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Summary Of Where Have You Gone Charming Billy? 'By Tim O' Brien

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Ripping of the Band Aid War to some people might be a little scary, but do they understand how scary it really is? In the short story “Where Have You Gone Charming Billy?”, by Tim O’Brien, it shows how truly scary war can be. For the people who have not served, we can not even understand the half of it. War might seem like nothing or it might be near and dear to your heart. People that have not served or had a relative fighting, probably do not know how scared you are twenty-four seven. Being a soldier is not all dress and no play, it’s real life. Most people might say that no soldier is scared. If anything they probably say nothing can phase them, but soldiers are afraid to. “Could not stop giggling, remembering: scared to death” (O’Brien 202). The soldier is scared that he is going to die. War is scary and every soldier deep down is probably terrified. Even though they put on a tough face, does not mean that they are not scared. …show more content…

You are worried that you are going to step in the wrong place. “He walked carefully. He remembered what he’d been taught: stay off the center of the path, for that was where the landmines and booby traps were planted, where stupid and lazy soldiers like to walk” (O’Brien 199). Even if you are tired while at war, one wrong move and you could die. In America we can walk basically wherever but at war you can’t. No matter the training, you can never be totally ready for what will happen in war. “They hadn’t given any lessons in courage - not that he could remember - and they hadn’t mentioned how Billy Boy Watkins would die of a heart attacks, his face turning pale and veins popping out” (O’Brien 200). Even if you can watch a movie where someone is being burned at the steak that doesn’t mean when you smell human flesh that you will be okay. Tim O'Brien is trying to show us throughout the story what war is really like. Just because you might be a video game hero does not mean you can be a real life war

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Character Trait Paragraph In “Where Have You Gone Charming Billy?” by Tim O’Brien, the narrator demonstrates imagination in his attempt to distract himself from stress. An example of the narrator’s imagination is when he revisits memories “camping with his father” (1). This shows his original thought process; he is envisioning his father instead of focusing on the current war, he is thinking of a fun point in his life.

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Name of Document: A Southern Woman Describes the Hardship of War - 1862 A. List four things the author said that you think are important: 1.The townspeople fears the fact that the southerns will lose the town. 2. Laura and other southerns didn’t expect to see the Union invade Tennessee so quickly. 3.All communication with the brother will be lost if the Union captures their town.

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Obrien perfectly describes the duality of war saying, “war is nasty; war is fun” and “war makes you a man; war makes you dead” (76). War has many positives for some men, and it gives them a chance to honor their country. War is also horrible and leads to the death of countless young men with bright futures ahead. O’Brien uses the story of the water buffalo to describe all the emotions described in the description of war. The shooting of the water buffalo shows how desensitized soldiers become due to the mindless killing of Vietnam.

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“Ultimately, trying to stay alive long enough to return home in one piece was the only thing that made any sense at all.” This quote shows that most soldiers had people and loved ones waiting for them at home and making it out of this war alive was really the only goal of the war entirely, dying would be to leave everything and everyone you know behind. Sometimes soldiers begin to fear death so much that they leave their platoons to try and escape the war, while there are others that fear death to the point they don’t want to move at all knowing that there are landmines, snipers, boobytraps and ambushes pretty much everywhere. “When a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause, you can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead.”

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O’Brien goes into great depth in this small quote on how loss of innocence and war can affect people in the war. The quote “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t” shows how war is so different from what any human experiences at home. After that small quote he follows it up by bringing up how you have to use normal stuff to show how crazy these things are and how much of a pole it can have on somebody during a war. The way that war is treated for many is mostly the mental part that is struggling. But for many "War is hell, but that's not half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love.

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The same saying could be interperated in this situation for the American soldiers. “Small children who will play with you, old men with their talk, women who offer chai- / and any one of them may dance over your body tomorrow” (25-28). This quote shows that even though some people may seem innocent and easy to befriend, it is incognizant if they will rejoice over their death tomorrow. In the war zone, it is unkown. Soldiers are unaware of what could happen, or what the Midde Eastern people are going to do.

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Being terrified is the thing that keeps hope out of our lives. It is important to not be scared because if we are, then we will have no hope in winning and we will not win. If we just believe that we can win and not give up then we will have our victory. We could also get someone to come and help out in the war. Many people don’t want to work because they are too sick.

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The Fear of Decision Making In the short story, On The Rainy River by Tim O'Brien, he writes about what he did after he got his draft notice and his fear of going to the war and getting killed. He ran to the Canadian border to run away from this duty but in the end could not run away because of his cowardliness. Fear is the feeling of being afraid of something or to avoid or put off doing something because one is afraid. Everyone is afraid of different things such as spiders or the dark or monsters under the bed but everyone is afraid of making the wrong decisions.

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With all that fear and worry going on in their head they have to stay focused and clear headed. All of these things is what makes a veteran brave and

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Throughout all of American history, African Americans face injustice. Despite this, they keep their head up high and endure the pain and suffering, no matter how bad the conditions may get. A great example of this is the experiences of African American soldiers of the civil war. They were treated unfairly, receiving less pay than their white colleagues, living in worse conditions, and even looked down upon (whether they were high in rank or not). The movie Glory, directed by Edward Zick, conveys the African American experience during the civil war beautifully, showing a very accurate perspective of what it might have really been like for the people.

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The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.

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The reason is because perhaps they have not experienced war. They have not had the experience most soldiers have. They haven’t had to shoot someone,

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Run the gauntlet Soldier Boy thats me. At lest thats what i am now in this hot place thats never at rest. In training they would line us up and make us march all in perfect Synchronised high knee steps we all new war was not going to be an organised place but the training before hand still gave us a fouls sense of security as. There is nothing but chaos. I wanna be a good soldier and i wont to do my part but to being good war is a contradiction to all morals and lessons of being a good person in the real would to shoot some one is to be a bad person but as a soldier i am commended for the lives i have taken and the trophies i have collected.

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The war is something no one wants to go through. Soldiers train to fight for their country and for their very lives. In doing so, the war isn’t a pretty place to be in. Many soldiers have returned with diseases, missing limbs, and mental trauma. After fighting the war, numerous soldiers return home injured or has contracted some type of health condition or disease.

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People need to stop fighting one another. Fighting can make matters worse and fighting will hurt people even more than they anticipated. Instead of fighting, people should come together and resolve the problem which is much safer than fighting each other. People who do take the fighting route, often take a chance of leaving their family that they may never see again. To eliminate any chances, people should just get along with each other and talk about any problems that they may have.

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