Those that engage in the activity of war can be noted as mad and insane, but some individuals may also be considered brave souls, and that all depends on the select few that dare to go through with the entire process of being involved in such a feat. The forces in the war who only murder to get a rise out of and who continually toy with the on-lookers can be portrayed as mad and insane, while those who decide to join the noble partisans, despite perhaps even being drafted, to play their part in war were considered to be brave young soldiers. This was exactly the case in Russian director Elem Klimov’s 1985 film Come and See. The main character, Florian, a boy of fourteen years, is dragged into a war by the force of the Belorussian partisans, so that he could play his part in the war between Belorussia and Nazi Germany.
These brave young Belorussian soldiers that set out to war against their opposing German forces may not be portrayed accurately by this unforgettable cinematic masterpiece for a more contemporary time period, as, say, the solders that are currently settled in and fighting with the regions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but the portrayal can be said to be accurate for how the soldiers and their opposing forces behaved within the film, and acted their roles well. Near the middle of the film there is a scene where a crowd of villagers are put inside of a barn in a village, revealing to the audience that the Nazi German officials are in total control of the situation and whatever will occur next, because they are directing the villagers their exact orders, “We have opened this
window to aid you in your escape. Women or couples with children must, however, under all circumstances, leave their children behind” (Come and...
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...er, and in several lines an image of a dead soul is somehow depicted. “He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning” (Owen, Line 16). That signifies that no matter how someone dies for their country, or is dying for their country, that they think they are doing the right thing by giving up their own life because they think that giving up their own life for the sake of others is the right thing to do.
Works Cited
1. Come and See. Elem Klimov. Perf. Aleksei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova. Mosfilm. 1985. Film.
2. Crane, Stephen. “War is Kind.” Exploring Literature. Ed. Frank Madden. Pearson, 2009. 75.
3. Michaels, Lloyd. “Come and See (1985): Klimov’s Intimate Epic”, 213.
4. Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” Exploring Literature. Ed. Frank Madden. Pearson, 2009. 1223.
5. Youngblood, Denise. “A War Remembered: Soviet Films of the Great Patriotic War”, 853.
The story takes place through the eyes of a German infantryman named Paul Baumer. He is nineteen and just joined up with the German army after high school with the persuasion of one of his schoolteachers, Mr. Kantorek. Paul recalls how he would use all class period lecturing the students, peering through his spectacles and saying: "Won't you join up comrades?"(10). Here was a man who loved war. He loved the "glory" of war. He loved it so much as to persuade every boy in his class to join up with the army. He must have thought how proud they would be marching out onto that field in their military attire.
The film brilliantly portrays the war with no enemy’s, just people and relationships. It is the story of friends, Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres) and his friends joining the war through propaganda, and leaving through death.
Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel All Quiet on the Western Front is based on World War I; it portrays themes involving suffering, comradeship, chance and dehumanization. The novel is narrated by Paul, a young soldier in the German military, who fights on the western front during The Great War. Like many German soldiers, Paul and his fellow friends join the war after listening to the patriotic language of the older generation and particularly Kantorek, a high school history teacher. After being exposed to unbelievable scenes on the front, Paul and his fellow friends realize that war is not as glorifying and heroic as the older generation has made it sound. Paul and his co-soldiers continuously see horrors of war leading them to become hardened, robot-like objects with one goal: the will to survive.
This paper seeks to address the literacy and stylistic issues presented in two texts. Specifically, an extract from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Wilfred Owens’s Dulce ET Est. Decorum. Initially, the paper will outline the prevailing social and historical contexts associated with the two texts. The principal purpose of this work is to address the themes common to both texts. For this to be achieved, an initial investigation and critique of both authors use of language will also need to be looked at.
Even though the films “Battleship Potemkin”, “From Here to Eternity” and “Saving Private Ryan” are all movies based on military life during war time the variation in time periods and culture made each film very different. These differences did not take away from the impact the films had on their audiences at the time or the messages they were each trying to covey. The Horrific images and hear wrenching scenarios helped to evoke strong emotions and patriotic feeling from audiences allowing film makers to pass along their truths. Thru these films we are magically transported to several dark periods in the world history and left to experience the pain, fear, isolation and ultimately the triumph of these soldiers’ lives.
In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul, the main character is a nineteen-year-old man who voluntarily joins the German army to fight in World War I against the French. Paul went into the war full of nationalism and ready to fight for his country. Soon after entering training, Paul began to realize that there is way more to war than just fighting for his country. Because it contains evidence of dehumanization and disconnectedness with the world, Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front reveals soldiers who are blindsided by the effects war has on them.
War slowly begins to strip away the ideals these boy-men once cherished. Their respect for authority is torn away by their disillusionment with their schoolteacher, Kantorek who pushed them to join. This is followed by their brief encounter with Corporal Himmelstoss at boot camp. The contemptible tactics that their superior officer Himmelstoss perpetrates in the name of discipline finally shatters their respect for authority. As the boys, fresh from boot camp, march toward the front for the first time, each one looks over his shoulder at the departing transport truck. They realize that they have now cast aside their lives as schoolboys and they feel the numbing reality of their uncertain futures.
This means ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.’ But in Wilfred Owen’s opinion it is a lie, because during his poem he expresses his feelings on war, and gives the impression that you shouldn’t go. ‘And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime… Dim, through the misty panes and think green light, as under a green sea, I saw him drowning.’
In this piece of work I hope to compare successfully Wilfred Owens ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ with Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’. I will compare the similarities and differences between the two texts in themes, styles and linguistic features. When first reading both pieces of writing you wouldn’t assume there are many similarities between the two authors, as they were written one hundred years apart and came from completely opposite social and historical backgrounds.
More importantly, in This Boy’s Life Wolff breaks down this myth-making function through his depictions of the damaged men who more than a decade later still felt the emotional ripples from WWII. This is a story that is different from the surface narrative of nostalgia, one with more shades of sorrow and anger mixed with youthful idolatry. The WWII generation is sometimes referred ...
The Forgotten Soldier is not a book concerning the tactics and strategy of the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War. Nor does it analyze Nazi ideology and philosophy. Instead, it describes the life of a typical teenage German soldier on the Eastern Front. And through this examined life, the reader receives a first hand account of the atrocious nature of war. Sajer's book portrays the reality of combat in relation to the human physical, psychological, and physiological condition.
N.Cull’s assessment of the film Saving Private Ryan in that it portrays “a realistic depiction of the lives and deaths of G.I’s in the European theatre in World War II” is an accurate one. Director Stephen Spielberg brings to the audience the “sheer madness of war” and the “search for decency” within it. That search ends for a group of soldiers whose mission it is too save Private Ryan. Although the film shows horrific and realistic battle scenes along with historically correct settings and situations with weapons and injuries true to their time, the film’s portrayal of war goes a lot deeper than that. The expressions and feelings of soldiers along with their morals and ideology are depicted unifyingly with the horror of war. The lives and deaths of American soldiers in the immediate part of the invasion of Normandy are illustrated more realistically than ever before. Saving Private Ryan captures the “harsh reality of war as authentically as possible”.
Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” makes the reader acutely aware of the impact of war. The speaker’s experiences with war are vivid and terrible. Through the themes of the poem, his language choices, and contrasting the pleasant title preceding the disturbing content of the poem, he brings attention to his views on war while during the midst of one himself. Owen uses symbolism in form and language to illustrate the horrors the speaker and his comrades go through; and the way he describes the soldiers, as though they are distorted and damaged, parallels how the speaker’s mind is violated and haunted by war.
“Compare and contrast “The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke with “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen with regard to theme, tone, imagery, diction, metre, etc”
The same goes for the officials that promote wartime propaganda. Instead of explaining what would be witnessed in war, they glorified it, instilling a sense of nationalistic virtue in recruits. The recruits, instead of pride and nationalism, returned mentally disturbed. Most did not return. In the same way, the boy held an honorable image in his mind, one where was working to support his family. He was not, however, prepared for the causality that was inflicted upon him. The speaker presents the boys horrors, fully realizing the dangerous position he is in, “He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off - / The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’” (25-26) Michael R. Little explains in his analysis of “Out, Out-”,