The Real War Summary

685 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The impact of the holocaust

An article called, “The Real War,” written by Roger J. Spiller, begins with a quote by Walt Whitman, “The real war will never get in the books.” The author writes about an interview with Paul Fussell, who was a soldier in World War Two and has written many books about World War One and World War Two. Fussell is very opinionated and critical about other books written about these wars, asserting they are not realistic or portray the true essence of what really occurred by soldiers and other people participating in the wars. I claim that it is impossible to convey the actual personal feelings and emotions of those involved in a war in books or any other forms of media. There are thousands of books, articles, biographies …show more content…

Fussell states, “If you’ve been in combat more than ten minutes, you know that it is about survival, and it’s about killing in order to survive.” While most people have read or seen news reports on war, unless they were in a situation that Fussell just stated, it is impossible to know how it feels to have to kill someone in order to survive; or have the fear that you may be …show more content…

As time passes, people move on, memories fade, anger and fear often subside. This could be one reason why the information reported on any war becomes sanitized over time. It’s not that the information reported is inaccurate, but the connection to the wartime era being reported diminishes as time elapses and the number of survivors declines. Even if we cannot personally feel their emotions, survivors can still bestow important facts about their personal involvement that historical accounts do not always provide. But unfortunately, not many survivors are still alive from the World Wars. Florence Green, who served in the British Allied armed forces during World War One, died in 2012. She was the last survivor and now there is no one left from that war that can personally provide descriptions of what they saw and felt. As the number of World War Two and Holocaust survivors decline, their impressions of the war will cease also. That is why it is important to document their personal accounts. PBS documentaries and people like Steven Spielberg, who has filmed over 52,000 personal testimonies of Holocaust Survivors, are attempting to provide this type of information as best they

Show More
Related

  • War and Memory in Irene Zabytko?s ?Home Soil?, Bruce Weigl?s ?Song of Napalm?, and Wilfred Owen?s ?Dulce et Decorum Est?

    755 Words  | 2 Pages

    The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.

    Read More

  • The Trauma of War Conveyed in Ninh's Short Story, A Marker on the Side of the Boat and the Film, Barbed Wire and Mandolins

    1810 Words  | 4 Pages

    War is cruel. The Vietnam War, which lasted for 21 years from 1954 to 1975, was a horrific and tragic event in human history. The Second World War was as frightening and tragic even though it lasted for only 6 years from 1939 to 1945 comparing with the longer-lasting war in Vietnam. During both wars, thousands of millions of soldiers and civilians had been killed. Especially during the Second World War, numerous innocent people were sent into concentration camps, or some places as internment camps for no specific reasons told. Some of these people came out sound after the war, but others were never heard of again. After both wars, people that were alive experienced not only the physical damages, but also the psychic trauma by seeing the deaths and injuries of family members, friends or even just strangers. In the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh about the Vietnam War, and the documentary film Barbed Wire and Mandolins directed by Nicola Zavaglia with a background of the Second World War, they both explore and convey the trauma of war. However, the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” is more effective in conveying the trauma of war than the film Barbed Wire and Mandolins because of its well-developed plot with well-illustrated details, and its ability to raise emotional responses from its readers.

    Read More

  • Tim O’ Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story

    602 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many times readers lose interest in stories that they feel are not authentic. In addition, readers feel that fictitious novels and stories are for children and lack depth. Tim O’ Brien maintains that keeping readers of fiction entertained is a most daunting task, “The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination- to vividly imagine and to vividly render extraordinary human events, or sequences of events, is the hard-lifting, heavy-duty, day-by-day, unending labor of a fiction writer” (Tim O’ Brien 623). Tim O’ Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” examines the correlation between the real experiences of war and the art of storytelling. In O’Brien’s attempt to bridge the gap between fiction and non-fiction, the narrator of the story uses language and acts of violence that may be offensive to some.

    Read More

  • Irony in Tim O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story

    2118 Words  | 5 Pages

    O’Brien, Tim. “How To Tell a True War Story.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2003. p. 420-429.

    Read More

  • Essay On Imagery And Irony In All Quiet On The Western Front

    721 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many soldiers who come back from the war need to express how they feel. Many do it in the way of writing. Many soldiers die in war, but the ones who come back are just as “dead.” Many cadets come back with shell shock, amputated arms and legs, and sometimes even their friends aren’t there with them. So during World War I, there was a burst of new art and writings come from the soldiers. Many express in the way of books, poems, short stories and art itself. Most soldiers are just trying to escape. A lot of these soldiers are trying to show what war is really like, and people respond. They finally might think war might not be the answer. This is why writers use imagery, irony and structure to protest war.

    Read More

  • Battleship Potemkin, From Here to Eternity, Saving Private Ryan

    802 Words  | 2 Pages

    Even though the films “Battleship Potemkin”, “From Here to Eternity” and “Saving Private Ryan” are all movies based on military life during war time the variation in time periods and culture made each film very different. These differences did not take away from the impact the films had on their audiences at the time or the messages they were each trying to covey. The Horrific images and hear wrenching scenarios helped to evoke strong emotions and patriotic feeling from audiences allowing film makers to pass along their truths. Thru these films we are magically transported to several dark periods in the world history and left to experience the pain, fear, isolation and ultimately the triumph of these soldiers’ lives.

    Read More

  • Voices from Vietnam

    934 Words  | 2 Pages

    This reader’s rating for this book is average. It is a very well written book but it may not appeal to some people. If the reader was familiar with the war then this would be a wonderful book to read. This reader thought it was interesting but not as enthralling as it should be. The book was mainly made out of quotes or dialogue from the men in the war. This was a very different way of writing but it was interesting. Many of the veterans had interesting stories to tell and how it felt like to be in the war. Overall it was a book to consider if you’re into war stories.

    Read More

  • The War within The War by Timothy Findley

    1727 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Struggles in life is something everyone is faced with whether it is physical, emotional mental or personal struggles. These struggles are capable of shaping an individual’s personality and outlook on life. Timothy Findley’s novel The Wars, shows that struggles lead to the character’s ultimate inner struggles, outer struggles and self-discovery. War exists in a person’s physical and psychological aspects. In The Wars, Robert Ross goes to war and fights a personal and physical battle.

    Read More

  • Photographic Images: Perceptions of War's Pain

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    It was not until the 19th century that a very powerful tool was examine in depth by different viewers, photographic images. In the depression years, war was not seen by others as what war really is, and or what war can do. Some perceived war as an act of heroic action, and were not really aware of the pain that war brought to others remotely. Photographs were and continue to be visual representations of current and history events. In Regarding the Pain of Others, written by Susan Sontang. She analysis many factors in how war is perceived in images/photos by different viewers. Susan Sontang also reacts to a key point word that Woolf ’refers to as “we” when it comes to relating to the pain of others and there experience of this subject.

    Read More

  • Review of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

    1755 Words  | 4 Pages

    He states, "The myth of war is essential to justify the horrible sacrifices required in war, the destruction and death of innocents. It can be formed only by denying the reality of war, by turning the lies, the manipulation, the inhumanness of war into the heroic ideal" (26). Chris Hedges tries to get the point across that in war nothing is as it seems.... ... middle of paper ...

    Read More

  • The Vietnam War In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    1201 Words  | 3 Pages

    “War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead,” (80). In the fiction novel The Things They Carried, the author Tim O’Brien reminisces fighting in the Vietnam War and the aftermath of the war with his platoon mates through short stories and memories. He goes in depth about the emotional trauma and physical battles they face, what they carry, and how Vietnam and war has changed them forever. O’Brien’s stories describe the harsh nature of the Vietnam War, and how it causes soldiers to lose their innocence, to become guilt-ridden and regretful, and to transform into a paranoid shell of who they were before the war.

    Read More

  • What Does O Brien's Purpose Of How To Tell A War Story

    701 Words  | 2 Pages

    As previous passages focus on this idea of emotion, inherent limits of storytelling, and questioning all war stories for its truth, O’Brien ultimately says, “Absolute occurrence is irrelevant” which means truth is not subjected to a nonfictional representation of an event. This concept breaks the boundary between fiction and nonfiction accounts of war as all stories are representations of an experience. However, this experience, according to O’Brien, also does not have to have occurred because it is what the story conveys that represents truth. It is through this convention that allows The Things They Carried to further expand the war story genre by defining truth within a story to include works of

    Read More

  • Theme Of Heroism In A Farewell To Arms

    1145 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the past one hundred years, war has greatly influenced the dark themes that have emerged in storytelling, as well as how an author executes their story’s tone, style, structure. Ever since the world was first exposed to war on a large scale in the 20th century, it has impacted many, especially the soldiers involved. Some of these soldiers, like Kurt Vonnegut and Ernest Hemingway, went on to become war writers. Even though their view of war contrasts, it is also similar in some aspects. Hemingway and Vonnegut both agree that war is atrocious in all ways. An HBO Documentary called Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq supports this belief as well, even though the time span of Hemingway and Vonnegut’s works are at most one hundred years before

    Read More

  • The Great War Analysis

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Great War was the first occurrence in written history to produce such an outpouring of first person testimony about the events of the war by first person observers. For many years, historians distanced themselves from analyzing and questioning the documents produced by these observers of history and just left them at their word. It was not until more recent history that historians have started to question the accounts provided in a scholastic manner of examination. Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker argue that these first person accounts should be taken with a grain of salt because the reader, and the historian for that matter, must remember that trauma such as war has a profound effect on memory, thus these accounts should not necessarily be taken

    Read More

  • The Impact of World Wars on Literature

    690 Words  | 2 Pages

    World wars made a magnificent impact on society. This impact developed a new approach of art, literature, philosophy and religion. For literature, it created a new genre of it about the war. Therefore, the wars had a big affect on the genre and style of novels that became published. Most of what was published then was about the war and it's affects. Authors were disappointed by the experience of war and, although they did not write directly about the war, their writing reflects an anti-authoritarianism that derives from their experiences. Literature has changed to be as we know it today, from the beginning of World War I to the end or World War II.

    Read More

More about The Real War Summary

Open Document