Stop the Sun essay

Understanding Soldiers after Vietnam

          Of the thousands of American soldiers that died in Vietnam, 58,000 died. And the ones that did come back were seriously traumatized. So although the ones that did come back weren’t dead physically they were dead mentally. In the fictional short story “Stop the Sun” by Gary Paulsen, we are introduced to a young adult named Terry who through his father learns about Vietnam. But he never truly understands because he wasn’t there. After going through tough situations, like his dad, people get tougher to understand.

     Through Terry’s dad we see how we can’t understand what we haven’t been through. Not everyone’s been in war therefore, not everyone’s had to go through what soldiers go through. Different situations give you different perspectives. Like if you’ve gone to war you might appreciate life more. Like what happened to Terry in the text, “It was easily the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to him.” (Page 51-Paulsen).You might experience different emotions if you haven’t been through the same things. So again restating we can’t understand what we haven’t been through.

    Though Terry’s dad we see how we have to try to understand things we don’t know about. Like, we haven’t been through the same things, so people who haven’t gone to war might think of it as something funny. If we don’t try to understand we might end up hurting people’s feelings. Like Terry at the mall, “It was easily the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to him.”People have different perspectives. Therefore, not everyone finds things funny or sad. So we have to try understanding people for how they are.

   Through Terry’s dad we see how war affects soldiers making them harder to understand. Memories last forever. Therefore they’ll have the pain forever. They saw people die so they might appreciate life more. They might have flashbacks which will bring up unanswered questions. So soldiers affected by war can be harder to understand by the people around them.

    Vietnam traumatized thousands of people and Terry’s dad was one of them. And he going through Vietnam made him harder to understand. So from the story we can learn that war may make people harder to understand but we have try our best to understand them or else it’ll slowly destroy the family.