Short Summary Of The Village By Wilhelm

Wilhelm likens her village to the My Lai massacre in order to essentially bring the war back home to America by comparing what happened to the Vietnamese citizens in real life to that of the American civilians in the village. “The Village”, being written in 1969, is during the Vietnam War in which American citizens are protesting against being involved with a war related to Vietnamese independence. For example, Wilhelm uses Mildred Carry as a writing strategy to show that Americans soldiers are attacking Americans, but she can’t understand them. Mildred Carey says that “GI’s approached her, still pointing their guns at her. One of them said something, but she couldn’t understand his words” (Wilhelm 66). At this instance, the American soldiers …show more content…
“Marjory Loomis threw herself down on top of her baby, and shots stilled both figures. The people were driven to the edge of town…The sergeant closed his notebook and turned away. The firing started” (Wilhelm 66-67). As the soldiers invaded the village, Marjory Loomis, in an effort to save her baby, jumped on top of her. Shockingly, they shoot both Loomis and the baby without remorse. As all the buildings were being burned, the sergeant forced innocent people to their death by a fire squad. Wilhelm used this brutal scene to make you believe that when people in power make ignorant decisions, such as attacking a random village, leads to the brutality of innocent civilians. “As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (O’Brien 65-66). This quote shows that true war stories need to have some type of evil and gruesome terror in order for it to be a true war story. O’Brien knows what humans react to in light of war which is why he includes this in his story for readers to understand the real meaning of war. War is hard to define in what really happens, so what writers do is that they make it offensive and disturbing to the reader. Wilhelm accomplishes this throughout her story by giving vivid details of executions and shooting scenes where babies are killed without mercy. O’Brien agrees that war is dumb and uses ignorance in war to show brutality is the ultimate result. “How to Tell a True War Story centers on O’Brien’s recollection of Curt Lemon’s sun-drenched death and his assembling of the parts of the image over and over in an attempt to recapture the meaning of a moment in words” (Braswell 6). Braswell is against the Vietnam War which makes his ideas very interesting. This quote shows how O’Brien uses his Curt Lemon’s death to emphasize atrocity