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Impact of world war 2 on american literature
Wars effect on literature
Impact of world war 2 on american literature
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In the Chapter “A Night” from Hospital Sketches, Louisa May Alcott describes her typical night as a nurse during the Civil War. Though Alcott did serve as a nurse in the Civil War for a brief period of time “A Night” is a fictional story of what Alcott actually experienced. A major part of this chapter has to do with the fictitious wounded soldier named John. Although many readers may just see John as Alcott’s idea of a perfect man, I argue that John is more than what is described, Instead, John is an allegory for a higher power. John, given the state he is in, is unrealistically perfect and provides a light to many wounded in the darkness of war. First off, John is described differently compared to the rest of the patients. Alcott uses many descriptive metaphors when describing the patients, she cares to. She describes them as “Harmless ghosts”, “goblins”, and “babies”. By using these comparisons, Alcott sees these patients as hopeless and weak. “Goblin’s “and “harmless ghosts” foreshadow the eventual deaths of the patients and babies describe their states of mind. In …show more content…
John’s death didn’t just affect Alcott, it affected everyone. Just before John’s death “one by one, the men woke, and round the room appeared a circle of pale faces and watchful eyes, full of awe and pity; for, though a stranger, John was beloved by all” (9). Being loved by all says a lot about John and the way he was able to influence people he hardly knew. Most of the wounded soldiers only knew John for a short period of time, but his character had the ability to bring people together in many people’s darkest hours. A higher power serves a rock for most people. It is someone they can lean on when there is no one else. John served as that rock for many wounded soldiers and each one of them will remember him because of
Night Waitress by Lynda Hull is a poem that describes the feelings of a waitress that works the night shift of a diner Reflection of “Night Waitress” “Night Waitress” by Lynda Hull is a poem that describes the feelings of a waitress that works the night shift of a diner. The speaker obviously belongs to a lower social class, in the way of income and her occupation. Much like the character in this poem, the speaker in “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake works long, hard hours as a chimneysweeper. These two characters are both related in their ways of life and their classes in our society.
As he immerses his audience into combat with the soldiers, Shaara demonstrates the more emotional aspects of war by highlighting the personal lives of the men fighting. For example, when Shaara reveals the pasts of James Longstreet and Lewis Armistead’s, I started to picture them as the men that they were and not as soldiers out for blood. After suffering a devastating loss of three of his children to fever, Longstreet is tossed into battle. In Armistead’s case, he not only suffered the loss of his wife, but also of a friend fighting on the Union side, General Winfield Scott Hancock. Shaara saves his readers a front row seat to the inner turmoil of General Chamberlain regarding his hindering duty as a soldier clashes with his duty to family as he strived to serve the Union as well as protec...
Owen Meany, on the other hand, is almost the complete opposite of John. He knows that everything that occurs happens for a reason, and that there is no such thing as coincidences. John Irving follows the journey from childhood friendship into adulthood between the two, showing the true meaning of friendship and the impact that Owen has on John. John doesn’t feel a connection with God while growing up, quite possibly because he had changed churches several times as a child, due to his mother and her relations with Reverend Merill. John is characterized as a person lacking to know the very self of him, and he seems to learn from the events that occur around him, rather than to himself.
Through John's interference he turned what was considered a minor case of a chemical imbalance into to full blown schizophrenia. During the turn of the century, which is when this story took place, what scientists knew of the human mind wouldn't fill the inside of a matchbook. This was for certain the case when it was a woman who was the patient. If there was any deviation in the accepted behavior of a woman as deemed by society, the woman was considered hysterical. When dealing with these patients, instead of seriously considering the consequences of their actions, they went along with obscenely stupid notions on how to deal with problems of the mind.
Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy, who tells of his experiences during the Holocaust. Elie is a deeply religious boy whose favorite activities are studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple with his spiritual mentor, Moshe the Beadle. At an early age, Elie has a naive, yet strong faith in God. But this faith is tested when the Nazi's moves him from his small town.
How could one dieny that the mass murder of six million jews never happened? These revisionist, or deniers, like to believe that it never did. Even with the witnesses, photos, buildings and other artifacts left behind, they still believe that the Holocaust is a hoax. The Holocaust deniers are wrong because there are people who have survived that wrote books, there is proof that Jews were being killed, and other evidence and artifacts have been found.
Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, took the time to inform the world about his experiences as a prisoner of Auschwitz during the Holocaust in order for it to never happen again. Wiesel uses a language so unbearably painful yet so powerful to depict his on memories of the Holocaust in order to convey the horrors he managed to survive through. When the memoir begins, Elie Wiesel, a jewish teenager living in the town of Sighet, Transylvania is forced out of his home. Despite warnings from Moshe the Beadle about German prosecutions of Jews, Wiesel’s family and the other townspeople fail to flee the country before the German’s invade. As a result, the entire Jewish population is sent to concentration camps. There, in the Auschwitz death camp, Wiesel is separated from his mother and younger sister but remains with his father. As he struggles to survive against starvation, physical, emotional and spiritual abuse he also looses faith in God. As weeks and months pass, Wiesel battles a conflict between fighting to live for his father or letting him die, giving himself the best chance of survival. Over the course of the memoir, Wiesel’s father dies and he is left with a guilty conscience but a relieved heart because now he can just fend for himself and only himself. A few months later, the Allied soldiers free the lucky prisoners that are left. Although Wiesel survives the concentration camps, he leaves behind his own innocence and is forever haunted by the death and violence he had witnessed. Wiesel and the rest of the prisoners lived in fear every minute of every hour of every day and had to live in a place where there was not one single place that there was no danger of death. After reading Night and Wiesel’s acceptance speech of the Nobe...
Unique in style and content, the novel explores the emotions of a young Civil War recruit named Henry Fleming. What is most remarkable about this classic is that the twenty-four-year-old author had never witnessed war in his life before writing this book. Crane's story developed to some degree out of his reading of war stories by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and the popular memoirs of Civil War veterans, yet he also deviated from these influences in his depiction of war's horror. Critics have noted that his portrait of war is an intensely psychological one, blending elements of naturalism, impressionism, and symbolism. Indeed, he broke away from his American realist contemporaries, including his mentor William Dean Howells, in his naturalistic treatment of man as an amoral creature in a deterministic world.
By sleeping with Abigail Williams he had completely lost his honor and all hope for a reputable reputation, but towards the end of the story, John begins to realize his sins and the mess that has been made by one foolish act. John slowly beings to attempt redemption to his prestige. In the final act of this performance, John has a choice to make; save his own life by signing a confession to witchcraft, or be sentenced to hang if he did not. At first he began to lie, signing the false confession, then he snatched it back, “I have confessed myself! Is there no good penitence but it be public? God does not need my name nailed upon the church! God sees my name; God knows my how black my sins are! It is enough!” John does not want his name and his false confession hanging in public for all to see, his name means too much to him. John also talks about the effects it would have on his sons, “I have three children-how may I teach them to walk like men in the world, and I sold my friends?” In John’s eyes it would be more honorable to die than to hang his lie for all to see. All would know it was a lie, and how could John raise his sons, living a lie? In short, John’s reputation meant more to him than his
In conclusion, Abigail Williams, Mary Warren, and Goody Proctor were responsible for John’s death. This whole mass hysteria that was created was initially because of john, because he wasn’t in love with abigail, so he was bound to be dead. In these type of stories there’s no happy
In “The Wound Dresser,” Walt Whitman describes his experiences as a caretaker to the wounded during the civil war, and the pain and suffering he witnessed. He shares graphic images of what he observed when caring for the wounded. Much like healthcare workers today, Whitman was a servant who with humility cared for those suffering and in pain. “Devotion, sacrifice and compassion” is how Whitman described the way one needs to care for the suffering. This is applicable to h...
...hung from the church’s walls john has ended the pain for his family and John was hung. All the event that occurred showed that John’s action effect the people around him in a positive and negative way, having cheating on his wife had an major effect on his wife and there relationship he completely took away all the trust she had for him, also form being a very selfish man and only caring for himself to a man who gave him life for his wife so that she can live a easier life.
In the Spring of 1944, it was hard to imagine the horrendous acts of terror that would be bestowed on innocent people and the depth of Nazi evil. To Jews in a devout community with Orthodox beliefs and spiritual lifestyles, faith in God and faith in humanity would be shaken to the core as horrific, inhumane acts of torture and suffering were experienced by those in the concentration camps. Since the creation of the world, Jews have often associated darkness (or night) with the absence of God. Consequentially, Elie Wiesel struggled with this as the unimaginable atrocities took place in his life. Although a survivor, he has been haunted with guilt, questioned his faith and developed a lack of trust in humanity as a result of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel entitled his book about the Holocaust, “Night”, because darkness symbolized the evil death camps, and a permanent darkness on the souls of those who survived.
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed”(Wiesel 32). Wiesel uses the symbolism of night to convey the death, the darkness, and the evils that started with the first night. In the memoir Night, Wiesel uses a distinct writing style to express what he went through, how he changed and how it affected the rest of his life, while in the concentration camps, during the Holocaust. He uses techniques like irony, imagery, symbolism, and a poetic syntax to describe his story of surviving the Holocaust. By applying these techniques, Wiesel projects a tone of bitterness, confusion and grief into his story. Through his writing Wiesel gives us a window into the complete abandonment of reason he adopted and lived in during the Holocaust.
In the end we find out that John had not raped and killed the two little girls he was found with, but instead he had happened upon them and tried to bring them back to life; only it was too late. Seeing the fantastical nature of the situation the guards who knew the truth were unable to free John of the charges he was facing and they had to kill him anyways.