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TTTC And Platoon: The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

773 Words4 Pages

Micaela Tracey English 12 Derosa Per. 2 5/21/24 TTTC and Platoon Essay The Vietnam War was a very gruesome, and unsettling time for many soldiers who went to fight in the war. Being a soldier in the Vietnam War could turn an innocent man into someone who ended up killing many opposing soldiers. The Vietnam War was no joke and many soldiers were faced with that reality the longer they spent in their platoons. The soldiers in both the movie Platoon, by Oliver Stone and the book The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, were faced with many challenging events that will change the way they look at the world for the rest of their lives. A point of reoccurrence that was seen by the characters in both the movie and the book was the soldiers loss of innocence. …show more content…

This event in the story changes Tim O’Brien’s look at war and his time in Vietnam because he can’t believe that he was able to bring himself to kill another human being. It was so hard for him to accept this truth because in the beginning of the story, Tim enters the war as a scared and innocent man who felt like he would have been shamed if he didn’t enter. He was scared of dying and seeing the killing of other innocent people. Because of O’Brien’s past of being scared of war and not wanting to enter, this fueled his anger and sadness after he killed another soldier. This was not something O’Brien stood behind, and he was very ashamed of his actions. Even though the other soldiers around him also have killed opposing soldiers, he still is filled with shame and regret for his actions. O’Brien lost his innocence at that moment because he no longer would be able to call himself an innocent man. He now in his mind was a cold blooded

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