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Emotional and psychological effects of war on soldiers
Emotional and psychological effects of war on soldiers
Emotional and psychological effects of war on soldiers
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How does war affect relationships in Regeneration?
"Regeneration" is a novel that combines fact and fiction to describe a
soldier's experiences of the war. It does this successfully through a
series of relationships, not only of a sexual nature but also
relationships between Rivers and his patients, which reveal how
difficult it is for rivers to form a trust relationship with patients
and how stressful their revelations are on him. There are also
examples of friendships, between Sassoon and Graves, and love, in
particular between Priors and Sarah.
One of the first relationships we come across is the doctor - patient
relationship between Sassoon and Rivers. Evidence from their first
conversations seems to suggest that at least on an intellectual level
they are equal. Sassoon indicates his intelligence when Rivers
questions him about his declaration, he is quite aware of how it
sounds for a "Second Lieutenant" to say "The war must stop" however he
doesn't see how any war can "justify this level of slaughter." Sassoon
appears defensive at times during the first conversation, particularly
when Rivers refers to Sassoon throwing his medal in the river as
"agony." He appears to snap back almost immediately "No agony is lying
in a shell hole with your legs shot off" indicating his bitterness
towards civilian ignorance at emotional and physical suffering for
soldiers in the war. At this point Rivers, indicating the honesty of
the relationship, makes his opinion on Sassoon's state of mind clear
and tells him that he seems to have "very powerful anti-war neurosis"
and that it is his duty to "try and change that." This honesty is
essential in the relationship between Rivers and his patients. At this
time in the n...
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...ctant at first she agrees, as "the
thought of being collected from her lodgings by an officer was too
much for her." There is irony here, as she complains about the class
system and wants it to change, however she is thrilled at the thought
of being courted by an officer.
In the novel "Regeneration" the portrayal of the different
relationships gives us an idea of the effect war had on, not only the
soldiers but also the people back home, in particular the women. Which
as Prior pointed out in the novel "seemed to have changed during the
war." These relationships can also give us an idea of how the soldiers
felt connected and became comrades, but also of how, after being at
war for so long, the soldiers began to hate the civilians back home
for being so ignorant as to what was actually happening and being to
concerned with trivial things in everyday life.
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.
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 retrospect chapter one demonstrates how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were influenced by the Vietnam War, many of the soldiers had to face the burdens of war, the lost of innocents and the sexual yearning for women. One of the fundamental themes introduced in the first few pages of the novel was the burdens many of soldiers encounter during the war. The soldiers in the novel carried some remarkably heavy physical and emotional burdens; these burdens almost always seem too much for them to carry. For instances Jimmy Cross the leader of the platoon was responsible for the lives of all soldiers in subdivision, however he was unable to keeping his soldiers alive. Another theme introduces in chapter one is the lost of innocent. The Vietnam War both defiles and terminates the innocence of those soldiers who participated in the war. Most of the soldiers in Vietnam War were young, not even twenty. Nevertheless, Tim O’Brien relentless points out that although they are young, they are killers when commanded. Many of the soldiers had to give up their innocence and become men immediately during the war. Other themes that emerge in chapter one is the sexual yarning for females. In addition with fighting Vietcong, soldiers had to endure living without any females around; which cause a lot of anxiety on them.
The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is one of O'Brien's predominant themes in his novel. By consciously selecting very descriptive details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants. One of the soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. . .The Thumb was dark brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen"(O'Brien 13). Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war makes him into a very hard-mannered, emotionally devoid soldier, carrying about a severed finger as a trophy, proud of his kill. The transformation shown through Bowler is an excellent indicator of the psychological and emotional change that most of the soldiers undergo. To bring an innocent young man from sensitive to apathetic, from caring to hateful, requires a great force; the war provides this force. However, frequently are the changes more drastic. A soldier named "Ted Lavender adopted an orphaned puppy. . .Azar strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device"(O'Brien 39). Azar has become demented; to kill a puppy that someone else has adopted is horrible. However, the infliction of violence has become the norm of behavior for these men; the fleeting moment of compassion shown by one man is instantly erased by another, setting order back within the group. O'Brien here shows a hint of sensitivity among the men to set up a startling contrast between the past and the present for these men. The effect produced on the reader by this contrast is one of horror; therefore fulfilling O'Brien's purpose, to convince the reader of war's severely negative effects.
...as Mary Ann in the novel show that women can do so much more than sew and cook. Without women, all wars would have been a lot harder. Although men tend to keep a macho facade in order to calm others (such as the women in their lives), inside they may be like glass, easy to break. A society set on the ideal stoic, fearless warrior who acts ruthlessly and saves the damsel in distress (also showing that women are weak) obviously is one where doomed to sexism. Without the comfort and inspiration, men would have deteriorated in the face of death. All and all, women provided the needed comfort, nursing, “manpower”, and love that the soldiers of Vietnam need, something that helped them endure the havoc of war. O’Brien’s expert use of the feminist lens allows the reader to know that women indeed were a powerhouse in the Vietnam war, without whom, men would have perished.
Life can bring unexpected events that individuals might not be prepared to confront. This was the case of O’Brien in the story, “On the Rainy River” from the book The Things They Carried. As an author and character O’Brien describes his experiences about the Vietnam War. In the story, he faces the conflict of whether he should or should not go to war after being drafted. He could not imagine how tough fighting must be, without knowing how to fight, and the reason for such a war. In addition, O’Brien is terrified of the idea of leaving his family, friends and everything he loves behind. He decides to run away from his responsibility with the society. However, a feeling of shame and embarrassment makes him go to war. O’Brien considers himself a coward for doing something he does not agree with; on the other hand, thinking about the outcome of his decision makes him a brave man. Therefore, an individual that considers the consequences of his acts is nobler than a war hero.
O’Brien has many characters in his book, some change throughout the book and others +are introduced briefly and change dramatically during their time in war and the transition to back home after the war. The way the characters change emphasises the effect of war on the body and the mind. The things the boys have to do in the act of war and “the things men did or felt they had to do” 24 conflict with their morals burning the meaning of their morals with the duties they to carry out blindly. The war tears away the young’s innocence, “where a boy in a man 's body is forced to become an adult” before he is ready; with abrupt definiteness that no one could even comprehend and to fully recover from that is impossible.
...g during the war. Tim O'Brien doesn't write about black and white of what is true and what is not, but of the gray fog in between. Even though each story is separate, they come together to express how stories rule our lives. What is written down in words is what others hear and is passed down. "What stories can do, I guess, is make things present…I can make myself feel again." His main purpose is to make a person feel something about what the characters are going though. It is not everyday when one comes home from war. The only way to preserve the memories are to write about them in a story. This novel may appear to be a simple story about a platoon of soldiers while in Vietnam. As the book progresses, the weight of the war starts to dwell on the reader. The powerful emotional content grows as the narrator gets more courage to talk about the horrors that occurred.
A true war story is not always true. Some would say a true war story is an experience from war. Others, who came from war, would say they make up stories to make war seem crazier than it really is. Tim O’Brian states that the story is fiction, but the moral is true. Tracy Kidder had written war stories based on his time in Vietnam, and his book is rated as nonfiction, even though he admits that some war stories are made up.
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).
Billy Prior is another patient who Rivers treats at Craiglockhart and who for quite some time was completely mute. He is literally speechless because of what he saw in the trenches. Prior was an officer, however he did not hold any significant occupation before the war. He was a person who found meaning in his life on the battlefield and was made strong by that. As someone who always felt he had something to prove Prior was finally able to show his masculinity. His need to prove himself a man stemmed from his childhood with an abusive father, and he grew up constantly needing to prove his masculinity. However even on the battlefield Prior suffered, having a type of asthma that made him more susceptible to the gas attacks used in the trenches and more
The war in Vietnam is without a doubt an outlier in comparison to every other U.S. war, specifically as the only war that the U.S. has ever lost. Losing the war may have been a direct result of a draft that placed young men in Vietnam, many of whom had absolutely no personal goals other than survival. This sets the scene for Going After Cacciato and its main character Paul Berlin. The book is told in the form of three stories. Sixteen chapters are a narrative of the real war, focusing on the deaths of the men in Berlin’s squadron, another ten chapters depict a single full night when Berlin decides to take the whole watch rather than wake up one of his companions, and the other twenty chapters center on the squad’s imaginative journey to Paris chasing Cacciato. Berlin spends essentially the entire novel trying to come up with his own stories, one a true recollection of what actually happened and another, the fictional account he can tell when he returns home. The book is metafictional; it explores the process of writing a war story (Calloway 188). In Going After Cacciato Tim O'Brien utilizes metafiction to examine the confusion of war.
Throughout history, men have constantly been at war with something. Whether that something was nature, other men, or a supernatural force, men have historically loved battle. War stories have always been a way for authors to express their concerns about issues in society. Through these stories, authors depict honor not seen in real life, problems that face the world now, and closure so often exempt from our world. There are defined enemies, a clear line drawn between good and bad, and we may be powerful and violent for the sake of righteous ideas. "The war story is a way to exemplify good angels and bad, to exercise our fears, and find some comfort in the inevitable triumph of right over wrong," (strangewords.com). There are three main areas that come to mind under the heading "Men as they are portrayed in war". These topics are: typical attire, enemies, and weapons. We will be comparing and contrasting the four issues as they have been presented to us in science fiction, and also how they have been portrayed throughout history.
War is defined as armed conflict between different nations or groups of people. In the novel The Lord of the Flies, the characters face a war of their own. The novel takes place on an island in which a group of British schoolboys are stranded after being the only survivors of a plane crash. The boys have to work together in order to survive and be rescued from the island. However, they are eventually divided because of contrasting opinions and begin fighting amongst each other, which causes them to feel the repercussions of their actions. Lives being lost, nature being destroyed, as well as civilization falling, and people losing their innocence and descending into savagery are some of the consequences of war that the boys felt firsthand while on the island.
The quote “all’s fair in love and war” means nothing is out of bounds when it comes to love and war; everything is fair game. Nicholas Sparks, Norman Rockwell, and Robert Frost do an excellent job depicting this quote in their work. Nicholas Sparks is famous for his romantic novels; many of which involve a man in the military falling in love with a woman and doing whatever it takes to be with one another. Norman Rockwell’s paintings are simple but also show the love and war. Though Robert Frost’s poem are not particularly about love and war; he does have many poems about love between two people as well as poems about war and what it takes to survive. All three people are extremely talented and I enjoy all of their work.