Deer Hunter and the Fire in the Lake
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Americans see history as a straight line and themselves standing at the cutting edge of it as representatives for all mankind. They believe in the future as if it were a religion; they believe that there is nothing they cannot accomplish, that solutions wait somewhere for all problems, like brides. Americans have been said to be woefully ignorant of the rest of the world. They are sometimes charged by the rest of the world as having little real knowledge of their own history, but also for the rest of the world's history and culture. The movie The Deer Hunter, and Frances Fitzgerald's Fire in the lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam shows how this is sometimes sad but true. Chapter two of Lake of Fire talks about how the American support for the Vietnam War is manipulated by 25 years of political rhetoric and well as America's misconstrued notion of Southeast Asia's political purpose as the fundamental cause of the Vietnam War. Fitzgerald begins examining the U.S. in Vietnam from the perspective of Vietnamese history and culture; and in the process, demonstrating the tenacity and courage of the Vietnamese people, as well as their determination to rid themselves of any foreign invaders, even if, as with the Chinese, it takes 1,000 years. Fitzgerald's work is an articulate study of Vietnamese society and culture...