose of being in Vietnam. Richie doesn´t have the social skills since he´s been away from home for a while and wartime changed

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Tim O’brien’s historical fiction book The Things They Carried is focused around soldiers involved in the Vietnam War. This war was a difficult time for both the Americans who were drafted to fight in the war as well as for those who were at home and disagreed with the idea of currently being in war in Vietnam. As he writes about his own fictional experiences during the war along with the stories of many other fellow troops, O’brien expresses that it is difficult to “tell a true war story”. With the use of imagination and invention, he is able to successfully convey the difficulties involving truth-telling and wartime conditions. O’brien is open with his intended audience and blatantly states that it is hard to tell a true war story.

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His story provides raw examples of the modern day military and their tasks. This story gives a great in sight to someone who is unaware of the military’s difficult challenges in today’s world. Some of the things he could have done better were define some of the words he used such as: HQ, BUD/S, and lokhay. Military people may know these terms, but other people may not. I think that in the beginning of the book he spends too much time telling about his experiences in boot camp and training.

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With unforgiving terrain and the seemingly never ending destruction, the environment of war can be the biggest challenge faced. The constant presence of death and the savage actions of men, the jungle and villages of Vietnam that was home to many families can become a nightmare within days. The book says, “I walked away. People were not supposed to be made like that. People were not supposed to be twisted bone and tubes that popped out at crazy kid’s-toys angles.

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Tim O’Brien uses seemingly true events to describe his overall emotions about the Vietnam war and what he and others did there. “I want you to know what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth” (O’Brien, pg. 171). This quotation is the foundation of the entire book The Things They Carried, O’Brien uses this base to tell the story of many things that he witnessed. O’Brien’s verisimilitude is used to give real world emotions to a literary work.

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Alliances had been put in place in order to balance power and prevent a world war to ever happen. Alas, the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was not prevented at all. The conflict was what pushed forward the war and caused countries to call for more alliances. This had gotten more and more nations involved in what started as a small conflict to a war. Countries started declaring war on eachother until it was, what some might call, a bar fight.

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In Gary Paulsen’s novel, Soldier’s Heart we meet Charley Goddard. Charley was fourteen when he entered the war. The next year he had turned fifteen years old. I am 12 years and I am 5’6. I am from Jonesboro, Ar and Charley is from Winona, Minnesota.

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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.

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While he was in the country he “wrote a few letters home; didn’t go into much detail; motive was "more superstitious" than protecting parents; wrote some short pieces for the Minneapolis newspaper and one for Playboy (published after he returned) that became the basis for his first book, If I Die in a Combat Zone; had always wanted to be a writer, but Vietnam made him need to be a writer; pieces were about events and other people, not about him; went to graduate school at Harvard after his return, kept writing short pieces, not intending them to be a book, but at some point, they accumulated into one. ”[Interview, 04:19] H said that the books he read inspired him to be a writer even if he hadn't gone to Vietnam, though “his experience made him a certain kind of writer; all his books are about the individual’s struggle to do the right thing against outside forces” [Interview,06:15] O’Brien takes the “awful experience of war; tries to reflect the non-linear experience of Vietnam; of his books, The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods best capture that.” [Interview, 06:15] “I was drafted in 1968 and spent the summer playing golf and worrying about Vietnam and dying and killing. But it’s abstract.

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It reveals his personality from a younger age to when he wrote the book and so forth. This novel affected society the way he wanted all of his books to do. He was a determined writer throughout his long life, and everything he wrote was written with the intent of changing society. When he was eighteen, he started selling his stories to Street and Smith, a somewhat popular publisher that printed popular fiction books which were usually poorly written. The first seventeen chapter are about the struggles faced by one extended family from the eastern European country of Lithuania.

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Through Farquhar, Bierce shows how soldiers on both sides were merciless in their acts, a fact that would never be mentioned if Romantic writings were all that remained from this era. Fast forward several decades, World War Two has consumed the planet, and officers are just as cruel as they were in the Civil War. “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell, announces, through the form of a poem, the callousness of the military in WWII. A man thinks he is safe under the protection of the State, but the poem tells that, “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” (“Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell).

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He base most of his novel on stories of his days in a platoon during the Vietnam war. Smack dab in the middle of the novel he throws the reader a major curveball. “I’m forty-three years old, true, and I’m a writer now, and a long time ago I walked through the Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier . Almost everything else is invented.” (O’Brien, 171)

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Although he learned that he had to learn to cope with every single physical, emotional and mental stress factor that came his way. He learned with every guy in his platoon, they all stuck together. This novel was a very well written book. Each story was different, and gave a different aspect on war every time. The emotions were real, and very descriptive.

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How he hated being drafted and how badly he wanted to run away. He tells how he took time to himself to decide whether or not he was going to run away and risk being caught and imprisoned or go join the army and risk dying over in Vietnam. He states at the end, “ I passed through twins with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward.

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