The romanticism of war is separate and opposite of romanticism for life. They cannot exist at the same time. War stands for death and destruction and life is the opposite. There is a constant clash between the love of decency: courage and devotion to your fellow men, and the love of life free of the horrors of war. War, and all things that propel war, is inherently evil. Beliefs in heroism, honor, and dignity are all idealistic. To the soldier on the field of battler their sole purpose is self-preservation. The only way that soldiers can persevere through the God awful shitty mess of war is through the brotherhood between the soldiers. This bond does not negate the hypocrisy of war; instead, it allows the men to survive it. The brotherhood is love for the sake of self-preservation. At its core, war dehumanizes people and one cannot have love for life if they are less than human. War is a machine that extracts young men and women from reality. It twists their morals until they do not know what is right or wrong. This level of dehumanization and objectification is clearly argued in Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July: “He had never been anything but a thing to them, a thing to put a uniform on and train to kill, a young thing to run through the meat-grinder, a cheap small nothing thing to make mincemeat out of” (165). War is the “meat-grinder.” Soldiers only matter because they can kill. War tears apart the people fighting it. Coming out of the war Kovic does not know what to do. He is lost. This aimless feeling is similar to the experiences of Jake and the Gang in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. The protagonist, Jake Barnes, and his entourage wander the streets of Paris and Madrid with no purpose. After war, the real w... ... middle of paper ... ...not applicable in reality. This a problem that Jake, in The Sun Also Rises, faces. He does not like his friend group, he is jealous of Cohn and he despises Mike. He stays with them, not out of friendship, but because they share the experience of war. Because of this, the bonds forged have no real value outside of war. In some ways, this brotherhood is detrimental to the soldiers. It follows them for the rest of their life. They can never forget their pain of war. More importantly, they cannot fully accept reality after war because they are surrounded by people stuck in the same absurd world of war. It is hard to extract oneself from this absurd reality if it constantly follows them. The so-called “love” between soldiers allows them to preserve on the battlefield, but it is yet another hypocrisy of war because it maintains the absurd reality that they are trapped in.
In the typical love-war story the soldier would go off to war, fighting for his country, to later return safely to his family typically unscaved. Worst case scenario for these types of stories is the soldier loses a limb or eye.
History has caused us, as the human race, to subconsciously assume that War is seen to be a product of death, destruction and hatred, a need to seek revenge on those who started the war. That, throughout time, war has been considered meaningful. Is War meaningful or is it better to be seen as meaningless? Were the three most well-known wars of history, World War 1, World War 2 and the Vietnam War, products of a meaningful event that inevitably killed thousands? Or do we need to realise that the only thing meaningful in regards to War, is the literature written by authors or poets who have experienced War and its devastating effects. That authors like Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote his literary classic “Slaughter House Five” in order to make people realise the true meaning behind war. That all war conveys is an attitude of selfishness and arrogance, a product of slavery and victimisation. This is also evident in not just “Slaughter House Five”, but in Joseph Heller’s novel, “Catch 22”. Both these two novels show different but similar viewpoints of war, by emphasising the concerns and ideas of the time periods in which these two novels were written. Today, you are joined with me, Sarah Day, here at the Brisbane
They enter the war fresh from school, knowing nothing except the environment of hopeful youth and they come to a premature maturity with the war, their only home. "We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. We are not youth any longer" (page #). They have lost their innocence. Everything they are taught, the world of work, duty, culture, and progress, are not the slightest use to them because the only thing they need to know is how to survive.
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain ...
What does war do to a man? It destroys his inner being; it crushes hope; it kills him. Experiencing battle leaves only the flesh of a man, for he no longer has a personality; it leaves a wasteland where a vast field of humanity once was. Through the main character, Paul Baumer, the reader experiences the hardships and consequences of war. During the course of the war, Paul reflects on how the young men involved in the war have no future left for them, they've become a "lost generation." Paul feels that his generation has "become a wasteland" because the war has made him into a thoughtless animal, because he knew nothing before the war, and because the war has shown the cheapness of human life.
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
In a world of chaos and conflict the value of society is often demeaned. Warfare affects the difficulty of coping mechanisms and leads to isolation and abandonment. Both in Earnest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and in J.G.Ballard’s “Empire of the Sun” the protagonists are distraught and torn by warfare. “The Sun Also Rises” follows the journey of Jake Barnes a post-World War one veteran whereas “Empire of the Sun” follows the journey and maturation of a young boy during the time period of World War two. Throughout both stories, warfare experiences and situations psychologically and emotionally distress the protagonist’s and are leading factors as to how they’re dehumanized. When it comes to the genuine components of the stories, specifically the change in trauma, loss of innocence, dilemma in character vs character, and the life transition construct theme and conflict.
Tom Brokaw called the people who lived through World War II (WWII) “The Greatest Generation”, where he shares many heroic war stories in The Greatest Generation. The classic character displayed in the book was a decorated war veteran who returned to the United States (US) and developed a prosperous lifestyle. The WWII veterans came to symbolize strength, honor, unity, justice, success, and noble sacrifice. This image was portrayed through literature and film. Books and movies created an image of the WWII veterans which the US would idolize. Popular culture gave the war a romantic appeal. People fell in love with the idea that the US was liberating Europe from the Nazi Hun and the evil Japanese Empire. After the war, men came back to marry their sweethearts and had several children who were called the Baby Boomers. This romanticism continued through television shows like Leave it to Beaver and literary titles similar to Dick and Jane, which dominated popular culture. Though popular culture defined the perfect life, the lifestyle was not typical for the average American.
War. When the word is said, what immediately comes to one’s mind is a battlefield; blaring guns, generals screaming orders as planes roar overhead, with soldiers watching as their comrades have unimaginably gruesome deaths. The same is expected for a novel about war. The main character is enlisted and goes through all of the aforementioned things and then some. However, one book does not fit under this stereotype. Even though a huge theme in this novel is war, not a single gun is fired throughout the entire story. Not only that, but the main character does not share his time in the war until the last few pages of the book. This is because the novel accurately depicts the effects of an actual war instead of a romanticized version of one. By showing the impact of war on
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.
For many, war has quite an ugly face, yet there are those who seem to view war through rose petal spectacles, hear of its successes in lullabies and speak of its necessity with words dripping with honey. During the eighteenth century, a burgeoning art of literature took hold on the populace, it colored reality in such a manner that one would “fall in love” with it – Romanticism, a term loosely applied to literary and artistic movements of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, Romanticism is:
War; petty arguments caused by those in power that lead to sacrificing young men into battle because they had no other choice. Ironically, war destroys those fighting in battle while making the countries proud of their succession. Past wars are reflected upon the soldiers in a horrifying manner because soldiers bear a huge burden upon them. Physical and mental effects transform soldiers and their countries in negative ways. Only a soldier can go through a true horrifying experience in war and not return the same way as he entered. A trigger of hatred and fear is sent to the rest of society after war has occurred. Dramatic transformations after war leave the country and the soldiers in a way in which they never were before.
Intro: Many people are affected by war because of what happens and how they feel during war. The four texts I have studied which portray soldiers in a certain way are ‘Hero of War’ a song by Rise Against, ‘First Blood’ a movie by Ted Kotcheff, ‘Who’s for the game’ a poem by Jessie Pope and ‘Citizen Soldier’ a song by 3 doors down. The portrayal of soldiers is important because people perceive soldiers in different ways. The texts Citizen Soldier and Who’s for the game portray soldiers as being heroic and war in a positive way in comparison to Hero of War and First Blood which show the audience the negative impact on human lives that war can have.
There are often misleading glorified ideas told to people when they first join the war. They are told they will be seen as strong, brave, and somehow immortal. It is seen as a great honor to serve one’s country during war but not everything is as it seems. The gruesome reality of war is often times unacknowledged when recruiting new people. Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce est Decorum et” paints a horrific image of the blood-shed and horror behind war. Owen uses his personal traumas to illustrate the graphic image that is undisclosed when people first join. Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Man He Killed” tells of one man’s experience of killing a man and living with the consequences afterwards. The speaker is forced to attempt to justify his actions to himself.
During times of war love is cultivated and social statuses are eradicated. War wipes away all the concerns with petty things in life while lifting up the values that we hold so strongly to within our hearts and souls. War makes people remember what is truly important in life and gives individuals a sense of purpose. Love and friendship are unbreakable bonds that we as humans cherish. All of the trivial concerns in our civilized world often tend to make us temporarily forget that fact. Love makes us human, especially during times of war when people can seem so inhumane.