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Who Is Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now?

1398 Words6 Pages

Against this haunting music, the opening scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s surrealistic Vietnam epic “Apocalypse Now” shows what initially is a peaceful coastline of graceful palm trees along a beautiful and deserted beach. As Jim Morrison mournfully sings, helicopters begin to appear and that coast becomes totally engulfed in the violence of bursting explosives and fire. That’s the same coast my shipmates and I saw, but with the shelling and fires finally silenced, as we sailed away, leaving a brutal and painful war in our wake. This book is about what it was like to be a witness to the very end of the Vietnam War. It’s my personal story, along with a few relevant and hopefully interesting historical notes, of the six and a half month voyage I made as a newly commissioned junior officer shortly after reporting for duty aboard the U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer USS Benjamin Stoddert (DDG-22). Although what happened at the end of our deployment was truly historic and significant, this is still a sea story told mostly in the …show more content…

A yard may also very well have been the legendary distance between Henry I of England’s thumb and his nose at the beginning of the 12th Century, which is actually pretty interesting. But what’s more important is that a nautical mile or 2,000 yards is exactly one 60th of a degree of latitude, also known as one minute of latitude. A minute of latitude is the exact same length everywhere on the planet, whereas degrees of longitude are longer at the equator, diminishing to zero length at the Earth’s poles. Use of latitude minutes/yards is eminently useful for marine navigation, in the form of 1 minute of latitude = 1 nautical mile = 2,000 yards, which is about 1.85

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1513 Words | 7 Pages

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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1882 Words | 8 Pages

While Norman carries the traumatic memory of global warfare with him into the domestic space, there is an unwillingness of the local American space to listen to the realities of war fought abroad. Rather than speak of the trauma suffered abroad, Norman traps his story inside him and allows the wound to destroy him rather break the idyllic American landscape with the reality of the horror of

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1292 Words | 6 Pages

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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791 Words | 4 Pages

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the author retells the chilling, and oftentimes gruesome, experiences of the Vietnam war. He utilizes many anecdotes and other rhetorical devices in his stories to paint the image of what war is really like to people who have never experienced it. In the short stories “Spin,” “The Man I Killed,” and “ ,” O’Brien gives reader the perfect understanding of the Vietnam by placing them directly into the war itself. In “Spin,” O’Brien expresses the general theme of war being boring and unpredictable, as well as the soldiers being young and unpredictable.

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919 Words | 4 Pages

Rather, the significance of O’Brien’s work is his utilization of a metafictional novel as a representative vehicle for the Vietnam War. Within The Things They Carried

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2081 Words | 9 Pages

The soldiers in the Vietnam War are portrayed as losing themselves in the chaos and trauma of combat. Through the stories of the soldiers and their experiences, O’Brien explores the ways in which war strips away one's sense of identity and humanity. The author himself is depicted as losing himself in the war. O'Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his experiences inspired much of the book. Through the character of Tim O'Brien, the author explores the ways in which war can strip away one's sense of self and purpose.

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813 Words | 4 Pages

Regret is a powerful emotion that has the ability to scar someone for the rest of their life. Moments of regret can come from relationships, self-made decisions and life changing events. The idea of regret also applies to “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh and “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien. Although these two literary pieces are very different in many ways, both authors describe the experience of the Vietnam War as a time of regretful decisions that negatively impacted people of both the American side and the Vietnamese side. Both authors tell a story about a character that recalls of flashbacks of the war, where they grieve over the past decisions that have affected them for the rest of their life.

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1504 Words | 7 Pages

The novel focuses on coping with the death and horror of war. It also speaks volumes about the true nature of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the never-ending struggle of dealing with it. In the

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1398 Words | 6 Pages

Toward the end of the twentieth century, American literature saw a wave of fresh analysis about the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien, one of the most popular authors of this historical event, wrote a few of the popular Vietnam-themed novels. In the Lake of the Woods is among these novels about the Vietnam War, fictitiously depicting events that have changed society’s perspective on the history. Tim O’Brien expresses his rebuke of numerous ways, including how the war has changed modern warfare. He also displays his views in an anti-war tone, speaking out against the war itself and the individual damage it has caused.

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1405 Words | 6 Pages

In 1990, Tim O’Brien published a powerful collection of short stories that was carefully composed into the novel, The Things They Carried. This novel has allowed many readers to gain insight on the appalling, yet realistic aspects of the Vietnam War that are otherwise not typically shared. O’Brien takes specific events from his own war life and applies them to stories in which various characters learn lessons on integrity, politics, rationality, life, and love. Without a doubt, O’Brien tackles difficult themes regarding life at war that allows others to feel the pain and horror that the characters are experiencing. Beyond the plethora of the themes shared, O’Brien specifically emphasizes how difficult situations can test the strength of love

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688 Words | 3 Pages

He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

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925 Words | 4 Pages

Literary analysis America’s war heroes all have the same stories to tell but different tales. Prescribed with the same coloring page to fill in, and use their methods and colors to bring the image to life. This is the writing style and tactic used by Tim O’Brien in his novel, “The Things They Carried”. Steven Kaplan’s short story criticism, The Undying Certainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, provides the audience with an understanding of O’Brien’s techniques used to share “true war” stories of the Vietnam War. Kaplan explains the multitude of stories shared in each of the individual characters, narration and concepts derived from their personal experiences while serving active combat duty during the Vietnam War,

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547 Words | 3 Pages

I decided to switch my artifact for the research paper from John Erick Dowdle’s No Escape (2015) to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) because I think this film is more suitable for what I want to research, which is how and why the media actively shapes Americans’ perception of historical events. I am also especially interested in the role Orientalism plays in this process. Unlike No Escape, Apocalypse Now has a lot more historical significance because it came out a few years after the Vietnam War (1955-1975) and is considered one of the most famous films about the Vietnam War. In addition to that, there is more room for debate about the significance of the film and its portrayal of Southeastern Asians.

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1079 Words | 5 Pages

In 2013 when Viet Thanh Nguyen began to write The Sympathizer, it had been 40 years since the Vietnam War. It had been 40 years since French and American military involvement ravaged a once beautiful countryside and littered lush forests with napalm. It had been 40 years since 2 million people were displaced from their country and left to die in the Pacific Ocean. In those 40 years, many works were published about the Vietnam War. These stories came from many, contrasting, perspectives.

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742 Words | 3 Pages

Farming has evolved tremendously over the past couple hundred years. Through technology we have been able to develop the things that farming has today. With just less than two percent of the world’s population living on farms, technology plays a key part in enabling that small amount to feed the other 98 percent. By the year 2050, farmers will be responsible for feeding nine billion people, will they be able to accomplish this?

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