Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is a very changing novel in the way it's written. The stories really make you think, really make you war through different eyes. After reading The Things They Carried, my opinion about the war in Vietnam was changed. I had some previous knowledge of Vietnam before I began reading the novel, but my previous knowledge still acclaimed that the war had justification and purpose. Once I finished the book, I realized something: the war had no justification at all.
Soldiers didn't know why they were there. People back home didn't realize our purpose for so many deaths. We were just there, bombing villages, shooting bystanders and burning homes. Even the Vietnamese didn't know why we were there. They thought we were there for money; this is present in the documentary Two Days in October.
As I was watching this film, my thoughts began to change about the war in Vietnam and what I had learned in history class about it. After watching the film and reading Tim O'Brien's novel, my opinion had totally changed. I am a fairly patriotic person, but after watching these media on the ten-year tragedy that was the Vietnam "war", I feel that I would have stood up and done what was right and justified.
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