War for centuries has separated families from one another and pitted regular young men, all for the reason of supposed glory that comes with victory. However, even through these tough situations, humans' sense of empathy and emotion shine through, with acts of compassion demonstrated on the battlefield adding to the moral sense of soldiers as they develop the understanding of how every life is valued on and off the battlefield. The narrative “The Cost of War: Letters from the Homefront” by Tom Engelhardt provides great insight into this concept as it provides real letters sent in by worried mothers and fathers about their children who have been sent into war. The narrative is mainly built around the first letter coming from Teri Willis Allison, …show more content…
The author then goes on to describe the degree to which this war is affecting her life by explaining how she lives in constant dread of the thought that one day her son could be one of the hundred coming home injured or dead. For example, after talking about the number of soldiers already killed or injured by the war, Mrs. Allison points out how lucky she is that her son is still safe and how every death affects her as she knows she is “...not immune to that knock on my door either” (The costs of war...). This demonstrates the severity war has on the people, creating a stronger emphasis on the value of humanity as a whole as everyone wishes to see their kids back home safely. A similar comparison can be drawn from All Quiet on the Western Front with Paul’s mother upon his return home during leave. Upon returning home, Paul is met by his ill-stricken mother who, upon seeing him, asks anxiously “Are you wounded?” (Remarque 158). A simple sentence that conveys strong emotions by demonstrating the effect of which Paul going to war had on the mother, thus representing how war can create a stronger emphasis on the value of human
The novel All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the poem, “In Flanders Field,” by John McCrae and the film, Gallipoli, Demonstrates how war makes men feel unimportant and, forces soldiers to make hard decisions that no one should half to make. In war people were forced to fight for their lives. Men were forced to kill one another to get their opinion across to the opposing sides. When men went home to their families they were too scared to say what had happened to them in the war. Many people had a glorified thought about how war is, Soldiers didn't tell them what had truly happened to them.
To Pursue Remarque’s tone farther, his tone throughout this novel was rather easy to find because of the horrific, depressing, yet at the same time a little sympathetic, scenes. Paul explains a scene after a bombardment, “In the branches dead men are hanging. A naked soldier is squatting in the fork of a tree, he still has his helmet on, otherwise he is entirely unclad. There is only half of him sitting up there, the top half, the legs are missing” (93). The bombs are killing several men at a time. Paul not only observes this in real life, he ultimately has to live through it. Once a war has been going on for a long period, the soldiers know that war is all about death.
In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of personal responsibility as they struggle to cope.
Promises that men make have been connected with man since the beginning of time, and are the rocks for many human bonds. Breaking these covenants, disregarding the promise made to one’s family or going against ones’ word can be seen as a potential character flaw. One emotional and physical trauma of wartime is the choice to disregard a prior family commitment. Evidence of broken bonds can be seen through news articles on the Texas Revolutionary War, books on the Civil War, letters about World War I, textbooks including information on World War II, and journals from Vietnam. Discovering the existence of broken promises for self-preservation exhibits the importance of understanding the depth of wartime and the emotional trials placed on soldiers and victims of war rather than their family.
Not many people in society can empathize with those who have been in a war and have experienced war firsthand. Society is unaware that many individuals are taken away from their families to risk their lives serving in the war. Because of this, families are left to wonder if they will ever get to see their sons and daughters again. In a war, young men are taken away from their loved ones without a promise that they will get to see them again. The survivors come back with frightening memories of their traumatic experiences. Although some would argue that war affects families the most, Tim O’Brien and Kenneth W. Bagby are able to convey the idea that war can negatively impact one’s self by causing this person long lasting emotional damage.
The Civil War, World War I, the Vietnam War, World War II, and the conflict in the Middle East are all wars that have been fought over the difference of opinions, yet come at the cost of the soldier 's fighting them; Humans killing other humans, and death is just one of the many emotional scars soldiers of war face. Why do we go to war when this is the cost? For many it is because they are unaware of the psychological cost of war, they are only aware of the monetary cost or the personal gains they get from war. Tim O 'Brien addresses the true cost of war in "The Things They Carried". O 'Brien suggests that psychological trauma caused by war warps the perception of life in young Americans drafted into the Vietnam War. He does this through Lieutenant
their families who have suffered from war's visible and unseen effects. Some are still suffering to this day. The issues and ramifications which constitute their suffering will be examined in this
An emotional burden that the men must carry is the longing for their loved ones. The Vietnam War forced many young men to leave their loved ones and move halfway across the world to fight a ...
Erich Maria Remarque's classic war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with the many ways in which World War I affected people's lives, both the lives of soldiers on the front lines and the lives of people on the homefront. One of the most profound effects the war had was the way it made the soldiers see human life. Constant killing and death became a part of a soldier's daily life, and soldiers fighting on all sides of the war became accustomed to it. The atrocities and frequent deaths that the soldiers dealt with desensitized them to the reality of the vast quantities of people dying daily. The title character of the novel, Paul Bäumer, and his friends experience the devaluation of human life firsthand, and from these experiences they become stronger and learn to live as if every day were their last.
...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam 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.
In every epic story, the center of attention will be on the epic hero. Usually all the epic heroes have some kind of special power, which keep them different from other characters. Later on, their epic journey these powers, help them to win the glory, which make them epic heroes. In Beowulf, Beowulf is truly an epic hero, because of his wisdom, strength and bravery.
When Paul is about to go on his leave, he visits with his fellow soldiers and thinks to himself, “I will be away for six weeks - that is lucky, of course, but what may happen before I get back? Shall I meet all these fellows again?” (Remarque 152). Paul is fearing that his comrades will die in the war as he is on leave. Remarque utilizes this fear to show Paul’s true comradery with his friends and to show that a soldier has far more to worry about than himself in the war; a soldier always has friends to worry about. On top of that, Paul is worried about his mother and even says, “...how can it be that I must part from you...we have so much to say, and we shall never say it” (Remarque 184). Paul understands that he will most likely die in the war, and therefore, he dreads leaving his mother. Remarque adds this detail in to express how war often causes far more grief than ever thought of before. He uses it to show that war takes away much more than a man’s body, that it also takes away a man’s mind, and destroys his family with grief. With only a few ties to reality, Paul must fight through the cloudedness in his mind as well as the war.
Bracken, Patrick and Celia Petty (editors). Rethinking the Trauma of War. New York, NY: Save the Children Fund, Free Association Books, Ltd, 1998.
Many individuals look at soldiers for hope and therefore, add load to them. Those that cannot rationally overcome these difficulties may create Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tragically, some resort to suicide to get away from their insecurities. Troops, notwithstanding, are not by any means the only ones influenced by wars; relatives likewise encounter mental hardships when their friends and family are sent to war. Timothy Findley precisely depicts the critical impact wars have on people in his novel by showing how after-war characters are not what they were at the beginning.