The novel Prince of Afghanistan by Louis Nowra (2015) explores two Australian soldiers, Casey and Mark who are involved in a mission to rescue hostages captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, due to the unfortunate death of Casey, being killed by a Taliban rocket, his dog, Prince is left behind with no carer, other than Mark. With the brutality of war, and the race against hunger, danger and time, they both must rely on each other for survival. As the story reflects upon Australians engagement with Asia, it conveys themes of friendship, trust and the nature of courage and heroism through the character, character development and the relationship among each other. Prince of Afghanistan is a suitable text for a stage 5 class, where
although the text is short and simple to read, it engages well with students who are interested in action, adventure and understanding the dangers within a destructive environment, such as war. It also gives students an opportunity to broaden their understanding of Australia’s involvement with Asia, as well as allow the readers to build and express their own identity, values and beliefs, and explore their own sense of moral and ethical self through understanding the role of the character and their development. It is assumed that students can proficiently use ICT programs, such as accessing online servers, websites and conduct research on a given task. Students should also be able to identity the main characters, and how character development is built through the novel. Although students are expected to read the book on their own, close reading and analysis on each chapter in the lesson will help engage and ensure that students thoroughly understand each chapter, as well as help students distinguish the main ideas, themes and concepts that they may have not understood through their readings. To ensure that students gain a deep level of understanding and knowledge about the novel, formative assessments will be conducted in each lesson. This allows the students to identify their strengths and weaknesses, target areas that require extra revision, improve their academic achievement, and as well, enhance their motivation and learning experiences with the content. This also helps teachers observe and determine the students’ progress, providing guidance, and as well prepare work and activities that can cater to further their understanding. Therefore, it aims to prepare students for the summative task at the end of the unit, evaluating students overall understanding and knowledge about the context. Teachers are also informed about how effective their teaching strategies are, in addition to reflecting on how to improve their teaching methods for future students (Timperley, 2015).
Many war stories today have happy, romantic, and cliche ending; many authors skip the sad, groosom, and realistic part of the story. W. D. Howell’s story, Editha and Ambrose Bierce’s story, An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge both undercut the romantic plots and unrealistic conclusions brought on by many stories today. Both stories start out leading the reader to believe it is just another tpyical love-war senario, but what makes them different is the one-hundred and eighty degrees plot twist at the end of each story. In the typical love-war story the soldier would go off to war, fighting for his country, to later return safely to his family typically unscaved.
In The Things They Carried, an engaging novel of war, author Tim O’Brien shares the unique warfare experience of the Alpha Company, an assembly of American military men that set off to fight for their country in the gruesome Vietnam War. Within the novel, the author O’Brien uses the character Tim O’Brien to narrate and remark on his own experience as well as the experiences of his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company. Throughout the story, O’Brien gives the reader a raw perspective of the Alpha Company’s military life in Vietnam. He sheds light on both the tangible and intangible things a soldier must bear as he trudges along the battlefield in hope for freedom from war and bloodshed. As the narrator, O’Brien displayed a broad imagination, retentive memory, and detailed descriptions of his past as well as present situations. 5. The author successfully uses rhetoric devices such as imagery, personification, and repetition of O’Brien to provoke deep thought and allow the reader to see and understand the burden of the war through the eyes of Tim O’Brien and his soldiers.
There is a major change in the men in this novel. At first, they are excited to join the army in order to help their country. After they see the truth about war, they learn very important assets of life such as death, destruction, and suffering. These emotions are learned in places like training camp, battles, and hospitals. All the men, dead or alive, obtained knowledge on how to deal with death, which is very important to one’s life.
In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of personal responsibility as they struggle to cope.
In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses this story as a coping mechanism; to tell part of his stories and others that are fiction from the Vietnamese War. This is shown by using a fictions character’s voice, deeper meaning in what soldier’s carried, motivation in decision making, telling a war story, becoming a new person and the outcome of a war in one person. Tim O’ Brien uses a psychological approach to tell his sorrows, and some happiness from his stories from the war. Each part, each story is supposed to represent a deeper meaning on how O’Brien dealt, and will deal with his past. In war, a way to discover and to invent new ways to release oneself from the pressure of it, O’ Brien’s writing is all about it; this stories will makes the reader understand his burden.
Weiss, M., & Maurer, K. (2012). No, Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan. New York: Penguin Group US. Retrieved November 05, 2010, from books.google.co.ke/books?isbn=1101560762
Robert Ross’ is introduced to characters with varying outlooks on the world, based on their own social and economic backgrounds. The soldiers around Robert Ross differ greatly,...
When a soldier goes to war, they see death everywhere and are in a place where survival is the first priority. They miss their country and family while they are across the seas fighting a war. Pen Farthing was one of the soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. While on patrol, he and his troops encountered a dog fight and broke it up. One of the dogs followed him home. The dog was a stray who had been surviving on the streets. Pen Farthing decided to take him in and named him Nowzad the town that he had saved him from. For several months, Nowzad and Farthing filled the voids in each other's heart. Farthing gave Nowzad a home while Nowzad gave Farthing a way to destress and disconnect from the war that was going on outside. When he was going back
The book The Lovers: Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet, by Rod Nordland, is a true story about two couples who ran away from home to get married. Zakia and Ali are from two different tribes. As they got older they started to develop feelings for each other. After months of planning, they decide to run away. They lived and still live in a constant state of fear of being found by Zakia’s family. They have promised to avenge their honor and bring her back home so she can get what she deserved. Zakia and Ali are still hiding.
Had Tim O’Brien written the same story in each chapter or utilized the same perspective, his chapters would be highly ineffective to demonstrate the complexity of warfare and its effects on the human soul. Therefore, his chapters are not all the same story; instead, they are all a pieces of Tim O’Brien’s imagination that when put together form one coherent story. These chapters are not meant to be read alone. Only reading them together allows the reader to comprehend the paradoxical nature of war and its effect on people.
The soldiers feel that the only people they can talk to about the war are their “brothers”, the other men who experienced the Vietnam War. The friendship and kinship that grew in the jungles of Vietnam survived and lived on here in the United States. By talking to each other, the soldiers help to sort out the incidents that happened in the War and to put these incidents behind them. “The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing at some of the craziness that used to go on” (O’Brien, 29).
Storytelling has the ability to display the details and and events of war that is not easily depicted in any other way. O’Brien describes the misconceptions and truths that surround the experiences of war and stories about war. O’Brien’s stories are a way of preserving his memories from war, and also a method for soldiers in coping with their situations as well. Stories have the ability to reflect on the grief, struggles, and even satisfying events of war, especially on the front lines of combat. Storytelling is an important way to appeal to emotion and describe important details about the ugly truths that are hidden from the public eye, as well as serving as a coping mechanism in order to deal with one’s life situations.
Comparison will let us recognize our defects and learn from the good qualities when we take a deep insight into others’ virtues. In “Body-Building in Afghanistan”, Oliver Broudy makes a comparison between our high-quality life and Afghan’s poor-quality life conditions. He begins by asking the audience to think about how we start a new day. In general, when the alarm goes off at eight o’clock in the morning, sleep will pull us back towards the comfortable bed. However, people in Afghanistan get up before the alarm clock starts; around four o’clock in a dry, dirty place. The comparison between the morning scenes implies two opposite kinds of life, the easy and the poor. The poor appreciate what they have while the easy are wasting time on meaningless
In The Kite Runner both Amir and Hassan are heroes in their own ways. Amir put his life in danger for Hassan’s son, Sohrab, while Hassan put his in jeopardy for Amir. In his childhood, Amir always wanted Baba to love him only, but Baba felt guilty for the fact that Hassan, his son just like Amir, was living in his house as a servant. Therefore, Baba struggled to show his love for Amir. However, Amir, who did not know that Hassan was his half-brother, thought that Baba did not love him because he killed his wife when she was giving birth to him. Additionally, in Amir’s childhood Baba always questioned Amir‘s abilities, while he praised Hassan’s skills which made Amir bitter toward Hassan. Amir was brainwashed by the fact that Hassan was only a Hazara servant, and it did not suit him to play with a Hazara boy. Although Amir loved Hassan, he struggled throughout his childhood to show it to him due to lack of attention from Baba and the segregation between Hazara and Pashtun. But his entire life, he felt ashamed of what he did to Hassan. However, he showed his heroic personality later by putting his life in danger to only save Hassan’s son, Sohrab. On the other hand, Hassan showed his love for Amir openly as a good friend from the beginning to the end. He never lost an opportunity to sacrifice his life for Amir.
towards the end of the month of Muharram 7 AH. He set out of Medina