The introductory readings, Obrien's If I die in a Combat Zone, Hasford's The Short-Timers, Moore's The Green Berets, and Obrien's Going After Cacciato, all share a common element - fear. An integral part of each story is a sense of fear that helps to intensify the experiences being related by the author; ie make the stories more realistic. Without the use of fear, these stories would lose much of their impact. The entire experience of …showed first 75 words of 1034 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1034 total…is interesting because the authors use it in so many different ways - but it remains one of the common denominators to all of them. How the characters deal with the fear, and in what context it is described in is a large part of the Vietnam story as a whole, and many of the issues that Vietnam is famous for build almost solely upon the constant fear that pervaded the lives of those there.