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Fighting and Writing: America's Vietnam War Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Donald Ringnalda
Donald Ringnalda
Affiliation:
Donald Ringnalda is Assistant Professor of English at the College of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, 55105, U.S.A.
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Extract

A familiar sight at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. is people tracing onto a piece of paper the name of a relative or friend who was killed in Vietnam. On one hand, this gesture is sadly poignant, even cathartic. On the other hand, it is also symptomatic of many Americans' perceptions of the Vietnam war, whether in the sixties or in the eighties: when we have the name of something we somehow also possess the thing named. Even though there is obviously an enormous semiotic gap between that symbol, etched instone, and its object, long gone, that symbol nevertheless acquires a powerful ontological status. A traced symbol of a symbol on a symbol becomes reality. When I recently witnessed this scene, I couldn't help asking myself, “just what kind of legacy is this?”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , April 1988 , pp. 25 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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