Spin

  In the chapter Spin O'Brien writes in his "peace story," "All that peace man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back." In my own words, I believe that this quote tells the reader that peace is different for a normal person and a soldier. In the oxford dictionary, the word peace is defined as freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility. For us peace can be reading a book or lying on the sofa without any noise. However, for a soldier, peace can be described as death. A soldier who is fighting in a war cannot be in rest as there are enemies surrounding them; they become paranoid. The only way they can close their eyes and think about nothing is death. This shows the desperateness of the soldiers as they only wanted an exit door out of Vietnam. From the statement above, we can also see that the Vietnam War had very unpredictable emotions as peace changed over a matter of seconds; like how Tim O'Brien defined War as a ping pong ball as it changes when one puts a little spin to the ball.