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Prestige During The Vietnam War

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Prestige and Death What is prestige? According to dictionary.com, prestige is your reputation or influence arising from success, achievement, rank, or other favorable attributes. The word 's definition can be traced as far back as 360 B.C.E. when it was used in Plato’s Socratic dialogue, Crito. In the dialogue, the character Crito, when trying to break out Socrates from jail, says, “For if you die I shall not only lose a friend who can never be replaced, but there is another evil: people who do not know you and me will believe that I might have saved you if I had been willing to give money, but that I did not care.” This quote from a piece of work that was created 2375 years ago brings up the question: how important is prestige in society? …show more content…

for men between the ages of nineteen and 25. Most of these men though did not want to go to a foreign country to fight for a country, a flag, or an ideal that they did not believe in. Some of them had the option to stay at home if they had physical problems, were attending college, or were needed at home to support their families. But, the ones that were unlucky and didn’t have any excuse had to go and fight the war unless they fled to Canada. A book called the The Things They Carried by Tim O’ Brien actually chronicles first hand the journey and the embarrassment one must experience to flee the draft. At first Mr. O’ Brien wants to flee to Canada even though he knows that he won’t be able to see his family again or that he won’t be able to come back to the states. However, when he is only twenty yards away from the border, he can’t risk the embarrassment from his hometown and the whole universe, so he goes to the war. During the war, Mr. O’ Brien figures out that the only reason that any of his fellow soldiers are at the war was so their prestige wouldn’t go down. He goes so far as to say, “Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to… They died so as not to die of embarrassment.”(O’ Brien, 21) If someone during the draft hadn’t gone to Vietnam to die for something they didn’t believe in then they would have been looked down upon by society just because our society is so

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In McDonald’s song, the effect of the draft and its effects on society are highlighted by the lyrics, “Send ‘em off before it’s too late. Be the first one on your block To have your boy come home in a box,” [Doc B]. More than 50,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War, and after withdrawing from the battlefront, Americans felt it was for nothing. Robert F. Kennedy said, “we have sought to resolve by military might a conflict whose issue depends upon the will and conviction of the South Vietnamese people,” [Doc E]. To the war, Americans provided weapons, supplies, and troops.

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At this moment, O’Brien is going through remorse for himself. He does not think that he should be forced to fight in this war when he does not believe in what they are fighting for. O’Brien believes that the war was unjust because “certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (1002).O’Brien

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In the short story, “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien focuses on this to show that everyone fighting in a war has a story. He spends the story describing the man he killed and searching for justification of his actions. He carries around guilt with him because of it, and his fellow soldiers try to help him justify and come to terms with his action by saying things like, “You want to trade places with him? Turn it all upside down= you want that? I mean, be honest,” (126) and “Tim, it’s a war.

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The draft pulled them into it. They did not want to dishonor their fathers, their country and society who told them fighting is honorable. In “The Things They Carried,” it was this ‘dishonor’ that had lead them to enter the war, it was “nothing

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The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien uses many effective rhetorical strategies throughout. In the chapter On the Rainy River, Tim O’Brien tells the audience a story he has never told anybody. Not even his parents, siblings or wife. He narrates the events and emotions that he experienced after receiving a war draft notice during the summer of 1968. O’Brien is ashamed about how he dealt with the notice and he feels as though he is “too good” to go to war.

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Those still in favor of the war considered it their patriotic duty to enlist and fight for their country, while the opposition came from the lower class groups such as African Americans, “white trash,” Mexican Americans, and other minorities. Because of their lower socio-economic status, they were more often the targets of recruiters and had more difficulty evading the draft. As James Fallows said of his draft experience, “While perhaps four out of five of my friends from Harvard were being deferred, just the opposite was happening to the Chelsea [Boston] Boys.” (Doc 5) Similarly to the civil war era, the majority of the burden of fighting was going to the poor majority as opposed to the privileged few. Other groups, such as the African Americans, were opposed to the draft because of their status at home.

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While perhaps four out of five of my friends from Harvard were being deferred, just the opposite was happening to the Chelsea boys.” this highlights how the draft was unfair and unjust to people of the lower class because they didn't have deferments like college or a doctors note that could be faked. They had nothing to stop them from going to war and that was unjust and unfair. In Doc 10, during Martin Luther King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech in 1967, he says” It became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.

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He begins to start thinking about his family, friends, goals, and dreams. He questions if he should even go to Canada and begin a new life where no one would know what he had done or go back and fight in a war that he didn't believe in. Tim can’t push himself to jump and swim twenty yards so in embarrassment he cries and has a mental breakdown because of the conflict he was faced with. O’Brien ends up going back to his hometown and fights in the war not because he had to but because he was ashamed that when he was given the chance to leave the U.S he froze up and couldn’t do it, all he wanted to do was escape and not fight in a war he didn't believe in. This story shows great examples of what shame can do mentally to a person who doesn’t believe in the war or wants to get involved in

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In The Things They Carried, O’Brien’s story-telling method is an attempt to show that the lines between fiction and reality are often not that far. Even though the names or details may not be fully accurate, this does not change the fact that they are a reality for many. Additionally, he challenges the importance that we place on war and links it to a storytelling aspect because he’s pointing out that not every story has a moral to it. With tragic events, we typically want some sort of meaning behind them, some sort of assurance that the incident was not for nothing. However, this is not always true, as a character “Yeah, well…I don’t see no moral”…

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"I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam — the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers," quotes O’Brien. "More importantly," he continues, "I carry the weight of responsibility, and a sense of abiding guilt." (npr.org). His intended audience for the book was adults,

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This is evident when Mr. O’Brien says, “I would go to the war – I would kill and maybe die – because I was embarrassed not to,” (pg. 57.) In the end the author realized what he must do and went back home, so he could fight in the Vietnam

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The soldiers in the Vietnams war were there for different reasons, some soldiers were forced against their will and some were there by choice. Because of that, each soldier has their own thoughts about the war, O’Brien has interpreted that “The twenty –six men were very quiet: some of them excited by the adventure, some of them afraid”. This clearly shows how the men

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In his article, “Equality, Expectation, and Envy,” Alain de Botton rests on the idea that due to status envy, people cannot be truly happy with their current standings because they are always putting themselves into comparisons with those who surround them. Throughout time, people seem to feel as though “neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough” (25), and due to these situations, people are always in search of becoming better, or succeeding above those whom they consider themselves in relation to. Botton bases his arguments through means of philosophy, historical documents, psychological evidence, various writers, etc., all through recurring times in the past where similar instances have occurred. Botton makes the case that

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If there are two dominating factor that follows a social status it is wealth and power. This is prevalent in the conversation between Jack and Lady Bracknell [Gwendolen’s mother], as Jack attempts to seek approval for his proposal to Gwendolen. Lady Bracknell questions Jack’s about his yearly income and the land that he owns: “Lady Bracknell. ‘What is your income?’

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There are people who does not have money, does not have much knowledge, or does not have family. Hence, they consider wealth of money, knowledge, or family. Moreover, excellence is the same as wealth, it has different types such as beauty, genius, or power. Although people differently think about the word of excellence and the word of wealth, they usually consider that “excellence” is when an one person or an one thing is more beautiful, stronger, more intelligent, or more cunning than another the man or the object. However, Socrates who is wise philosopher means that “excellence” is something like goodness, and “wealth” is a money.

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