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The effect of war on family and society
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The effect of war on family and society
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“Get up!!!” The whistle of the bullets flying past my head was like nothing I have ever heard ending anything and everything in it’s path. The roaring sound of bombers Echoing down roads and through homes Like a song of the devil himself. My life flashed in my eyes. And now to think it was over was nerve racking. Fire’s blazed in homes like a flower blooming in mid spring… The year Is 1944. Me and my men are going to a place where happiness Was imprisoned and not to be let free for it would be executed at once.A place Where the sky was black as coal.a place I’d never call home.The ekos of family's cries over gone loved ones for to them there end was also there beginning. The smell of gunpowder, mud ,and maggots in my food was not what
Imagine being in an ongoing battle where friends and others are dying. All that is heard are bullets being shot, it smells like gas is near, and hearts race as the times goes by. This is similar to what war is like. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator, Paul Baumer, and his friends encounter the ideals of suffering, death, pain, and despair. There is a huge change in these men; at the beginning of the novel they are enthusiastic about going into the war. After they see what war is really like, they do not feel the same way about it. During the war the men experience many feelings especially the loss of loved ones. These feelings are shown through their first experience at training camp, during the actual battles, and in the hospital.
“This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war...”
A soldier’s journey, a trip back home from World War II and a collision with reality is described in the opening of Henry Green’s novel, “Back”. The opening deals with the soldier’s journey, his experience at the warfront, the death of his love, and finally a child who is his own son, the last thing he has of his love. Charley, the soldier is seen reminiscing the moments he had with Rose and his experiences at the battlefield while he walks through the graveyard towards the body of his love. The author conveys a lot more than just what the words say in the first few paragraphs, leaving the reader eager to turn the page as well as giving the reader the freedom to interpret what certain words and sentences mean.
Whenever one reads or hears about World War I or World War II, you hear of the struggles and triumphs of the British, Americans or any of the other Allies. And they always speak of the evil and menacing German army. However, All Quiet on the Western Front gives the reader some insight and a look at a group of young German friends who are fighting in World War I. “This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.....” The soldiers of this war felt they were neither heroes nor did they know what they were fighting for. These soldiers were pulled from the innocence of their childhood, and thrown into a world of rage. Yet somehow they still managed to have heart and faith in man kind and could not look the opponent in the eye and kill him. For he was man too, he too had a wife and children at home, he too was pulled out of his home to fight for a cause he didn't understand.
"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."
...though people believe that, those on the home front have it just as a bad as the soldiers, because they have to deal with the responsibilities of their husbands, there is nothing that can compare to what these men have gone through. The war itself consumed them of their ideology of a happy life, and while some might have entered the war with the hope that they would soon return home, most men came to grips with the fact that they might never make it out alive. The biggest tragedy that follows the war is not the number of deaths and the damages done, it is the broken mindset derives from being at war. These men are all prime examples of the hardships of being out at war and the consequences, ideologies, and lifestyles that develop from it.
From sunrise to sunset, day after day, war demolishes men, cities, and hope. War has an effect on soldiers like nothing else, and sticks with them for life. The damage to a generation of men on both sides of the war was inestimable. Both the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and the poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” by Alan Seeger, demonstrate the theme of a lost generation of men, mentally and physically, in war through diction, repetition, and personification.
Each soldiers experience in the war was devastating in its own way. The men would go home carrying the pictures and memories of their dead companions, as well as the enemy soldiers they killed. “They all carried emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” These were the things that weighed the most, the burdens that the men wanted to put down the most, but were the things that they would forever carry, they would never find relief from the emotional baggage no matter where they went.
In movies, a soldier's homecoming is depicted as one of honor and courage. Hollywood tends to glamorize war and not show the true effects of the mentality of a woman or man who have just returned home after the war. In the poem, "Homespace", by Anthony Grooms, the psychological state of the soldier's return home is displayed more true to that of Hollywood's. The boy returns home and is embraced by his mother. The family has a barbeque for the boy's homecoming. Even though he is at home, where he should feel safe and secure, the boy remains in war-like state of mind. He isolates himself from everyone else, "I made myself busy with the fire/ So I wouldn't have to talk," (Line 7-8). The young man, "heard screams" (Line 9), when fuel was added to the coals. Men and women of war are tormented by the images they seen and heard. No one person at this gathering seemed to take notice of the impression that the war left on this boy, mentally. It seems as though, because the boy was home and no physical evidence appeared on his body, they assumed everything was in good condition. Not noticing the boy's problem, "Women and children laughed from the porch/ Men sat under the elms" (Line 11-12). All the while these ignorant people sat enjoying themselves, the boy, "watched the sky for the enemy" (Line 13). This last line adequately describes the mind frame of the boy and in all probability many of men and women who fight in wars for their countries.
Predictably, several letters exist in which soldiers share their unpleasant accounts of the unforgiving interminable First World War. The first letter in the document is a despairing exchange between “A Garwhali to his father” (Omissi, 27-29). Through this letter, the soldier illustrates the warfront as treacherous and unforgiving. The war is becoming increasingly harder to endure when “the bullets and cannon-balls come down
“Now the bleedin war is over Oh, how happy I was there; Now old Fritz and I have parted, Life’s one everlasting care. No more estaminets to sing in, No mamoiselles to make me gay; Civvie life’s a bleedin failure, I was happy yesterday.”(398). This post-World War II song exemplifies the complexity of soldiers’ feelings towards war. There is no simplicity in how a soldier feels in battle or in the sanity under which they operate; often there is no method to the madness. The extreme conditions of war reveal man’s basic instincts and expose human nature. In an attempt to understand the issues that influence a soldier on the front line, Richard Holmes’s Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle faces the grisly truth about men in war. Holmes addresses soldiers’ motivations in and out of battle. He addresses fear, pain, fatigue, the enemy, and death as a part of battle. Out of the field, he discusses boredom, patriotism, religion, basic training, and family. The main points are well-researched and essential to understanding soldiers’ actions within war. His attention to the unpleasant details, that he deems essential to a soldier’s
You would. My inner voice says No I would not, thank you very much. That is what you are doing right now, isn’t it?
	The pounding of shells, the mines, the death traps, the massive, blind destruction, the acrid stench of rotting flesh, the communal graves, the charred bodies, and the fear. These are the images of war. War has changed over the centuries from battles of legions of ironclad soldiers enveloped in glimmering armor fighting for what they believe to senseless acts of guerrilla warfare against those too coward to be draft-dodgers. Those who were there, who experienced the terror first hand were deeply effected and changed forever. In their retinas, images of blood and gore are burned for the rest of their life.
The consequences of the Great War have been explored in literature throughout history ever since the atrocity occurred. Yet the true horrors of World War I are difficult to convey through traditional written word. David Malouf’s Fly Away Peter is a novella which uses an array of poetic language along with vivid imagery to truly channel the anguish and confusion of soldiers into the reader. Distinct characterisation further evolves this idea and provides a way for audiences to engage with such a terrifying event through relatable characters. Juxtaposition is Malouf’s greatest asset, coupling this technique with allusion and religious symbolism to create a novella of dualities. These techniques allow Malouf to condemn war and illuminate the power behind life in its purest form.
This particular poem leaves you in no doubt as to the horrors of war and the terrible atrocities these poor men endured.