After reading Herr's article and preparing the discussion on the material, I have gained a much better understanding of the feeling present in America at the time regarding the involvement in Vietnam. In the past, I have learned about the war, however never focused as much on the reaction of our people at home. I also had not thought of the economic factors that played a role in who actually fought.
I felt the Herr reading was very informative as well. I have never had the opportunity to reach such a vivid description of a war account in class, and I felt that the author did an excellent job at presenting his account without a lot of bias. Herr excelled at displaying the emotions felt by the soldiers, and the day to day life experienced by those in Vietnam. I felt that the Pyle account was substantially more slanted, and painted the war discussed as "the good war", and did not focus on the chaos and brutality of the conflict. This in a sense distances readers who do not get the same feelings from the text.
From lecture, I also obtained a better understanding of the difference between not supporting the war and not supporting the troops. I must admit that before I was a little quick to judge those in opposition, perhaps sometimes misinterpreting the protest as being rather anti-American. After our discussion, I find it easier to take the time to really think about the motivations behind those who publicly express their opinions about any type of political action. Overall, I am glad I had the opportunity to further explore the topic of the war and its implications to the rest of the country both at the time of occurrence as well as the present day.
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i too think that Herrs corespondence from vietnam better helped me to understand the feeling in america at the time. i feel that out generation is probably the first since that one that can realate to coming of age in that atmosphere and i can now see that even we dont understand. more than once i thought "woah. i would have been upset to had i been reading this"
ReplyDeleteI think thats a great point that the fact that WWII is referred to as "The Good War" sums up the many inherent differences between what was probably viewed as objective journalism when Pyle was writing, compared to when Herr wrote. Like Ashton said, I think that there is an interesting correlation between our generation growing up during the Iraq war, and the youth generation when Herr was writing, I just wonder how the divergence in very public demonstration that the 1960's was known for, and the relative "tame-ness" that people used to protest the Iraq war, ended up coming about. It just seemed that (as lecture showed) there were many similarities between the 1960's-70's and present day.
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