Written in 1975, it has been surpassed by many later books which much more effectively and movingly convey the story of the soldier and marine in Vietnam. No character development. Too much self-indulging "philosophy", pompously quoting Plato and others. A book written just after the War's end by a college graduate who was drafted (for 2 years)rather than volunteer for Officer training (four year committment. As with many such college grads during the Vietnam era, he was an anti-Vietnam, anti-military, "silent" protester, slacker...and amateur philosopher who saw himself as superior to everyone in the US military, especially to all senior officers.

Read some OTHER books about the Vietnam War...not this one. You'll learn/understand MUCH more.

Using the audiobook version makes it good getting the emotional voice of a Vietnam solider/veteran.

After surviving Vietnam, it was nice to see Tim graduate from one of Boston's best... Harvard University.

n  The Things They Carriedn By Tim O'Brian work is even a more popular Vietnam work.

Nothing new to add to old review. Was rereading for a class.
If I Die in a Combat Zone is good, but this memoir proves the point O'Brien makes in The Things They Carried: story truth is more true than happening truth.

SE MUOIO IN BATTAGLIA


La foto di copertina. La guerra in Vietnam fu per antonomasia la guerra degli elicotteri.

L’esordio narrativo di Tim O’Brien, scrittore che nella sua partecipazione alla guerra in Vietnam ha trovato una fonte d’ispirazione pressoché inesauribile.
Mi ha colpito il fatto che questo libro sia un romanzo, e invece Quanto pesano i fantasmi è una raccolta di racconti, che però a suo modo risulta più compatta, più ‘romanzo’ di questo.
Forse l’esperienza di O’Brien in Vietnam era ancora troppo recente, troppo calda, ed è mancato il giusto tempo per metabolizzare, per elaborare gli appunti.
È comunque materiale letterario notevole. E, materiale umano eccezionale.



Iniziato a scrivere in loco, O’Brien prendeva appunti quando poteva, e quando ritornò a casa aveva un’ottantina di pagine. Ma gli ci vollero comunque altri due anni per finirlo.
E alla fine capì perché voleva pubblicarlo:
Per vendetta. Volevo vendicarmi di tutte quelle casalinghe teste di legno e di tutti quei ministri che erano convinti che la guerra era una cosa da fare. Volevo sbattergli sotto gli occhi l’orrore di un conflitto che, anche se inizia per i motivi più puri, poi prosegue senza scopo.



In che modo la guerra del Vietnam è diversa da quelle che l’hanno preceduta, si differenzia e stacca da quella in Corea, dalla Seconda Mondiale eccetera, ed è invece molto più simile alle guerre che l’hanno seguita?
Nelle guerre che hanno preceduto il Vietnam, il nemico era soggetto conosciuto e riconoscibile, vuoi perché portava una divisa, vuoi perché erano chiari gli schieramenti in campo - in quelle guerre il conflitto aveva una destinazione, e terminava quando una forza espugnava il territorio altrui, arrivando a Berlino, o a Tokyo.

I soldati in Vietnam, invece, si chiedevano a chi stavano sparando.
Si chiedevano dov’erano diretti: ‘ripulivano’ un villaggio, e il mese dopo lo facevano daccapo – conquistavano una posizione, la perdevano appena la abbandonavano, e di nuovo dovevano riconquistarla. Hamburger Hill.
Si chiedevano chi era il loro nemico: se quel/quella vietnamita che stava sorridendogli era amico/a o nemico/a.
Dal Vietnam in poi si è cominciato a sparare a tutto, quantità di munizioni sterminate.
Adesso, si vince davvero una guerra? L’Afghanistan e l’Iraq insegnano qualcosa, il Vietnam aveva cominciato a spargere il dubbio, a generare la frustrazione.



La guerra in Vietnam era contro i vietcong: ma anche contro il paese, contro il territorio, le risaie, le sanguisughe, il sole. Una guerra totale, il nemico era l’intero paese.
Un soldato dopo il Vietnam, e dopo le guerre che sono seguite, è in condizioni di sapere se ha ucciso qualcuno? Sa per certo se ha sparato: ma l’effetto, le vittime non sono più chiaramente identificabili.
Dalla guerra in Vietnam in poi, le guerre hanno cominciato a diventare azioni di rastrellamento, casa per casa.



Tim O’Brien dice che è stato in Vietnam, ha premuto il grilletto, e che dopo quel gesto, ha poca importanza se ha ucciso qualcuno o meno: è comunque responsabile.

PS
Se muoio in battaglia, mettimi in un sacco e spediscimi a casa, recita il titolo originale (If i die in a combat zone, zip me up and ship me home).

Brilliant. Gave me the vocabulary to communicate better in Call of Duty. I tried reading Ernest Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls for the same purpose but his style didn't stick with me. I'm a warmonger and my dream is for the world to be engaged in perpetual conflict. Love war because War is Peace.

I would have finished this book a week ago, but I've been down with the flu. I completed the book in the throes of a relentless fever, that still persists as I write this, but that fever might have added the unknown ingredient a reader needs to embrace O'Brien's work: a sort of light-headed vulnerability. O'Brien's memoir of his tour in Vietnam, some of which was written while he was there, and the rest written immediately after he was home, is visceral and introspective, unadorned and critical. This book works well in tandem with O'Brien's brilliant THE THINGS THEY CARRIED. This book seeks fact and comprehension, but TTTC—written in excerpts during the eighties, and published in 1990—strives for truth and meaning. There is no greater purpose for any work of literature.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be drafted into the war at a young age? Tim O’Brien experiences first hand the stresses and decisions that needed to be made when he first learned he was drafted for the Vietnam War in the summer of 1968. In the memoir If I Died in a Combat Zone: Box Me up and Ship Me Home, Tim O’Brien talked with his friends as he explains, “I was persuaded then, and I remain persuaded now, that the war was wrong. And since it was wrong and since people were dying as a result of it, it was evil” (18). O’Brien was torn between what he should, and should not do. Within himself he instilled all the values his parents have passed along and those reminiscing thoughts pulled him in the other direction. He said, “It was an intellectual and physical standoff, 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 of 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 just that I valued the order. I also feared its opposite – inevitable chaos, censure, embarrassment, the end of everything that had happened in my life, the end of it all” (22). O’Brien decided to serve for his country.

O’Brien tells his stories throughout the memoir of his personal encounters as a soldier and human being. He does not try to make himself sound like a hero of great magnitude; O’Brien was more interested in leaving Vietnam than actually being there. O’Brien’s work shows how truly negative he is about being at war, and the job he entails there.

After being deployed into the Alpha company, 5th Battalion of the 46th Infantry, 198th Infantry Brigade, O’Brien describes his scenarios and events that took place there. One being, all the mines that were encountered by the infantrymen and the ways they work, and the torture and killings they produce. He says, “The Bouncing Betty is feared most. It is a common mine. It leaps out of its nest in the earth, and when it hits its apex, it explodes, reliable and deadly…The fellow takes another step and begins the next and his backside is bleeding and he’s dead. We call it “ol’ step and a half” (122). The reality of these mines is the deaths and tortures they produce are real. I was amazed at the fatalities and near death experiences soldiers came in counter with when they are faced with crossing these mines.

Like every other soldier in his Alpha Company, O’Brien just works hard so he can get a job as a rear echelon officer. In which they can leave the battle zone, and move back towards safer cover. Throughout the book you will discover his adventure towards his return home. In the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me up and Ship Me Home, Tim O’Brien writes about the personal experiences of what occurs at war, and the harsh realities of death and fighting. He questions, “Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advice others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories” (23).

I'm just going to list some of my notes about the problems I had with this book because let's be honest: nothing was really gained or developed that made these critiques invalid, even towards the end of the book.

I have exactly four major dislikes about this book (plus some specific things that pissed me off).

1. O'Brien's horrid writing style.

He talked way too much about his pretentious ideas of *sigh* courage and Plato (god, at least he's putting that collage degree to good use?) and focused on the most random shit that I couldn't care about while neglecting to talk more about the stuff that interested me. Which brings me to the second part.


2. The lack of regret or shame in this book as he causally mentioned soldiers targeting civilians (himself included).

This criticism, I really think, is up for interpretation. I viewed it as him using grief to try to justify the crimes committed and being all "Vietnam was just HELL and we couldn't tell the civilians from the VC anymore! So we just attacked random civilians :(." Honestly, the sympathy I feel for the American soldiers is the same that I feel for the Nazis and the Japanese soldiers in WW2. I'm sure a lot of them were pressured by their countries or forced but it's never going to overshadow what I feel for their victims. Remember, kids: having an explantation doesn't excuse your immoral, criminal actions!

Especially since he (maybe) expresses 0.5 point of guilt for his actions while using up how many pages to talk about the random shit I don't care about that I mentioned earlier.

There is a chapter where he wonders what courage is and a bunch of other worthless talk that amounts to nothing, and I'm pretty sure he ends it with hopeful that all the soldiers are worthy of "second chances". The lack of regret or anything in like vein of thinking makes me think no - that's not how second chances are supposed to work. (Especially that scene with them blowing up a Buddha statue at a welcoming monastery and then not even mentioning if they apologized?? Fuck you.) If you really don't think you did nothing wrong, that's being delusional, not getting a second chance. And the courage talk is total bull because everyone who was an American soldier in Vietnam were either idiots or cowards (the author himself even indirectly agrees so ha!)

The majority of this was written two years after the war, so don't tell me he hasn't had time to reflect on this actions.


3. The role of the Vietnamese in this book.

Another review of this book, I'm pretty sure, mentioned this but the Vietnamese people in this book are essentially used as props for his moral reflection.

I bet this guy was a philosophy major; he's just that self-righteous.

He didn't care about what the South Vietnamese were going through or how the war and American soldiers affected their lives. He basically put them into two categories: the bad Vietcong, and the good villages that worship the ground the Americans walk on, even when they get abused! Oh joy!

He literally tries to figure out how complex war and the American military is but doesn't extend that thinking to the enemy, even though that's the interesting part in this war: the Vietcong and the civilians! (I'm going to link a video of another American soldier who'd gone to Vietnam and talked about it because he actually talks about the people and how they were affected, etc.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tixOy...)


3. The complete lack of development/knowledge gained in this book.

What did anybody learn from this book? O'Brien wasn't even in the thick of it. He was just there and then he was gone. In the end chapter, he acts like he learned and grew from the war but he really didn't. He started it as a coward, just going along with everything to not upset the flow, and ended it as a coward, the entire time just passing judgment on others. I guess I can't blame him: the psychology behind the reason for war crimes is obedience (which is a pretty word for cowardliness) from the soldiers.


For a guy who acts like he's so morally righteous and smart for being anti-Vietnam War, he's so oblivious about who was most hurt by the war: the Vietnamese people, not the Americans, pal.

That was their country, no matter how many times you're going to refer to it as a hell and evil (a scene that really stuck with me was when the flight attendant at the end was spraying disinfectant to get rid of "asian evils" and more bull like that), so I really want to tell O'Brien to get off his self-pitying high horse because he's really oblivious to his privilege (I don't want to invalidate his trauma or how he processes it, but seriously? Have some self-awareness); at least his home wasn't trashed and destroyed by foreigners.

Whatever. I would burn this book like it was Bridget Jones's Diary but, alas, it's a school book... Anyway, there are way better things talking about Vietnam that isn't this stupid book.

I was so ready to give this 5 stars somewhere in the middle of the read, but then the last chapter came and made me pretty angry. Let’s break this down:

I love how this book is both personal and solemnly detached. I love how text is dynamic, how it accelerates and slows down not only within chapters, but within paragraphs. Intense and gruesome descriptions end with bitter jokes and it feels like tension is never released, so it just keeps building up behind you.
Basically, O’Brien writes how I would want to write: sharp and concise. He is separated from the text, but not emancipated. And this leads me to the next point: the narrator (O’Brien himself). Even though I can put the ambivalence of the narrator in both likes and dislikes, it surely kept me reading. In the begging of the book there’s this beautiful passage:

“Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories”

This gave me an explanation and a lens to look at the whole book: at least the format of the story can explain the lack of self-awareness (painting the picture becomes more important than intellectualising the experience). And he stays true to this for the most part, but then comes Plato and ruins the whole idea. For example, he dedicates a whole chapter to talk about courage and it just looks extremely out of place. For me, when he starts talking about philosophy, he automatically switches from telling to teaching, so it becomes problematic looking at the other chapters knowing that out of all things he could philosophise about (guilt, regret, grief, responsibility) he choses courage. The same problem I had with the last chapter. He speaks about what the war taught him and goes back to courage. It feels like at the end of the book he believes that the war was wrong a bit less than he did in the beginning. I guess it could feel like this because of him not wanting to rationalise the traumatic experience, but then again him and Plato? I’m really conflicted about this.
I give this 4 because it feels very familiar and is beautifully written. I also will never understand why a person would go to a war like this despite all the explanations and I don’t think I will be able to feel sympathy for the narrator.

I enjoyed this as much on my second reading as on my first. Although, I don't know if "enjoyed" is the most appropriate word, given the subject matter of the book; perhaps "appreciated" is more fitting.

This is the story of O'Brien's year serving as an infantryman in Vietnam in 1969. He tells us about his upbringing in rural Minnesota (Worthington, although he never mentions the town by name), and his moral struggles after receiving his draft card. He takes us through basic training at Fort Lewis in Washington, and then he's off to Vietnam.

The stories he tells about his experiences include the mind numbing routines, the fear of the unknown, constantly wondering where the enemy is, dealing with the local people, trying to determine who among them is friendly or deadly, the seeming lack of any military plan that characterized much of his platoon's activities, the counting down of days until your tour is over, deciding whether to re-enlist for 3 years and get a rear echelon job or take the risk of lasting out the standard one year term, dealing with the fallout of the My Lai massacre (his division had been involved in that the year before, and was still operating in that area), trying to define what courage truly is, and looking forward to the return home.

O'Brien states early in the book, "Now, war ended, all I am left with are simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates. It is hard to be brave. It is hard to know what bravery is. . . . Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories." O'Brien tells war stories, and does it well.

Precise, devastating, vivid. The skill of the writing matches the significance of the topic.

I get so mad thinking about the fucking US Army putting Tim O’Brien in harms way