Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Vietnam War is the longest, the most controversial and the first lost war in the history of the United States of America. It was a disaster to the Americans. American Vietnam veterans—the direct participants of the war, who risked their lives to bravely fight in Vietnamese battlefields, suffered most. Not only did they suffer in the battlefields but also they were discriminated against by their fellowmen after they returned home. Their sufferings caught many scholars'attention.Traditional study of Vietnam veterans are mainly based on interviews with the veterans and investigations of the Vietnam veterans'lives from epidemiological or sociological perspectives. Scholars at abroad mainly did researches on Vietnam veterans'health problems and their reentering of the main society. At home, our Chinese people did not do research on the veterans, who were only mentioned in the studies which focused on American social security system. Recently, some scholars come to discuss the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but they tend to view the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as only architecture and lack intensive and systematic study on its impact on the veterans. This thesis concentrates on how the Vietnam Veterans Memorial healed those veterans mainly through the materials from Washington Post.The thesis consists of five parts. The first part serves as an introduction, which briefly presents the background of this study, including literature review on Vietnam veterans'studies, the significance and layout of this thesis. Then follows the main body, which proves the Vietnam Veterans Memorial healed the wounds of those American Vietnam veterans. Chapter I analyses the wounds those Vietnam veterans received after their return from Vietnam War. Chapter II elaborates on the offerings left by American public and veterans themselves, which serve as a proof that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial healed the veterans. Chapter III focuses on how the Vietnam Veterans Memorial affected American public, its government and Vietnam veterans to realize their veterans'tremendous sacrifices in Vietnam and to make them realize their previous attitudes towards the veterans had been wrong. Thus they changed their views on Vietnam veterans and began to pay respect to them, which of course healed those Vietnam veterans. The last part is the conclusion, which reaffirms the argument of this thesis and furthers the analysis of this research's significance.