The Vietnam War brought many concerns to American Citizens. Protesters throughout the United States claimed America’s involvement in the war was both unjust and unethical. Likewise, Tim O’Brien, the author of many Vietnam based novels, expressed the same feelings of unjust and unethical means for America’s involvement in the war. In 1968, O’Brien graduated with his bachelor’s degree in Political Science and within the same year was drafted to the United States Army and served his time in Vietnam from 1969-1970. Fear being the most prevalent factor that characterized the nature for soldiers in Vietnam provided O’Brien with an ideal environment to present the exploration of courage. O’Brien attempted to come to terms with his many fears concerning the war. He focused on a person’s ability to make courageous decisions when faced with the threat of different fears brought on by the war in Vietnam. Equally, O’Brien constructed the use of courage and fear as the thematic backbone of the novel. Therefore, throughout the novel If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, O’Brien believed that courage is tested when fear would have a man act otherwise. O’Brien thought
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Fear and courage have a psychological basis that empowers issues with the concern of defining courage in the presence of fear and finding a mean to attain courage. The fear of guilt, war, and death puts O 'Brien at a mental state of attaining courage. Courage that he exclaims he never found. His decisions to fight in a war were not courageous if the choice was opposite to his convictions and to simply surrender to social censure. O 'Brien pondered the possibility, “Was my apparent courage in enduring merely a well-disguised cowardice” (O 'Brien 1975, 139). In his own words O 'Brien concluded that his attempted courage through all the fears of guilt, war, and death was evidently a disguise of
Fear and courage have a psychological basis that empowers issues with the concern of defining courage in the presence of fear and finding a mean to attain courage. The fear of guilt, war, and death puts O 'Brien at a mental state of attaining courage. Courage that he exclaims he never found. His decisions to fight in a war were not courageous if the choice was opposite to his convictions and to simply surrender to social censure. O 'Brien pondered the possibility, “Was my apparent courage in enduring merely a well-disguised cowardice” (O 'Brien 1975, 139). In his own words O 'Brien concluded that his attempted courage through all the fears of guilt, war, and death was evidently a disguise of