Vietnam War deprived thousands of people of life and is considered one of the deadliest wars in the history of humans. The decade participation of the United States in this war was initially directed at preserving the noncommunist government of the Vietnamese people. The American leaders were confident in their necessity to intrude into this conflict, especially after the success of the US army in World War second. Over the years, the American people realized that the lived of the US soldiers were wasted for achieving the ambitious goals of the American leaders. The horrible events taking place on the battleground were vigorously described by many war journalists and short stories writers. In particular, Viet Nam War Generation Journal reveals non-fiction stories depicting writers who highlighted cruel struggles in Vietnam.
Mangling Frail Civilian Sensibilities: the Story of Gustav Hasford, Literary Snuffie narrates some outstanding facts from the life of Gustav Hasford, the famous short story writer (Aaron 2002). Jason Aaron, the author of the article, describes the feelings and reflections of a young writer who witnessed the horrors of those fights. However, on arriving in this country, Gustav “didn’t exactly know where [Vietnam] was” (Aaron 2002), but further he realized that war had deeply perpetuated into his life thus having been embodied into his stories The Short-Timers and Mirror Northwest. These stories reflect Hasford’s condemnation of the war that made innocent noncombatants suffer. In his story The Tattooed Chicken, the author included the motives of the Vietnam War where the characters had been compared with werewolves in the violent scenes. In the article, Aaron refers to Hasford’s recollections of the war thus calling Vietnam a “bad dream that we wanted to tuck away forever. It was like writing about cancer” (Aaron 2002).
For this writer, this war was like a plague that crushed the aspiration of many good people to live. During the war, Gustav Hasford met many friends who helped him to remain strong and persistent and provoke him for writing his stories full of pain and grief. The article also showed the author’s growing anger against this cruel world where people turned into animals. By his writing, he intended “to attack you [the aliens] where [they] were the most vulnerable and [he] can inflict the most damage…” (Aaron 2002). In his works, Hasford expressed his hatred to this land that deprived him of his numerous friends, and instead he was constantly searching for the Promised Land full of honesty and humanity.
The article presents Hasford’s transformation from a glamorous corporate American writer into a writer-grunt calling himself “Snuffie”. Still, the war did not deprive the writer of the most valuable things he had – his aspiration to fight for the justice and moral values that all humans should possess. Hasford blamed the war for imprisoning his creative spirit in his writing career and filling his soul and mind with apathy to life. Spending much time comprehending the essence of war, he lost his personality thus obtaining the alter ego ready for deconstruction and cruel things.
The article, hence, describes one of the similar stories of the famous and brave writers who devoted their life to restraining the fire of the war and who died forgotten and alone. This grief story is another manifestation of the absurdness of this war initiated by the leaders who strived to possess the power.
Reference
Aaron, Jason. (2002). Mangling Frail Civilian Sensibilities: The Story of Gustav Hasford, Literary Snuffie. In Chairborne Ranger’s Viet Nam War Generation Journal. (pp. 234-237) US: Vietnam War Generation Press.