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Effects of war on soldiers essay
Effects of war on soldiers essay
A note on war poetry
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The poem introduces a dark and raw view of war by allowing readers to witness the thoughts of a soldier moments before and after his death inside a ball turret. The phrasing used in the poem and its lack of emotion paints the reality of the emotional effects of war on soldiers. The indifferent word choice ties in with the description of the ball turret as a womb of a mother to reveal the innocence of the soldiers fighting in the war. Randall Jarrell reveals the stark reality that war can dehumanize soldiers and expose the fragility of life through the use of strong diction and an extended metaphor. Randall Jarrell utilizes strong diction to create a very raw and surreal viewpoint of war. The soldier’s emotionless description of his death reveals
The powerful poem ‘Weapons Training’ showcases a sergeant, through malicious words, guiding his troops. However it is through ‘Homecoming’, where Dawe exposes the brutal hopelessness brought forth by the futility of war. Therefore it can be seen that war has an emotional toll on both families and the soldiers. Both poems have a recurring message that all war does is bring loss, death and mourning, showcasing Dawes strong opinions about a futile
Randall Jarret stakes his claim in “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by using imagery which concurrently expresses the literal horror of death as a World War Two gunner and a metaphorical representation of the death of an aborted child. By connecting the disparate themes with dual imagery, he creates an impact greater than either standing on its own.
BANG, BOOM, BLAM,TAT-A-TAT, TAT. My ears are assaulted with noise, my eyes witness squirting blood a soldier is shot. I observe soldiers blown away by bombs. I see blood that saturates an infantry man. I view maimed men and observe limbs with fragmented bone. I witness militia dead on the ground. I listen to screams, grunts and gurgling blood in a man's windpipe. WHOOSH, flame throwers make a path with flames blazing burning men instantaneously. My eyes reveal the emotion that rips through my heart, tears drip down my cheek. I turn my head. I cannot watch a soldier cradle his buddy as he dies.
She is a casualty of the war, not physically, but mentally. She is wounded emotionally by the loss of her loved one. This poem is set out like a nursery rhyme, its message is simple. The message reads that, in her eyes, war has ruined everything that used to be beautiful. War is unnatural and cruel, completely the opposite of nature.
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.
On the very surface The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner is a poem about just that. A soldier who goes into battle and dies. Jarrell paints a gruesome picture about being awakened by flack cannons and being killed shortly thereafter by the same things. In all his works Jarrell never glamorizes the war and never attempts to make sense of or find meaning in it. Instead he simply uses the horrors of battle to fuel his works by drawing comparisons from the grand scale of world war to the mundane aspects of everyday life.
“The Minefield” is a dark and traumatic poem that expresses the prolonged pain and suffering that is caused by the war. The memories that Thiel’s father carried with him caused him to mentally and physically abuse his family. Thiel is able to recreate her painful childhood by the use of tone, metaphors, and similes. “The Minefield” represents how the war can leave such a negative influence on someone’s life and also affect family and loved ones.
Throughout the times war has effected people immensely both physically and mentally. All people deal with their circumstances differently to help cope with what they dealing with. Whether it’s a fatality in the family, or post traumatic stress disorder most people find a way to heal from injury or emotional damage. In Brian Turners poem, “Phantom Noise,” he writes about the constant ringing he hears from the war he served in. The poem expresses that Turner seems to deal with his emotional damage by writing poetry about what he feels, hears, and sees during the time he spent in war and in civilian life. Even though Turner is no longer in war it still effects him greatly each day. The overall tone of the poem is very solemn and makes the reader
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.
... horrors of war such as, his parents who still view war as glamorous and idealistic. War takes a heavy toll on soldiers who fight in it and in these dangerous moments anybody would have gone insane. It takes a very special type of soldier to be able to handle both the psychological and physical challenges that a soldier has to face in everyday battle. A soldier such as this must be capable of handling the sight of a mutilated comrade and not immediately chatter to pieces. The author conveys this message in his extreme use of words with negative connotation such as shells, typhus, dysentery, and trenches. In this portion of the novel a great deal of emphasis is placed on the word death which is repeated several times and standing on its own it holds a great deal of negative connotations. Therefore, due to the severity of the situation and the extensive use of words with negative connotations the overall tone of the novel appeared to be very depressing or serious. This selection also demonstrates just how mythical the character of war that many individuals who have not experienced the tragedy of battle believe to be true by illustrating just how appalling and grim war is in reality.
Have you ever considered the thought of dying, or better yet being dead? In “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” Randall Jarrell introduces his readers to an airman. Jarrell takes his readers into the airman’s experience and days in the devastating World War II. In the beginning of the poem the author states how the airman felt safe in his mother’s womb, but later fell into the States. It seems as if he is a child who has been thrown to the Federal government. Jarrell is portraying how instead of being born into a world of love and peace the airman was awakened into a nightmare of the real world.
Through reading this poem several times I decided that the message from the poem is that war is full of horror and there is little or no glory. Methods which I found most effective were Full rhyme and metaphor.
Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" is a five lined poem set in World War Two. The title "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" outlines the entire setting of the poem and tells you everything about the poem. The Poem is about a man who manned a ball turret on a bomber and is narrated by the dead gunner himself. Jarrell's poem can be taken on many levels both on a line by line level detailing the death of a ball turret gunner and as a poem as a whole which has strong abortion symbolism.
Dark clouds settled above, forever watching the monstrous scene forming below. Flashes of lightning lit up the caliginous sky, a temporary false dawn. Rain moulded the once solid ground into a sodden, quagmire mess. War was the worst at night; when the fear of whistling bombs deprived soldiers of sleep and dreams of drowning in a green sea caused their hearts to palpitate. It was then, that they were left with their undesired thoughts. Waiting, watching, for the next barrage. The men sat silent and still; their thoughts repressing them from distant rest. Their eyes were empty sockets, stripped raw by the weight of their experiences in war. Settled amongst the soldiers on the Western Front, a distinctively younger boy stood out from the rest, eyes vibrant, ardent for some desperate glory.
This lulls the reader into a false sense of security, perhaps unwittingly expecting a much more upbeat and cheerful tale of war. Also, throughout the poem, the meter is iambic pentameter, with the exception of the last line that only has three feet. This abrupt ending to the poem is much like the sudden deaths of young boys fighting in the war. Suffering is clear, because even before any action occurs, the soldiers are described like hags or beggars, despite their youth. Furthermore, their movements are described as slow, despite German artillery firing behind them. This contrasts the idealization of war that encouraged young men to join the army. Additionally, in lines 9 and 10, fear is clear in the battle when Owen writes “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys—an ecstasy of fumbling,/Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time” (Stallworthy 188). Moving at such a rapid pace from fear shows a sharp contrast to the previous elderly, slow image of the boys, and demonstrates the terror associated with poison gas. The remaining lines in the poem describe a boy whose helmet was not on in time. The image of this boy still haunts the speaker of the poem, which is evident in lines 15 and 16: “In all my dreams, before my helpless