Michael Herr's Dispatches And Vietnam

Americans have a script in their minds about war. Movies, television, books, newspapers, and music have led society to form these scripts, which in turn has created a romanticized notion of war. Michael Herr's, Dispatches completely dispels the myth of idealized combat, and instead presents in part what he refers to as a secret history of the Vietnam War. This secret history is not the official history prepared by the government, or the mass media, but rather it is a history of first-hand experience. It is the chronicle of grunts, of young men who have no convictions about the domino theory or communism, and simply want to finish their tours alive. As Herr writes, "Conventional journalism could no more reveal this war than conventional firepower could win it, all it could do was take the most profound event of the American decade, and turn it into a communications pudding, taking its most obvious, undeniable history and making it into a secret history. And the very best correspondents knew even more than that (218).

In many ways the reader gets a sense that the author's secret history could also be referred to as real history, and that when Herr writes of secret history he is only shedding a dim light on what he has seen. Moreover, in this reader's opinion, the author presents a fully realized account of the secret history he saw as a correspondent in the films he co-wrote, Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket. These motion pictures are far removed from the previously produced sentimentalized portrayals of war. Realistic armed conflict jumps off the page, and off the screen in such a way that the audience becomes scared; while also thankful that they will never personally experience the horrors of war. Prior to Vietnam, the American public's view of war was un-authentic. War was macho, it was cowboys and Indians brought to life, and where boys became men. Herr's, Dispatches are genuine in that they present the grunts as scared, and unsure if today, tomorrow, or maybe none at all was their day to die. The author's accounts emphasize fear and death, and very few of these men are political crusaders. They have no strong commitment to an overall mission or containment, pacification, Vietnamization, or strategic hamlets. Quite simply they believe they are in the jungle for one reason, "to kill gooks." Herr's, Dispatches, are successful in changing the public's perceptions about war because of how he writes of these soldiers, and their beliefs and experience which encompass much of what he refers to as secret history. Herr's writing is unique in that he does not write in a narrative style, but rather a post-modernist's tone that cannot be confined to a genre.

Herr's work is a post-modern novel in that he does not follow a modern structure. The author is telling a story, but he is telling it through his disjointed articles rather than a personal narrative in novel or non-fiction form. This book is his fragmented thought, and remembrances about the war. Dispatches is about experience rather than objective truths or realities. Herr presents war as hell, and none of his real-life characters strive to be heroic, or larger than life in contrast to much of the modern literature written on war. If the men in Dispatches are courageous is it because they have risked such action to stay alive, or save a fellow grunt, not because they believe