English IV
The Controversy of War Before World War II was about to break out, a novel named The Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, vividly explained a young woman’s experiences and thoughts about World War I, was published. Brittain wrote her autobiography to protest the continuation of future wars and to prevent deaths of innocent human beings, such as the deaths of her brother, her fiance, and her dear friend. Because Brittain lost the men closest and dearest to her, Brittain has a bias towards war and prefers no war at all. Also, Brittain is a pacifist, thus adding to her bias against war and her opinions on how to settle disputes nonviolently. After all of the losses that Brittain had to live through, Brittain allowed her personal beliefs
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Brittain’s brother did in fact convince their father to allow her to go to Oxford College after much persuading. While in her first year at Oxford, World War I was declared and Brittain’s brother and significant other enlisted into the army. Brittain became so lonely and worried about them that she left and became a voluntary aid detachment (VAD). Throughout her adventures as a VAD, Brittain was always worried about her loved ones and felt closer to them the closer she got to the front lines. Brittain first lost her fiance, then her dear friend (who was not even supposed to be in the war), and then her brother. Of course the losses of any loved one would be devastating, but losing three would be nearly impossible to continue. But Brittain did continue on and return back to Oxford after the war was over, later graduating and becoming a successful …show more content…
Brittain suffered many losses, amongst the loss of her youth, her loved ones, and her ignorance, but the loss of her loved ones seemed to upset Brittain the most throughout The Testament Of Youth. Guilt seeps throughout Brittain’s veins as she never can forget her first love and her brother, so Brittain writes to try to make all of the lost lives of World War I meaningful. Brittain pleads, “What you have striven for will not end in nothing, all that you have done and been will not be wasted, for it will be a part of me as long as I live, and I shall remember, always,” (Brittain 200). Brittain is talking about her past loved ones and how they all wanted to be remembered and honored by serving for their country. Sadly, Brittain’s generation is known as the “Lost Generation”, where so many men died at such a young age that many were not recovered or individually receive honor. Because many men were lost and forgotten, Brittain feels a sense of urgency to always remember her past loved ones, thus she incorporates them into her writings. This type of writing can be very emotional and positioned, thus causing less facts to be introduced. With less facts being introduced, more emotions are poured into Brittain’s writing desperately trying to honor her brother and fiance. Along with emotions comes bias, thus proving that Brittain used more emotions than facts and cleverly created a persuasive
In John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, characters Gene and Phineas begin their journeys to adulthood in a war torn environment. The dynamic formed between a world full of struggle and the crucial age of development in high school proves to be an excellent setting to examine the abilities of both Gene and Phineas to “come of age.” Being a Bildungsroman, the theme of coping with war and death is highlighted via the imagery that surrounds both Gene’s epiphany moment at the marble stairs, and its introduction at the beginning of the novel. Additionally, Knowles employs a flashback to set a nostalgic and somewhat reflective mood, which further extends this meaning. In Knowles’ “coming of age” novel A Separate Peace, the use of imagery surrounding the marble stairs, and a reminiscent flashback aid Gene is discovering that war and death can never be understood.
[4] From the memoirs of J.B Gent a Child in the war who lived on
In the book “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien uses imagery, figurative language and repetition to convey his message. O’Brien’s purpose for story telling, is to clear his conscience of war and to tell the stories of soldiers who were forgotten by society. Many young men were sent to war, despite opposing it. They believed it was “wrong” to be sent to their deaths. Sadly, no one realizes a person’s significance until they die. Only remembering how they lived rather than acknowledging their existence when they were alive.
The Young People of Today, a series of opinion polls conducted among young educated Frenchmen by Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde find romantic sentiments for war much like von Treitschke. The two authors interviewed a professor who tried to explain that there were in fact unjust wars, however, according to the professor, “the class obviously did not follow me; they rejected that distinction” (Massis and de Tarde 224). Massis and de Tarde go on to write about the many young men who left their high studies to pursue lives as soldiers because for them “it is not enough, for them to learn history: they are making it” (Massis and de Tarde 224).
Pat Barker's riveting World War I novel Regeneration brilliantly exemplifies the effectiveness of fiction united with historical facts. While men aspired to gain glory from war and become heroes, Regeneration poignantly points out that not all of war was glorious. Rather, young soldiers found their aspirations prematurely aborted due to their bitter war experiences. The horrible mental and physical sicknesses, which plagued a number of soldiers, caused many men to withdraw from the battlefield. Feelings of guilt and shame haunted many soldiers as they found themselves removed from the heat of war. Men, however, were not the only individuals to experience such feelings during a time of historical upheaval. Women, too, found themselves at war at the dawn of a feminine revolution. One of the most contentious topics of the time was the practice of abortion, which comes to attention in chapter 17 on pages 202 and 203 of Barker's novel. Through Baker's ground-breaking novel, we learn how men and women alike discovered that in life, not all aspirations are realized; in fact, in times of conflict, women and men both face desperate situations, which have no definite solutions. Illustrated in Barker's novel by a young woman named Betty, and many broken soldiers, society's harsh judgments worsen the difficult circumstances already at hand.
Thinking that the war was just an ideal character. Convincing the reader to believe the boys didn't know the risk they were taking by being in this war. They way the boys viewed it, shows that, true their are some hard times in wars, but their minds are young and they thought it was just another thing to talk about. When they should have been taking things more serious, but thinking about the good parts helped them to keep a hold on their sanity. "They ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress to the future", was the beliefs of the boys after their friend Behn dies. Their generation thought that the authorities were going to look after, and take care of them, the authorities were thought of real highly by them. Until their friend passed away, then everything changed. "We had to realize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs", this is where they came to reality that, everybody was taking care of their selves, and didn't want anything to do with other peoples problems.
...s, demonstrated through the author's talent, are denouncing the authority figures who were supposed to guide his generation into adulthood but instead turned the youth against each other in the pursuit of superficial ideals. The soldiers were simply the victims of a meaningless war.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, is a novel that shows all of the horrible things and situations that occurred in WWI. It also talks about “the lost generation” that in fact WWI produced. The main character Paul Baumer and his fellow friends, had spent times listening to their teacher Kantorek's speeches. He talked about how it was the boys' “duty or job” to go out and b patriotic and help fight in the war. All in All the decisions that they had made at this time, still had them pondering on the outcomes their lives would have.
Jones, Peter G, War and the Novelist: Appraising the American war Novel. University of Missouri Press, 1976. 5-6. Rpt. in Literary Themes for Students, War and Peace. Ed. Anne Marie Hacht. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 449-450. Print.
In 1916 the United States was amidst the first of the World Wars. Keller hoped to rally people to “Strike against all ordinances and laws and institutions that continue the slaughter of peace and the butcheries of war. Strike against war” (). To promote pacifism, she insisted that it was the American citizen who is responsible for the destruction of war and that there is no purpose for the United States to join the war. Keller’s audience was the average American citizen, anyone who could cast a legal vote, but particularly parents and workers. Several times throughout her speech she referenced children, factory workers. The Women’s Peace Party and the Labor Forum were present.
...opted children. When the war ended, many children did not return to their biological families because they were so young when they were stolen that they didn’t know the truth. Many that could remember were too scared to leave or feared that their parents had already been killed. Children were trained to lie without understanding why and the lies caused them to lose the ability to separate reality from fiction. Children should never have been forced to deal with so much, so quickly. They were robbed of a real childhood when they should have been encouraged to explore their surroundings. The youth, like Anne, who grew up in World War II were tainted by these events and have undergone much more trauma than most of us can even imagine.
In her article “Thought’s on Peace in an Air Raid (1940),” Virginia Woolf speaks on the stipulations of being a woman and the emancipation from mental fear in the Second World War. As the German’s use of power causes a sense of intimidation, there is a great aspiration for a unified peace amongst all. Woolf recaptures the traumatic experiences and effects of this war. She speaks on unification: those that should come together and put their minds to great use to help devise solutions in light of great turmoil. She also addresses the physical responsibilities of war as it relates especially to women. Though Woolf speaks a lot about women in this article, the idea is that she wants these women to be catalysts to a greater cause: awakening minds and being an aspiration to others. The mind is a very powerful thing: it holds no restrictions and can be both destructive and victorious. This article is clever in its emphasis to awaken and enlightening minds to conceive the necessity for change for the benefit of all mankind.
Although there were many different individual and group experiences during and after the war, “the generation of 1914” may be used to collectively regard the suffering and sacrifice that all participants of this “generation” endured. Both Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth and Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That express a common theme of suffering, sacrifice, and the betrayal of their generation. Brittain wrote extensively about her generation’s loss and endurance of so many physical and mental hardships. Parents sacrificed sons, wives sacrificed husbands, and soldiers sacrificed their lives. Much of Europe had to endure under a constant atmosphere of death, loss, and other hardships, like food shortages, and military occupations. This suffering was an important element in Brittain’s definition of her generation. She wrote that if her fiancé had been of the postwar generation she could not have married him, because “a gulf wider than any decade divides those who experienced the War as adults...
A Testament of Youth says, “one-tenth of the physical and psychological shock that the Great War caused to the Modern Girl of 1914” (Williams and Bostridge 45). The women in Vera Brittain’s generation were greatly impacted during the Great War. These women were not allowed to attend college to further their education, go to work out in public, because the bourgeois society saw women to be the stay at home house wife. The book Testament of Youth states, “habitually quiet and respected citizens struggled like wolves for the provisions in the food shops, and vented upon the distract assistants their dismay at learning that all prices had suddenly gone up” (Williams and Bostridge 96). The society had a hard time grocery shopping at their local food shops because their food shops decided to move the food around differently in the store. The food shops did this so the society would not realize that the prices had increased because of the major war causing inflation. The worldview of the war affected Vera’s generation negatively. The Testament of Youth mentions, “the war, we decided, came the hardest of all upon us who were young” (Williams and Bostridge 129). The youth in Vera’s generation grew up living in the disaster of present war which caused many of the youth to lose their happiness. This war was hard for the young to accept because many did not want to see father’s leave to go and fight not knowing whether he would come back
...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.