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The theme of love essay
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Dissaccosication Dissociation is the disconnection or separation of something from something else or the state of being disconnected. Dissociation often occurs when people separate themselves from reality or a certain situation that they just don’t want to face. Being dissociated is like a mouse hiding out and waiting for the cat to leave; it’s like a person watching their own life through a lense. You’re living your life but you are not really apart of it, the theme of dissociation is exemplified in the two short stories: The Veldt by Ray Bradbury and For Esme with love.. by J.D Salinger. The parents in The Veldt and Sorgent X in For Esme with love and squalor exemplifies the theme of dissociation because they are all oblivious to their surroundings and are so separated from reality. …show more content…
As the story begin Sergeant X is an confident and uplifting man , but it’s towards the middle and end of the story that we see him disassociate from his surroundings and people that like him. For example in the story while everyone was down on the first floor he was up stair on the second smoking and drinking alone separating himself from the rest and using alcohol to numb his pain (J.D Salinger). When an individual chooses to isolate themselves from their surroundings and people, they become lonely and pained and they would use anything to numb the pain. For Sergeant X he begins to separate himself from everyone as he is at war.There is also a sense that Sergeant X is isolated from those around him. Despite being in England with sixty other soldiers, at no stage of the story does X socialize with any of his fellow soldiers . Even when he does socialize, for example with Clay, he doesn’t enjoy his company (J.D Salinger). This shows a great deal of disassociation and how the build up of isolation can affect you as a person without
“We did not break down, but adapted ourselves” These soldiers know that modern warfare is extremely complicated and demands knowledge and experience. They learn how the differentiate shell sounds, when to take cover, when it’s safe to take off your gas mask, how to tell shrapnel from high explosives. It is shown through the naive and inexperienced recruits that not knowing and applying this knowledge is fatal. Some soldiers call on their innermost animal instincts to allow them to kill mercilessly on the field, using the assistance of a metaphor Remarque writes “We are dead men with no feelings, who are able by some trick to keep on running and keep on killing.” Granted war is a barbaric affair, ironically sometimes the worst of conditions can bring out the best in people. This is through the form of comrade and mate ship. On the field fellow soldiers would provide mutual support for each other and create extremely tight bonds. This is shown in All Quiet on the Western Front through Paul and his tight nit platoon. Paul’s unique experience with mate ship is how especially close he is with his friend Kat. This is expressed in the recounting of when they stole and cooked a goose together. Remarque writes “We don't talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have.” This shows how mate ship was
He arrives back at his town, unused to the total absence of shells. He wonders how the populations can live such civil lives when there are such horrors occurring at the front. Sitting in his room, he attempts to recapture his innocence of youth preceding the war. But he is now of a lost generation, he has been estranged from his previous life and war is now the only thing he can believe in. It has ruined him in an irreversible way and has displayed a side of life which causes a childhood to vanish alongside any ambitions subsequent to the war in a civil life. They entered the war as mere children, yet they rapidly become adults. The only ideas as an adult they know are those of war. They have not experienced adulthood before so they cannot imagine what it will be lie when they return. His incompatibility is shown immediately after he arrives at the station of his home town. ”On the platform I look round; I know no one among all the people hurrying to and fro. A red-cross sister offers me something to drink. I turn away, she smiles at me too foolishly, so obsessed with her own importance: "Just look, I am giving a soldier coffee!"—She calls me "Comrade," but I will have none of it.” He is now aware of what she is
Away from the front lines, soldiers are perceived and act as individuals, however, when pulled to the front, they come together creating and inseparable bond of camaraderie. Remarque’s All Quite on the Western Front illustrates the true content of war. The soldiers of the front lines fought with a common purpose, putting aside other desires and denying personal needs, creating a flagrant bond of camaraderie. Through this camaraderie Paul Baumer finds life on the front lines bearable, as we see in the relationships the soldiers share. Through Paul’s protection of his comrades, the family like relationship between the soldiers and the development of a close bond during free time, Remarque shows that the most important aspect of war is undoubtedly camaraderie.
Many times throughout the story the tone of the narrator, Sergeant X, is scornful and sarcastic. For example, in the beginning, he wants to attend Esmes's wedding in England; unfortunately he is convinced by his wife not to go. Although he calls his wife "breathtaking and level headed" we learn later when asked if he was "deeply in love" with his wife, he does not answer. Furthermore, Sergeant X receives letters from his wife during the war and she only complains about her trivial problems in America. She does not ask about his well being at war. Also, he comments how he does not see his mother in law very often and "that she's not getting any younger." She also asks for some cashmere yarn to be sent home and she too does not inquire about his welfare. We see that these two characters are depicted as selfish and very apathetic, because of the sarcastic tone set by the narrator.
The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is one of O'Brien's predominant themes in his novel. By consciously selecting very descriptive details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants. One of the soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. . .The Thumb was dark brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen"(O'Brien 13). Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war makes him into a very hard-mannered, emotionally devoid soldier, carrying about a severed finger as a trophy, proud of his kill. The transformation shown through Bowler is an excellent indicator of the psychological and emotional change that most of the soldiers undergo. To bring an innocent young man from sensitive to apathetic, from caring to hateful, requires a great force; the war provides this force. However, frequently are the changes more drastic. A soldier named "Ted Lavender adopted an orphaned puppy. . .Azar strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device"(O'Brien 39). Azar has become demented; to kill a puppy that someone else has adopted is horrible. However, the infliction of violence has become the norm of behavior for these men; the fleeting moment of compassion shown by one man is instantly erased by another, setting order back within the group. O'Brien here shows a hint of sensitivity among the men to set up a startling contrast between the past and the present for these men. The effect produced on the reader by this contrast is one of horror; therefore fulfilling O'Brien's purpose, to convince the reader of war's severely negative effects.
In Hemingway’s short story “Soldier’s Home”, Hemingway introduces us to a young American soldier, that had just arrived home from World War I. Harold Krebs, our main character, did not receive a warm welcome after his arrival, due to coming home a few years later than most soldiers. After arriving home, it becomes clear that World War I has deeply impacted the young man, Krebs is not the same man that headed off to the war. The war had stripped the young man of his coping mechanism, female companionship, and the ability to achieve the typical American life.
After an event of large magnitude, it still began to take its toll on the protagonist as they often “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die” during the war (O’Brien 1187). The travesties that occurred with the brutality of war did not subside and began to affect those involved in a deeply emotional way. The multitude of disastrous happenings influenced the narrator to develop a psychological handicap to death by being “afraid of dying” although being “even more afraid to show it” (O’Brien 1187). The burden caused by the war creates fear inside the protagonist’s mind, yet if he were to display his sense of distress it would cause a deeper fear for those around him, thus making the thought of exposing the fear even more frightening. The emotional battle taking place in the psyche of the narrator is directly repressed by the war.
Erich Maria Remarque's classic war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with the many ways in which World War I affected people's lives, both the lives of soldiers on the front lines and the lives of people on the homefront. One of the most profound effects the war had was the way it made the soldiers see human life. Constant killing and death became a part of a soldier's daily life, and soldiers fighting on all sides of the war became accustomed to it. The atrocities and frequent deaths that the soldiers dealt with desensitized them to the reality of the vast quantities of people dying daily. The title character of the novel, Paul Bäumer, and his friends experience the devaluation of human life firsthand, and from these experiences they become stronger and learn to live as if every day were their last.
The two classic war novels ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Erich Maria Remarque and ‘Catch 22’ by Joseph Heller both provide a graphic insight into the life of soldiers serving their country in the historic world wars. One distinct theme of interest found in both books, is the way in which war has physically and mentally re-shaped the characters. Remarque creates the character Paul Baümer, a young soldier who exposes anxiety and PTSD (commonly known as Shellshock) through his accounts of WW1’s German army. ‘Catch 22’ however, is written in the third person and omnisciently explores insanity and bureaucracy in an American Bombardier Squadron through its utter lack of logic. The two novels use their structure, characters, symbolism and setting to make a spectacle of the way war re-shapes the soldiers.
While soldiers are often perceived as glorious heroes in romantic literature, this is not always true as the trauma of fighting in war has many detrimental side effects. In Erich Maria Remarque 's All Quiet On The Western Front, the story of a young German soldier is told as he adapts to the harsh life of a World War I soldier. Fighting along the Western Front, nineteen year old Paul Baumer and his comrades begin to experience some of the hardest things that war has to offer. Paul’s old self gradually begins to deteriorate as he is awakened to the harsh reality of World War 1, depriving him from his childhood, numbing all normal human emotions and distancing future, reducing the quality of his life.
After George had turned off the house, the kids began to wish dark and gruesome insults if the house wasn’t turned back on. These insults pressured George to turn the house back on and the children praised him. After this, the kids ran into the nursery, which has changed to Hawaii, and stayed there all night. In the morning, George called Peter and Wendy to the kitchen for breakfast but there was no response. George called the kids again but no answer again. This began to worry George and he called out to Lydia. Once again there was no answer and George become even more worried. George ran into the nursery and found the three of them in Hawaii having breakfast. With this discovery, George was relieved and sat with his family for breakfast.
In “The Veldt” I believe that the parents let their kids get addicted to technology and that is why they are dead. In the article Technology Addiction, it states that “ Technology addiction can be defined as frequent and obsessive technology-related behavior increasingly practiced despite negative consequences to the user of the technology. An over-dependence on tech can significantly impact students' lives. While we need technology to survive in a modern social world, a severe overreliance on technology—or an addiction to certain facets of its use—can also be socially devastating. Tech dependence can lead to teen consequences that span from mild annoyance when away from technology to feelings of isolation, extreme anxiety, and depression.”
... could not help themselves, they were not going to be helped. If struggle were encountered, men had personalized ways to reconnect with the real world, and if a tragedy were encountered which affected the entire company, they also found a combined way to cope with this pressure. The priorities of men during the war shifted greatly toward emotional connections to people and events other than the war, and it was these connections that helped them survive and return home. Coping with the stress and burden of war is not an easy task for anyone, yet in The Things they Carried, O'Brien depicts men dealing and coping as much as they can, using only their primeval resources. They learn how to cope with the barest necessities in life, and they learn how to make use of the smallest opportunities to obtain the most relief and joy from every moment in life.
“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another (263).” Powerful changes result from horrifying experiences. Paul Baumer, the protagonists of Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front utters these words signifying the loss of his humanity and the reduction to a numbed creature, devoid of emotion. Paul’s character originates in the novel as a young adult, out for an adventure, and eager to serve his country. He never realizes the terrible pressures that war imposes on soldiers, and at the conclusion of the book the empty shell resembling Paul stands testament to this. Not only does Paul lose himself throughout the course of the war, but he loses each of his 20 classmates who volunteered with him, further emphasizing the terrible consequences of warfare. The heavy psychological demands of life in the trenches and the harsh reality of war strip Paul of his humanity and leave him with a body devoid of all sentiment and feeling.
The story Veldt was about a family called the Hadley's. In this story it's just the parents, George and Lydia Hadley, and their kids, Peter and Wendy Hadley. Their house is basically run as a technologically driven house. They had a nursery in their house and they would here screams and yells, from upstairs and would go to go check it out, but there was nothing there. The nursery had basically run like if you were to imagine something, the thought or imagination in your head would come to life in that room. Lydia, mother of Peter and Wendy, told George get a physiologist, but George thought it’ll be fine. They eventually get the psychologist and there is was nothing wrong with it. The family kept hearing things so the parents decided to go