Vietnam War: in the Lake of the Woods & Its Historical Perspective
ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 8, No. 12, pp. 1582-1594, December 2018 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0812.03 Tim O’Brien’s “Bad” Vietnam War: In the Lake of the Woods & Its Historical Perspective Ramtin Noor-Tehrani (Noor) Mahini Acalanes High School, Lafayette, California, USA Erin Barth Acalanes High School, Lafayette, California, USA Jed Morrow Acalanes High School, Lafayette, California, USA Abstract—Award-winning author Tim O’Brien was sent to Vietnam as a foot soldier in 1969, when American combat troops were gradually withdrawn from the country. A closer look at his Vietnam war stories reveals that he indeed touched upon almost all issues or problems of American soldiers in this “bad” war; yet not many peer-reviewed authors or online literary analysis websites could identify and discuss them all. The purpose of this article is to address the war details in O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods and its historical perspective, so that middle and high school readers can understand the meaning behind Tim O'Brien's stories and know the entire big Vietnam War picture. Specifically, this article discusses the following issues that are raised by O’Brien in this novel: the Mỹ Lai Massacre and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Vietnam War veterans. In addition, the Mỹ Lai Massacre cover-up, forgotten heroes of Mỹ Lai, and soldiers’ moral courage are also presented. Index Terms—Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods, Vietnam War, Mỹ Lai Massacre, Mỹ Lai cover-up, Hugh Thompson, Ron Ridenhour, Seymour Hersh, Lawrence Colburn, Glenn Andreotta, peers inquiry I.
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