Trevor Hagerty

9/26/13

Period 5

The War

By Trevor Hagerty

            The War is about a Vietnam War survivor and his Vietnam War PTS. Stephen Simmons is a man struggling with PTS, he disappears for months at a time to a hospital to try and cure his PTS; his daughter (Lidia) and son (Stu) miss him greatly when he’s away, Stu barely talked when he was away, but when Stephen comes back from the hospital Stu is very talkative again. When Stephen gets back, he starts to tell Stu about what happened to cause his PTS, he’s interrupted and post-pones the truth. Stu fights with the Lipnickis, this represents his father’s fight against PTS, every time Stu wins or loses a battle against the Lipnickis his father suffers about it because he knows how futile the fight is, Stephen tries to convince Stu to work out things with the Lipnickis peacefully, he thinks that if the US government had tried to work things out with the Vietnam gov. then the entire war could’ve been avoided, he thinks the same about Stu’s fight with the Lipnickis. If Stu had been willing to listen to his father and the Lipnickis were less willing to fight and more willing to talk, the entire fight could’ve been avoided and both sides been stronger for it.

            Stephen has been in and out of jobs since he got back from Vietnam, he can’t hold one down because most employers see that he was in a mental hospital, they automatically assume that he’s got some kind of mental condition that makes him unstable, but what they don’t know is that he checked himself in to the hospital to see if he could get help for his PTS. He got a job as a school janitor, but they fired him because of his hospital stay, he gets a job as a potato farmer after that and meets another worker who has a better job opportunity, all he needs is a car. Both Stephen and his friend got the new job, it’s as a sewer worker, but one day, they’re working and someone turns the water on, this causes a collapse in the cave system and traps his partner, Stephen then grabs a lever to get the rock off his partner. Stephen manages to get the rock off his partner, but is hit by a rock in the process, almost killing him. Stephen is in the hospital for a few days and dies there because the doctors were not able to heal him. Saving his partner in the caves alleviates his guilt for leaving Dodge behind during Vietnam, so he dies a man free of guilt.

            Lidia is Stephen’s daughter, she doesn’t respect him as much as she should because she doesn’t understand PTS, and she thinks that her dad is just a dead beat who can’t hold a job. Throughout the story, she comes to realize that her dad is suffering from a condition that makes it very hard for him, and respects him more and more throughout the story. Lidia and her friends (Elvadine and Amber), want to build a fort in a tree, the same tree Stu and his friends (Marsh and Chet) want to build their fort in. Stu dares Lidia to find all the parts needed to build a fort, he doesn’t think she’ll succeed, but she does, she had to bribe the Lipnickis youngest though (Billy), this will come back to haunt them later. Lidia succeeds in getting all the materials she needs and Stu becomes her “slave” for the rest of the summer, in actuality Stu just has to build the fort without any of the girls help, after a week or so of this, the girls start to help Stu build the fort, they get it done a month or so later. In the meantime Billy has been saving his money and buys out an ice cream truck, he gets sick and his dad gets pissed at him, the Lipnicki kids torment him till he tells them who’s been taking stuff from their junk yard, when Billy tells the kids decide to wage war on the fort. This conflict, which has been escalating the entire movie, finally comes to a head when the Lipnikis stage an attack on the fort, but the Simmons gang is ready for them, they’ve prepared apple cannons and tar buckets, the Lipnickis brought Molotov Cocktails and started throwing them at the fort, this ended up in an all-out fist fight. Billy saw his chance to stop the fighting and went to go get the key to the fort, it was up on top of a rusty old water tower, Stu and Billy’s older brother saw him go up there and they both tried to save him, but Stu was the one to jump into the writhing water to save Billy, not his brother, Lidia and Stu breathed the life back into Billy and the Simmons-Lipniki fight was over. This represents the escalation of the Vietnam War, just hit after hit after hit. They were fighting like children, if someone hits you, you hit them back. It’s also like the Vietnam War because it could’ve been avoided had both parties talked things over before the fighting started.

            In The War, the Simmons parents were the mediators between Stu and Lidia. Stu and Lidia fight a lot, it’s just a brother-sister thing, but go to their parents to solve issues when they can’t work things out themselves. Sometimes they’re at odds with their parents, like if their parents take one kid’s side over the other, but sometimes, both Stu and Lidia are at odds with their parents, like when Stephen gives Lidia and Lois’(the mother) cotton candy to the Lipniki kids, Stu finds this unforgivable and criticizes his father for doing this, and his father says “I have a feeling they ain’t been giving anything in a long time,” meaning that the Lipniki dad is a drunk and disorderly man, and Stephen wanted to make their lives just a little better. This signifies Stephens desire to make the world a better palace before he goes.