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Literature in post - wwii
Literature after WWI
Social effects of World War II
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Mikael Niemi uses his personal novel, Popular Music from Vittula to inform readers not only on what everyday life was like growing up in Pajala, Sweden, but also how the Second World War and ideas of communism affected his small hometown. Throughout the novel, he goes in order of maturation stages, starting the book in the beginning of the sixties as a young boy, and ending the book as a teenager in the middle to late seventies. He uses his personal experiences to create a sense of imagery, making the book very relatable to adolescents and young adults that have a love for life and nature. He also focuses greatly on key elements that played major roles throughout his childhood such as friendship, manhood, religion, adventure, and the value of life itself. Niemi attempts to describe in great detail the aftermath of communism and World War Two throughout his novel. It can be assumed that a major theme in the novel is that war effects everyone, including the places most people tend to overlook on a map. Niemi excels at providing all different viewpoints on communism, including the opinions of communists and anticommunists that he encounters throughout …show more content…
While it is always very important to provide details when writing, he tends to be a little too wordy and at times repetitive. He also makes a lot of references to historical figures without providing background knowledge for his audience, leading them to doing their own research. Overall, it is very hard to critique this novel negatively, due to the fact that it is so well written and has such an amazing story line. This is a book that once someone starts reading it, they cannot put it down. Another thing that Niemi excels on is ending his chapters with cliff hangers, making the novel exciting and interesting. He always ends his chapters with a buildup of anxiety, and then he starts the next chapter with something completely
...f the innocent is what captured my attention the most. Hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians were killed for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Caputo mourns not only for the dead, but also for the men that are now emotionally and psychologically scarred for life. The images and sounds of death will forever be carved into their minds. Throughout this history class, I have been able to learn and understand new vocabulary and apply it to my reading. I would not have been able to understand the book, as well as I do, without becoming familiar with the terminology. A Rumor of War changed by view on the Vietnam War. Before reading this narrative, I did not realize the number of lives lost or the poor environments soldiers were subjected to. Philip Caputo was extremely detailed in his descriptions and painted a brilliant picture of the war.
...it may help us arrive at an understanding of the war situation through the eyes of what were those of an innocent child. It is almost unique in the sense that this was perhaps the first time that a child soldier has been able to directly give literary voice to one of the most distressing phenomena of the late 20th century: the rise of the child-killer. While the book does give a glimpse of the war situation, the story should be taken with a grain of salt.
As the war progresses, Caputo requests to go to a line company in the middle of November. This is a change from the “office” position he currently held where he was largely responsible for counting casualties. At this point, the romanticized visions Caputo had of war have been completely shattered and he goes into this transfer being fully aware of this. This change in viewpoint becomes even more clear when compared to the beginning of the novel where Caputo was intrigued by the romance and action of war. While readers would expect more action and typical war stories in this section of the book, Philip Caputo writes anything but. Caputo writes, “It went like that for the rest of the month. It was a time of little action and endless misery…Almost every hour of every night, the radio operators chanted, ‘All secure. Situation remains the same’ (1996: 240). Caputo repeats the phrase “All secure. Situation remains the same” five times throughout this single paragraph. Because of this, readers see the dull and mundane side of war that is often not talked about. In addition, Caputo continues to comment of the large amounts of waiting throughout the autobiography. When most think of the Vietnam War, they picture the “main events”. Similar to the numerous documentaries we watched in class, some of the main points of the war include: The first Indochina War, The Gulf of Tonkin, and the Tet Offensive. These documentaries all focused on these monumental events and because of this, the public perceives this war as the sum of these events. However, what many fail to consider the large gaps in time between these events. It is in these large gaps that little action occurred and most of the soldier’s time was spent waiting as Caputo depicted in this scene. In connection with
...nd enjoyable. The one thing that did bug me was that Youngs does not directly tie his thesis directly to the end of the book. It would have been helpful for the reader to be able to confirm Youngs’s intention for writing the book, but since he fails to re-introduce his argument in the end, it left me questioning that intention.
War always seems to have no end. A war between countries can cross the world, whether it is considered a world war or not. No one can be saved from the reaches of a violent war, not even those locked in a safe haven. War looms over all who recognize it. For some, knowing the war will be their future provides a reason for living, but for others the war represents the snatching of their lives without their consent. Every reaction to war in A Separate Peace is different, as in life. In the novel, about boys coming of age during World War II, John Knowles uses character development, negative diction, and setting to argue that war forever changes the way we see the world and forces us to mature rapidly.
...es of individuals can be used to explore a broader social wrong, in this case the injustice of a totalitarian government. Both authors use their protagonists to depict how a dictatorial state can destroy all sense of individuality, Orwell by presenting Winston in his fight against “The Party” and Niccol by depicting Vincent in his battle against society. Both authors also use individuals, who must isolate themselves in order to survive to expose how an unjust authoritative government can manufacture isolation. Orwell and Niccol also present conflicting views on the possibility of individual rebellion in an oppressive society, reflected by the success of Vincent and failure of Winston. In their prophetic dystopian texts both George Orwell and Andrew Niccol use the experiences of their protagonists to explore the broad social wrong of a totalitarian government.
My overall opinion of this book is good I really liked it and recommend it to anyone. It is a good book to read and it keep you interested throughout the whole book.
This is my personal reflection about this book. First and foremost, I would like to say that this book is very thick and long to read. There are about nineteen chapters and 278 pages altogether. As a slow reader, it is a quite hard for me to finish reading it within time. It took me weeks to finish reading it as a whole. Furthermore, it is written in English version. My English is just in average so sometimes I need to refer to dictionary for certain words. Sometimes I use google translate and ask my friends to explain the meaning of certain terms.
When the war breaks out, this tranquil little town seems like the last place on earth that could produce a team of vicious, violent soldiers. Soon we see Jim thrown into a completely contrasting `world', full of violence and fighting, and the strong dissimilarity between his hometown and this new war-stricken country is emphasised. The fact that the original setting is so diversely opposite to that if the war setting, the harsh reality of the horror of war is demonstrated.
have chosen it for my report. Finally, I will give my reactions to the novel
In chapter 1, the plot of the entire novel is defined: A very young soldier named Cacciato deserts, intending to walk to Paris by land. As his squad follows under orders to capture him, Paul Berlin begins his fascinating mind-journey of “going after Cacciato,” of escape from, and later a reexamination of, the reality of war. But what is defined first, in the first two pages to be exact, is this war’s reality and its cost to the young American soldiers involved. These pages list for us those who have died, in action and otherwise, and those who have been maimed, at times through self-injury, underscoring the urgency of the desire to live. These pages also vividly delineate for us the daily miseries and sufferings of the Vietnam war, from rain and mud to disease
and social aspects of the war. In doing so, he illustrates how the war affected the development of
It is difficult for them to hope to succeed in an area where so many of them have failed. The constant theme of betrayal in 1984 is being used by George Orwell to show how hopeless Winston’s struggle against the Totalitarian system is, giving the reader an idea of how bad this type of government is. The reader is introduced to this dark time and given hope in the form of the rebellious protagonist, Winston. However, the reader soon realises how hopelessly alone Winston is in his silent battle when they see that the government is against him, he has no support or allies, and that even his own mind can be turned against him. The message is clear and makes readers who live in a democracy happier with what they have.
William Golding illustrates World War II through young boys in this novel. Technology is one of the major destructors of a civilization. Jealousy is another destructor that ruins the good nature between men and brings out the beast from within. The author has chosen to show the evil in man though young boys to allow the world to understand how unethical the war was. The symbols, character, and setting are shown to correlate with the outside world. The novel just reinforces the idea of the savage within each and every human being.
A Farewell to Arms is clearly an anti-war novel; the story swifts from naive game playing, through the stages of love and hope, to pure despair and an understanding that a war can lead to no winners. The passionate love story of the novel strengthens the message still more by showing the ironic similarity, but also its discrepancy, with the war. The discrepancy is to be taken into serious account, this discrepancy is the important message of this novel; make love not war.