A Comparison Between Two Types Of Literature

The introductory readings, Obrien's If I die in a Combat Zone, Hasford's The Short-Timers, The Things They Carried, Moore's The Green Berets, and Obrien's Going After Cacciato, all share a common element - fear. An integral part of each story is a sense of fear that helps to intensify the experiences being related by the author; i.e. make the stories more realistic. Without the use of fear, these stories would lose much of their impact. The entire experience of Vietnam pivots on fear for many of the characters in these stories.

If I die in a Combat Zone

In Obrien's If I die in a Combat Zone, the main character struggles to balance his fear with his duty to his country, his town, and himself. 'So to bring the conversations to a focus and also to try out in real words my secret fears, I argued for running away,' (Combat, 29) the character says. He simply is torn between what he feels is a responsibility, and the many parts of his fear. Afraid of not upholding his pride, afraid of dying in a, '[war that] was wrongly conceived and poorly justified,' (Combat, 29), and crippled by, 'Doubts...hedged all this: I had neither the expertise nor the wisdom to synthesize answers...' (Combat, 29), the character simply is paralyzed by fear, and because of this, gets on the draftee bus without really having made a decision.

It was an intellectual and physical stand-off, and I did not have the energy to see it to an end. I did not want to be a soldier, not even an observer to war. But neither did I want to upset a peculiar balance between the order I knew, the people I knew, and my own private world. It was not that I valued that order. But I feared its opposite, inevitable chaos, censure, embarrassment, the end of everything that had happened in my life, the end of it all (Combat, 34).

This quote best illustrates his inability to make that necessary decision, and his failure to overcome his debilitating fear.

In Hasford's The Short Timers, fear is an underlying current to much of the segment that we have read. From when the poges say, 'Fucking grunts...they're nothing but animals...,' (Short-Timers, 39) and the Marines' reaction, to the exchange between Joker and Animal Mother when Joker must establish himself as a non-poge, the atmosphere has fear right below the surface emotions. It is important to them to establish that they are not afraid of anything, yet it is easy to see that right beneath that bravado is a fear that someone will call their bluff. All the hard talk, 'the baddest of the bad, the leanest of the lean, the meanest of the mean,' (Short-Timers, 40) is all just this little show, as much for the performer as the audience. Their need for this demonstration of manhood is taken a step further by Cowboy when he talks about taking over squad leader for Crazy Earl, 'I'm ...