Some Things are Good in Chunks...

There is particular scenes from plays that can be taken out, and watched individually. They may be humorous, exciting, sad, or any mixture of emotions. Sgt. Williams' monologue from The Sand Storm: Stories From the Front by Sean Huze is not one of them. It is a necessary part to make a complete play full of heartache and draw dropping realism. This play is very healthy for us and soldiers “a yearning to reverse the unwilling transformations conjured by combat experience; the inexplicable sense of exile that troubles any possibility of an easy return or rest”(Chen 77), is all conveyed throughout the play. Yet, when it is taken out of the play it becomes a monotonous, uneventful story. There is no climax or background, and the plot is weak. On the other hand, the short story “Ghost Soldiers” in Tim O'Brien's masterpiece The Things They Carried, gives the reader exactly what is described, a short story. There is character development, a turn paging plot unravels, and nail biting climax. The conclusion of the story is something that can be pondered upon, where as Williams' conclusion left me ready for the next monologue.

There can't be a comparison between apples and oranges without that distinction first being made. One of these is a short story, the other is a very brief scene and monologue in a play. Both of these centralize on a certain character, the main character. The scene from the play has the main character of Sgt. Williams, and the short story has Tim O'Brien. When a story has a central character, development of that character is crucial. The play although a great play, does not have a central character, there can be arguments that Sgt. Casavecchia is the main part. But I'm not talking about the play as a whole, I'm dissecting this one scene and by itself is weak compared to O'Brien's “The Ghost Soldiers”. The scene does have a main character, the person that does the monologue. His character development is very weak. He is not a dynamic character he is one sided. He talks about himself being stepped on, “ why in the hell would Staff Sergeant Adams do this to me?” , how the heat got to him, “felt like I was melting”, and not to mention the claustrophobia “restrictive airflow sent me into an instant panic.” (Huze 7) There is no moral dilemma, no choices to be made, just him complaining. By the time the scene get's that point across, they move on to the next scene. There is no room for development.

Sgt. Williams comes to you as an unruly boy, who throws temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way. He get's demoted to a driver he cries about it. He complains about the heat and doesn't wear his PPE (personal protective equipment) properly. Another soldier in an older war, Tim O'Brien, get's shot twice. The second time he's embarrassed but more importantly, he has wrath and not on the enemy. Instead he hates the man that could of saved him, the medic Bobby Jorgenson. Two different men both with spite in their hearts, yet I understand Tim more, I sympathize with him while I pity Williams.

How does Tim gain my sympathy and my compassion while, Williams get's none of that? The monologue although is in the first person, has an unbiased scene at the beginning, which is in third person narrative. This scene is very crucial in Williams' very little character development. Everything that comes after is being compared to this scene. The lengths of the two stories have to be accounted for. 

Sgt. Williams' story starts out in a scene with “Williams' Bitching”(Huze 5) which also happens to be the title. “Twelve years in this gun club and they make me a driver. A fucking driver! Shit, Weems is a fucking driver!”(Huze 5) No one likes a person griping all the time, and the introduction to Williams is of him whining about being a driver, in a war. The dialogue only lasts a page or so, but that first initial image sticks like a wet noodle on the wall. When he goes into his monologue shortly after, he tries to pull the sympathy from the audience. The remnants of the scene before is left in the mouth like a bad tuna after taste.

“I was shot twice” (O'brien 180). This is the very first line from O'Brien's short story. If there is no compassion yet there is certainly intrigue. He takes his time to set up the story. It's not until 2 or 3 pages in, that the plot comes about. By that time, there is already a bias opinion formed about Tim. O'Brien writes him in as a courageous man, and down to earth at the same time. He goes into detail of how it felt. I might as well of been shot.

There is no leading up to who Williams is and how he acts in a trying situation. His character is flawed, with no escapable qualities. Huze portrays him as a one sided, unstimulating coin. In “The Ghost Soldiers”, Tim's main character is him. He is telling word for word how he felt, moment to moment. With Tim there is ups and the downs, more of a roller coaster feeling. The monotonous personality of Williams would be a broken record if it was much longer. In the beginning of “The Ghost Soldiers”, Tim goes from a sense of pride, to humiliation, to anger. “it made me hate Bobby Jorgenson...,gut hate, the kind of hate that stays with you even in your dreams.” (O'brien 182) Through the middle that hate builds, and there is empathy with Tim, the way he described his experience of the gun shot that Jorgenson did not take care of. It was the man's job to take care of it. Tim was counting on him. (O'brien 181) Then the end unfolds and Tim learns a valuable lesson. Where was the lesson that William's learned? I failed to see it.

Character development is key in O'Brien's story “The Ghost Soldiers”, and the monologue by Williams' is incomplete at best. Although Williams' is descriptive on his experience of parts of the war, his pessimism stains the brutal war. The scene before his interview sets him up to fail. He is portrayed as someone who is to good for a grunt's labor and is incompetent, “you let your driver run right into the colonel's vehicle.” (Huze 6) Gunshot leads to tragedy in O'Brien's tale. Which is why his twisted sense of justice later on is understood. (O'Brien 192) Without a strong character the story will lack.

O'brien's “The Ghost Soldiers”, is a descriptive novel in comparison. It has time to lead up to the actual plot and story. It gives a brief background of a couple of the main characters, to better help understand them through the eyes of O'Brien. He goes into detailed paragraphs of how he feels giving analogies and comparisons. Through the entire story, he is describing himself, not just how he is in the story, but before the story. “I'd come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person …,but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under of the simple daily realities. I'd turned mean inside.” (O'brien 190) There is a simplicity to his feelings that we can all understand, yet he is still complex. This can only come about in time, and cannot be created in a page. He gives cause and effect; this is what I was feeling and this is why. He hated Jorgenson so much because of the hours of suffering he had to endure. He knew there was men out there like Rat Kiley that knew how to do the job. This ate at him, and you can feel the gnawing a couple pages in. This is not a scene it's a recollection of past events by a gifted writer. He takes us into the vietnam war, paint's the picture, and sets it to motion. It is a complete story.

Williams scene and monologue has no depth to it. It has a this is who I am attitude, and if you don't understand, I don't care. Goes right into the meat with no plot development. The story cannot stand alone, it would be to confusing. The point of it, has to be read collectively throughout the entire play to be understood. The meat of the story should be juicy and ready to digest, but this early in the play it feels more like beef jerky. This is not a soldier of fortune. He is no war hero, and there is nothing to be proud of him about. His reminiscence about the insufferable tightness of the gas masks seems childish, which in no thanks to development, has to be compared to the readers ideas about war.

When Tim is about to get his revenge, there is an on the edge of your seat excitement. Whether, he succeeds or not is up to the reader to wish for. O'Brien, throughout his detailed narrative gives that choice to us. There is a bare all, and be judged in his writing style. He has his character plea his point up until the very end, with a strong charismatic voice. Whether the reader despises him, or justifies his actions, we are a long for the ride as the story unfolds. In Williams story there is no climax, just blah it's over.

Overall, The Ghost Soldiers is a complete work. It has everything needed in a story to capture the reader's attention and keep it, while “Williams Bitching” may have it's comical relief to lure the reader into reading more. It is dull and uneventful that leaves the reader confused to the intentions of the story. In order for it to be complete there needs to be a better build up to the monologue, more action to keep the reader entertained, and a climax with an ending. The story does not need a moral, but needs to leave the reader something to draw off of. A Good Story speaks of, “as if it were some perfect direction with a firm result” (Frumkin). On a personal note, my intent is not to bash Sean Huze's play, was touch for me in a familiar way. I am 26 and grew up with a lot of friends that have went to Iraq and Afghanistan. I've heard stories on how soldiers from Vietnam were treated. "I went to sleep not knowing if I'd wake up alive. I put myself on the line, and I expected some respect from my own country," said Davidson, who recently revisited Vietnam. "But the Vietnamese gave me more respect this time than I ever got back home."'(Getlin) I would just like to say thank you and all soldiers from every era have my utmost respect, I am proud of all of you.

Works Cited

Chen, Tina. '"Unraveling the Deeper Meaning": Exile and the Embodied Poetics of Displacement in Tim O'Brien's  The Things They Carried.' Contemporary Literature Spring 1998, Vol. 39 No. 1: Pages 77-98. University of Wisconsin Press.

Frumkin, Gene. “A Good Story”. Boundary 2. Duke University Press, 1988. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/303255

Getlin, Josh. "Vietnam and WWII: Myths and Memories." Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA). 09 Apr 1995: A1+. SIRS Researcher. Web. 24 Oct 2010.

Huze, Sean. “The Sand Storm: Stories from the Front”. Susan Schulman Literary Agency, January 2004.

O'Brien, Tim. “The Ghost Soldiers”. The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin, 1990. First Mariner Books Edition, 2009.