Fight or FlightBy yen nguyen
The Lone Ranger, Zorro, Batman, Superman are some of the characters that we stereotypically constitute as heroes. They are known to fight with courage without fear of death. They destroy the enemy within a blink of an eye. They fight using their own body strength, superpower, or some kind of weapon. They come to the rescue miraculously and leave without a trace. They are mysterious. We are unable to identify who they are underneath the masks and disguises. Yet, we praise them and ignore the real heroes that surround us regularly, ordinarily. “All of us …like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth, bravely and forthrightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit” (O’Brien 39). In other words, we are quite oblivious to the ordinary people of the world that are, in fact, the true heroes.
These heroes are not the equivalents to the Lone Ranger or Superman; they might even flee instead of fight a dangerous situation. However, when they do fight, they fight with flesh and bone. They fight with emotions and tears. They fight with anger and fears. They fight with confusion. They fight for their country. They fight to avoid the shame and embarrassment. They fight because of obligations to the family, to the country, and to themselves. The heroes that come to mind through these descriptions are the ones fighting in uniforms. They are fighting in lands unknown. They are captured and tortured. They are young and naïve but they are obligated to perform their patriotic duties. They are the soldiers of my country, your country, and our country. They are the protagonists and characters of The Things They Carried, The Sorrow of War, and Crossing Over. With this in mind, a fearless, cowboy-like character; therefore, does not constitute the idea of a hero. “[The] old image of … a hero, as a man of conscience and courage, all that was just a threadbare pipe dream” (O’Brien 57). Rather, a hero is an “everyman”, whose attitude towards war arises from anger, fear, shame, morals, and confusion like any ordinary person.
These ordinary young men “did not want to die” (O’Brien 44), but they know “it is impossible to do a good job at war and expect to stay alive” (Currey 39). It is impossible because unlike ordinary games, “there was [not] a winner [nor] a loser. There were [no] rules” (O’Brien 32) because there are “no safe ground: enemies everywhere” (O’Brien 63). They are so scared that “if a mission seemed especially hazardous, or if it involved a place they knew to be bad, they carried everything they could” (O’Brien 9). Literally, they would take everything regardless of the usefulness because it is better to be prepared than sorry. They know that after the game of war things would “never be normal again” (Ninh 42). Kien, in The Sorrow of War, has a horrific experience that “every time after …when he recalled the first night home of his new postwar life, his heart was wrenched in anguish and bitterness and he would involuntarily moan” (84). It is an involuntary emotion that arises whenever he thinks of the day that he escaped Hell. Like Kien, Jimmy Cross of The Things They Carried feels the same torture. “The bad stuff never stops happening: it lives in its own dimension, replaying itself over and over” (O’Brien 32). This is how Cross feels, even though, he returns from the war alive. He will always be haunted by the horrific experience. These men are feared by the idea of the Vietnam War because the place is “spooky” and they have no knowledge of the land; therefore, they are angry by the draft.
They are “too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything. It couldn’t happen.” (O’Brien 41). They are unprepared and “didn’t know a rifle from a slingshot” (O’Brien 42). They wish that it is “a mistake, maybe—a foul-up in the paperwork” (O’Brien 41). However, they know deep down that it is no mistake. “It all seemed crazy and impossible. They are about “twenty-one years old, ordinary [kids] with all the ordinary dreams and ambitions, and all… wanted was to live the life [they were] born to—a mainstream life” (O’Brien 51). It is unreasonable for them to enter this conflict because “the forest a book [they] cannot read” (Currey 27) and there are not a drop of “military ambitions” (O’Brien 164) in their hearts. They want to continue the normal lives and pretend that the letters are delivered to the wrong addresses. They are “dragged into a wrong war” (O’Brien 158). Although they are angry, they have no choice but to fight in order to avoid the shame and embarrassment.
The soon-to-be soldiers face “a moral split” (O’Brien 44) between the time of receiving the letters and the day they leave. “A moral freeze: … couldn’t decide …couldn’t act…couldn’t comport …with even a pretense of modest human dignity” (O’Brien 57). In other words, they are torn between the notion of “fight or flight.” They could either deal with it or run away like cowards. “[The] conscience told [them] to run, but some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing [them] toward the war” (O’Brien 52). The powerful force is the embarrassment because “it had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was” (O’Brien 59).
To flee is a shameful and embarrassing action. “What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame. [The young men] did not want people to think badly of [them]” (O’Brien 52). It shows that “they were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it” (O’Brien 20). They want to be accepted by society. They do not want people to think that they are “treasonous pussy [that they] had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons” (O’Brien 45). They go to war anyways because they are ashamed of the “ conscience, ashamed to be doing the right thing” (O’Brien 52). Thus, they “would go to the war…would kill and maybe die—because [they were] embarrassed not to” (O’Brien 59). “It’s not just the embarrassment of tears. That’s part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses …much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took [the] heart” (O’Brien 57). In other words, people always say to listen to the heart and do what feels right but the heart is frozen. When the heart is frozen then what feels right does not exist. In this case, confusion arises due to the “paralysis of the heart.”
The only understanding that these young men have is that “it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple” (O’Brien 45). While in country they only know to “locate the enemy and, having done so, destroy that enemy by any means available before the same intention is visited from the opposite direction” (Currey 26). They have to kill the people they don’t know well enough to hate but they either kill or get killed. When they are not killing, “all… can do is whimper and wait” (O’Brien 211) because “the path of war seemed endless, desperate, and leading nowhere” (Ninh 15). The war is ongoing with torture after torture, they are desperate for some kind of conclusion; however, it seems like time has froze. Even when, “the war was over …there was no place in particular to go” (O’Brien 137). In the situation of Kien from The Sorrow of War, he has “no idea how he would spend the rest of his life” and that “it was a time of utter isolation, of spiritual emptiness, of surrender” (Ninh 74). He is surrendering not to the enemy but to the “anguish and bitterness” that permanently resides in his mind. Others like Kien “ try to explain some of [the] feelings, but there aren’t enough words, and so [they] just say that it’s a thing that has to be done” (O’Brien 55). When they do try to explain it is even more difficult because “eight months in fantasyland, it tends to blur the line. Honest to God, [they] sometimes can’t remember what real is” (O’Brien 204). Some soldiers remain permanently in Vietnam because they are awfully traumatized. They have “no idea why [they are] still [there] but…no desire to leave” (Currey 53). It is discouraging to hear such outcomes but that is because they are “dragged into a wrong war” (O’Brien 158).
Whether the young men come back or not, “no longer were there honorable or disgraced soldiers, heroic or cowardly, worthy or worthless. Now they were merely names and remains” (Ninh 25). In the end, the soldiers are either dead or alive. The ones that do come back probably wish that they are dead because through their “chaotic minds, their troubled speech, revealed how cruelly they were twisted and tortured by war. They collapsed both spiritually and physically” (Ninh 20). Death would be more soothing since the outcome is more dreadful than war itself. As we know “war is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead” (O’Brien 80). These young men go to war to prove to the family and society that they are strong and tough even if it means they might not come out alive. They are heroes regardless of their uncowboy-like attitudes toward war. They are angry because they are too young and too good for this war that has no benefits for them as individuals. They are scared because they cannot foretell the possible outcome of their lives in this combat. They are ashamed and embarrassed with their true desires not to fight. There is no freewill at this point because they feel obligated to be the patriotic men. They are confused not knowing the reason for this war but that it is “to stop the Communists, plain and simple” (O’Brien 45). Unfortunately is it not plain and simple, even a million words would not be able to express the experiences that these young men endure. Unlike the Lone Ranger, the soldiers would rather flee due to the natural human instincts toward a dangerous situation. Yet, they suppress their true feelings and fight with all they have. As we can see, the ones that fight to help people that they hardly know are indeed the regular, normal, and everyday human beings. With this in mind, we cannot count on the Lone Ranger to come to the rescue; rather, the heroes are right before our eyes. They are an “everyman.”
© yen nguyen |