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Roles of women in combat civil war
Mental and physical consequences of war for soldiers
Essays on women and war
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The Work of Death seemed inevitable to soldiers who embarked on the journey known as the Civil War. Throughout the Civil War, human beings learned how to prepare for death, imagine it, risk it, endure it, and seek to understand it. All the soldiers needed to be willing to die and needed to turn to the resources of their culture, codes of masculinity, patriotism, and religion to prepare themselves for the war ahead of them. Death individually touched soldiers with it’s presence and the fear of it, as death touched the soldiers it gave them a sense of who they really are and how they could change on their death bed. Although there was quite a bit of death, the whole motive of the book was to inform people how the soldiers coped with death, …show more content…
But in reality that was just an excuse to real cause, the abolishment of slavery. The southern states didn’t want to have their slaves taken away and Lincoln told them that they could retain their slaves, if they were to join back into the Union. Slavery was the fundamental for the Civil War, it made soldiers become “hard,” numb, and “calloused” or indifferent to others deaths in prospect of their own death. Slavery was mostly killing, which was the essence of the …show more content…
Author Drew Faust hit key points on his argument about death all throughout the book and completed it outstandingly. He went into depth of how the dead were handled and how nurses wrote the families by using pieces from the letters. In any way a person can try to describe a war, no one can make it a good thing even though the union soldiers were fighting for a good thing because it is and will always be known as the most bloodiest war in American
In Apostles of Disunion, Dew presents compelling documentation that the issue of slavery was indeed the ultimate cause for the Civil War. This book provided a great deal of insight as to why the South feared the abolition of slavery as they did. In reading the letters and speeches of the secession commissioners, it was clear that each of them were making passionate pleas to all of the slave states in an effort to put a stop to the North’s, and specifically Lincoln’s, push for the abolishment of slavery. There should be no question that slavery had everything to do with being the cause for the Civil War. In the words of Dew, “To put it quite simply, slavery and race were absolutely critical elements in the coming of the war” (81). This was an excellent book, easy to read, and very enlightening.
As with any genre, all novels termed ‘war stories’ share certain elements in common. The place and time settings of the novels, obviously, take in at least some aspect of at least one war or conflict. The characters tend to either be soldiers or are at least immediately affected by the military. An ever present sense of doom with punctuated moments of peace is almost a standard of the war novel. Beyond the basic similarities, however, each of these battle books stands apart as an individual. Charles Yale Harrison’s World War I novel, Generals Die in Bed is, in essence, quite different than Colin McDougall’s Execution. Coming years earlier, Generals can almost be seen to hold the wisdom one would expect see in an older sibling, while Execution suffers the growing pains that the younger child inevitably feels.
Despite these minor flaws, the book has many positive aspects to it. Probably most important, the book gives the reader an up close and personal account to the war. Each battle comes alive for the reader as a veteran vividly describes what he experienced. For example Vincent Walsh describes his first encounter with a violent death as follows: “we had occasion to pick up a dead pilot. They fingerprinted him and then he was wrapped in a piece of canvas and he went into a meat box” (Tomedi, 155). Lines such as this, puts a personality behind the speaker and makes it more personal. Also, the stories in the book present the same situations as other oral history novels. A good example of this is when Robert Roy claims “…I could see a line of tanks coming down the road, which we never expected…I could see the rounds explode against the tank, but the tank just kept going” (Tomedi, 10-11).
The war had a lot of emotional toll on people it destroyed their personal identity, their moral/humanity, the passion to live was lost and the PDS they will suffer post war, resulting in the soldiers to understand what war is really about and what is covered up. There are scenes that support the thesis about the war like "As for the rest, they are now just names without faces or faces without names." Chapter 2, p. 27 which show how the soldiers have emotional detached themselves from life. Also, when the novel says “I saw their living mouths moving in conversation and their dead mouths grinning the taut-drawn grins of corpses. Their living eyes I saw, and their dead eyes still-staring. Had it not been for the fear that I was going crazy, I would have found it an interesting experience, a trip such as no drug could possibly produce. Asleep and dreaming, I saw dead men living; awake, I saw living men dead.” Which to me again shows how the soldiers are change throughout the war losing the moral and humanity. Lastly what he says “ I’m not scared of death anymore and don 't care whether I live of die” is the point where I notice Phillips change in
"War is hell . . . war is mystery terror and adventure and courage and discovery and despair and . . . war is nasty (80)." When it all happened it was not like "a movie you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait (211)." O'Brien and the rest of the solders were just ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations. They needed to tell blatant lies" to "bring the body and soul back together (239)." They needed to eliminate the reality of death. As ordinary people they were not capable of dealing with the engulfing realities of death and war therefore they needed to create coping skills. O'Brien approaches the loss of his childhood friend, Linda, in the same way he approaches the loss of his comrades in the war as this is the only way he knows how to deal with death. A skill he learned, and needed, in the Vietnam War.
The poet Wilfred Owen was one of many poets who were against war. He reflected this idea of anti-war in his poems, one of his poems called “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, mirrors most aspects of war all put together in this short still deep poem. An example of that would be when the speaker stated,” What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”(1) The speaker asks is there any sound that marks our soldier’s death other than the sounds of church bell’s which are mostly rung to represent somebody’s absence? Clearly, the speaker sets anger as the tone of the poem through this question to show that soldier’s death is unremarkable.. The speaker compares the soldiers to a “cattle” which illustrates that soldiers are treated more like animals with no feelings and also shows how they are killed indiscriminately in war. Finally the line ironically contains an iambic pentameter which is a natural rhythm for such dark, grim, dull subject. The two novels, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, and All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, both present a similar idea of how soldiers are killed out there in the front comprehensively and the dehumanization of war towards its soldiers. The first novel is set during the Civil War, and it focuses on the psychological aspects of one soldier named Henry Fleming and how his naive thoughts about war constantly change through the course of the novel. The second novel presents the life of a soldier named Paul Baumer and his friends who were faced with the terribleness of war and how severely it affected their lives. The Red badge of Courage and All Quiet on The Western Front are similar in the way of how the main characters develop through the novel to change from naïve and innocent men ...
Before the start of the Civil War, conflict had been brewing between the states of the North and South. The election of Abraham Lincoln did not enhance the situation at all. Lincoln was a noted abolitionist and he wanted to abate the expansion of slavery into the Western states. The Southern states saw this as an infraction to their way of life by controlling their economy. How could the Northern states regulate the Southern states? The economy of the North was very different than the South. Especially since slavery was vital to farmers in the planting and harvesting the crops. Secession was on the horizon and Lincoln knew he had to do something to prevent this. To help build the Union Army, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve for 90 days. Every state was asked to fill a quota based on its population. This did not help Lincoln’s and only hurt the Union cause. This only enraged the Southern state more and seceding for the Union was becoming a reality.
This reader’s rating for this book is average. It is a very well written book but it may not appeal to some people. If the reader was familiar with the war then this would be a wonderful book to read. This reader thought it was interesting but not as enthralling as it should be. The book was mainly made out of quotes or dialogue from the men in the war. This was a very different way of writing but it was interesting. Many of the veterans had interesting stories to tell and how it felt like to be in the war. Overall it was a book to consider if you’re into war stories.
The majority of speculations regarding the causes of the American Civil War are in some relation to slavery. While slavery was a factor in the disagreements that led to the Civil War, it was not the solitary or primary cause. There were three other, larger causes that contributed more directly to the beginning of the secession of the southern states and, eventually, the start of the war. Those three causes included economic and social divergence amongst the North and South, state versus national rights, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case. Each of these causes involved slavery in some way, but were not exclusively based upon slavery.
Tim O’Brien’s use of torment and uncertainty does engage me as a reader. The torment was such an awful experience. The soldiers survived off of the substance of weed and intoxicating liquid called beer. They deadened their senses doing drugs so they would not feel the overwhelming fear. The descriptions are engaging and well thought out. The descriptions used are severely depressing, I came to realize that although they had a war they were fighting in, they lost friends, they lost limbs, and they went beyond the call of war and kill innocent babies. Even in killing innocent babies and young children you cannot fully blame them for their actions as they were acting out of complete loss of security, fearing every step they took wondering when they would take their last step on Earth. Many times the soldiers were out in unknown territory with people shouting at them in a language they did not understand which caused a defensive reaction to take over the body of the soldiers. I found that within this paper the argument presented was that soldiers go to war to protect the country they love
First, the book tells about the experiences of the soldiers at the front, during many different battles and also while
All Quiet On the Western Front was a very emotional book, when they are there at the western front there are a lot of fatalities for people who are not paying attention.. On the frontlines you can never let your guard down. Some of the new recruits that are put with them don't know anything. Most of them are so scared they let fear over take them then they get killed in action. Even for
The three incredible works of literature by Owen, OBrien, and Sassoon give a true sense of what fighting for ones country was really like. The battles, soldiers, and wars that most of the public see is glorified tremendously through movies and books mainly. These writers wanted a change and they went about this by giving the true and honest facts of what happened. War should be thought of as a tough obstacle that no one should ever have to go through, a sad occurrence, or a horrible burden, but not as a glorious victory. In order to reach that victory, the road is anything but sweet.
One of the worst things about war is the severity of carnage that it bestows upon mankind. Men are killed by the millions in the worst ways imaginable. Bodies are blown apart, limbs are cracked and torn and flesh is melted away from the bone. Dying eyes watch as internal organs are spilled of empty cavities, naked torso are hung in trees and men are forced to run on stumps when their feet are blown off. Along with the horrific deaths that accompany war, the injuries often outnumber dead men. As Paul Baumer witnessed in the hospital, the injuries were terrifying and often led to death. His turmoil is expressed in the lines, “Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death gurgles. Even the death room I no use anymore; it is too small.” The men who make it through the war take with them mental and physical scarification from their experiences.
The American Civil War, also known as the War Between the States, or simply the Civil War in the United States, was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865, after seven Southern slave states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America . The states that remained in the Union were known as the "Union" or the "North". The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories. Foreign powers did not intervene. After four years of bloody combat that left over 600,000 soldiers dead and destroyed much of the South's infrastructure, the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and the difficult Reconstruction process of restoring national unity and guaranteeing rights to the freed slaves began.