The Narrow Road To The Deep North Essay

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan focuses on the life of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. Like many other novels published after World War II, it firmly censures war. Flanagan does not spare the reader any description of the terrible circumstances of war. Unlike several other anti-war novels, however, he depicts the maladies of being a prisoner of war along with the circumstances of combat and post-war impacts. Flanagan also shows the consequences of war on both sides of the conflict. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan is an anti-war novel that focuses on the horrors of was in combat, during capture, and through the rest of a soldier’s life. Although Flanagan does not devote a large part of the novel to it, he shows the horrors of war while in combat. He shows the needless loss of innocent life. Evans, the narrator, recalls a goat that died prematurely during the war. He remembers, “A goat had staggered silently before them, intestines hanging out of its side, ribs exposed, head held high, making no noise, as if it might live through fortitude alone” (66-67). Evans further

Flanagan censures all aspects of war, from combat to the long-lasting psychological impacts. The horrors of war that Flanagan discusses in his novel remain relevant to this day. We must use the atrocities of the past as a mirror for our actions today. Military prisons such as Guantanamo Bay and Okinawa still exist, and if we forget the abhorrent occurrences in Japanese prison camps, we allow the same abuses of power to occur again. If we quickly forget the horrors of war, what will stop us from entering more wars and recreating the same awful circumstances? The consequences of war that Flanagan describes in The Narrow Road to the Deep North will remain relevant through the rest of humanity’s