The Vietnam War In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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The Vietnam War raged from 1955-1975. The United States had intervened in an attempt to contain Soviet influence as part of the bigger Cold War in progress. Ho Chi Minh and his communist Viet Minh party were battling South Vietnam and its ally, the U.S. More than 3,000,000 people died in the conflict - half were Vietnamese citizens and about 58,000 were Americans (History.com Staff).
The intervention of the United States began in 1955 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower pledged to support Ngo Dinh Diem and South Vietnam. By 1969, 500,000 American troops were deployed in the Southeast Asian country. Growing opposition to the war had been growing in the United States, leading to a harsh division of opinions. In 1973, President Richard Nixon finally decided to withdraw American troops. The war ended in 1975 after communist forces took over Saigon and the communist party seized control of the government (History.com Staff).
The setting of the photo is an open field in Vietnamese battlegrounds. The landscape appears …show more content…
It was a moral dilemma that tore the country apart. Some people were indifferent, while others advocated to protect the fellow man and his rights. As someone who has parents that escaped Vietnam because of the war, I have a different perspective on the war than the average American. I used to wonder why the U.S. didn’t funnel millions and millions of troops into my home country to save us from the horrible communists. It was because young American troops were fighting 8,000 miles away and dying for a cause that didn’t affect them. The ability to see a situation from a neutral perspective is critical, and this photo has helped me to analyze the Vietnam War on a deeper level. Huet perfectly represented the moral dilemma with one well-timed photograph that delivers a powerful
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