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Summary Of If I Die In A Combat Zone By Tim O Brien

884 Words4 Pages

In If I Die in a Combat Zone, author Tim O'Brien argued that the Vietnam War was wrong and unjust through his depictions of a soldier’s daily life on war, how the author is affected by moral ambiguity, and soldier's experiences of the feel of the war with struggles along with emotional and physical changes.
In the book, O’Brien invokes his daily life as a college student who was drafted into becoming a soldier at the Vietnam War (pg. 16). He had no other option than to take part in the war. His life is changed due to the war he is obligated to take a part of. He was persuaded then and still is that the Vietnam war was wrong because many people died during its evil (pg. 18). Soldier’s, including Tim O’Brien, walked from village to village causing …show more content…

He was unsure what he would do once drafted and thought of running away to avoid being taken to fight (pg. 17). This shows that the men drafted like the author were not ready to join the military to go off to war. They were not ready for what tragic events were to occur at the battlefield that would change their lives forever and what their perception about war in general. Being drafted affected O’Brien from having a clear perception about what he thought of war as he began as a new soldier drafted from college. Later, he thought that war is wrong because he was persuaded that it was and because it resulted in many deaths but he then he had a thought that war might be poorly justified and wrongly conceived (pg. 18). Not many new soldiers knew at the beginning of the Vietnam War that war was going to be wrong, unwanted, and not moral. O’Brien wanted to escape the draft and go live somewhere else, but did not want to embarrass his family and decided to stay to face it. On the other hand, his college friends found ways to easily avoid being drafted to the war. They got deferments and letters from clergy members and doctors to get away from the problem of being obligated to serve time in the war (pg. 21). The war was unwanted by many. Some men just did not want to go fight in a war that will result them to lose a body part or their lives. Leaving their normal lives they are used to having to

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