In Frank O’Connor’s “Guests of the Nation,” the narrator, called Bonaparte by his fellow rebels, recounts his reluctant role in the execution of two English soldiers in retaliation for the slaughter of four Irish rebels. O'Connor develops this conflict between revolutionary attitudes in the strained relationship between the narrator and Jeremiah Donovan, the experienced rebel, who has the responsibility for fulfilling the Second Battalion’s order to shoot the prisoners. The young revolutionary Bonaparte discovers, in his imprudent acceptance of group values, evil within himself. Against his ideal of actions appropriate to him as an individual, Bonaparte and his fellow-revolutionary Noble, at the insistence of their superior officer who contends that their duty as soldiers demands the executions, participate in the murder of two English hostages who have lived among them as friends for many months. For both young men, their action is a profound betrayal of soul.
The narrative employs a first-person participant point of view to dramatize the irony. The protagonist, Bonaparte’s narration occurs far in the future, distanced by many years from the event he recounts; the vividness and immediacy of his story indicates the extent to which he has been marked forever by his early experience. The older Bonaparte presents himself as a young soldier comfortable with his prisoners, only gradually coming to perceive that these friends may have to be killed.
O’Connor begins the story in a misleading way. The opening paragraph establishes both that the men are becoming "chums" (the word becomes ironic as their friendship is torn apart) and that they spend a good deal of time playing cards, an activity that not only breaks down the military barr...
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...reviously held, alienated from his own people including from his sympathetic comrade Noble and the old woman in whose house they were staying; alienated from both earth and heaven, and “the birds and the bloody stars” (O’Connor 5). The cozy dusk that opens the narrative gives way to darkness. The pleasant community of banter and card playing is replaced by isolation. The young soldier, who felt like an adult at the beginning of the narrative, feels “very small and very lost and lonely like a child astray in the snow” at the end. (O’Connor 5). The last sentence, “And anything that ever happened to me after I never felt the same about again,” indicates the permanent break between the narrator’s morally comfortable youth and his present pain. He is left feeling isolated from the nation in whose cause he murdered both an enemy-friend and his own youthful patriotic self.
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.
O Brien 's point of view is an accurate one as he himself because he is a Vietnam veteran. The title of the short story is meaningful because it describes each soldier’s personality and how he handles conflict within the mind and outside of the body during times of strife. The title fits the life as a soldier perfectly because it shows the reality that war is more than just strategy and attacking of forces. O’Brien narrates the story from two points of view: as the author and the view of the characters. His style keeps the reader informed on both the background of things and the story itself at the same
This internal battle to transform the war mindset of a soldier to the norms of society is exemplified through Norman’s actions. First, this is displayed through the situation at the Drive Thru. Norman’s distance from society is shown when he attempts to order from Mama’s Burgers, but does it incorrectly, as the procedure has evolved. This evolution reflects the transformation of the world that occurred while Norman was in the war. Thus, when he returns he is stuck in the past, and not confident in how to proceed into the future. This disparity with time is again echoed with Norman’s compulsion of guessing the time. This symbolizes that he is mentally frozen in time, unable to adapt. In addition, while Norman drives through his town, he sees a change in the lake. “The lake had divided into two halves. One half still glistened, the other was caught in shadow.” (O’Brien, 150). This division among the lake represents the divide Norman saw among the world he lived in as he attempted to adhere to the norms of society. The glistening half of the lake represents the life outside of the war, shining and drawing attention. Meanwhile, the side caught in the shadows depicts the side of Norman that is still within the war, hidden in darkness, unpresentable. Additionally, this reflects the silence that Norman was forced into about his memories of the war. His thoughts had to be hidden in the darkness. This is reinforced as Norman imagines telling several people, such as his Dad, Sally Gustafson, and the voice over the intercom, his story about almost receiving the Silver Star award. However, he does not. “He could not talk about it and never would. The evening was smooth and warm.” (O’Brien, 153). In his suicide itself, this oath of silence is present. Norman left no note and no explanation. Overall, Norman’s death raises the issue of
O’Brien has many characters in his book, some change throughout the book and others +are introduced briefly and change dramatically during their time in war and the transition to back home after the war. The way the characters change emphasises the effect of war on the body and the mind. The things the boys have to do in the act of war and “the things men did or felt they had to do” 24 conflict with their morals burning the meaning of their morals with the duties they to carry out blindly. The war tears away the young’s innocence, “where a boy in a man 's body is forced to become an adult” before he is ready; with abrupt definiteness that no one could even comprehend and to fully recover from that is impossible.
Imagine being in an ongoing battle where friends and others are dying. All that is heard are bullets being shot, it smells like gas is near, and hearts race as the times goes by. This is similar to what war is like. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator, Paul Baumer, and his friends encounter the ideals of suffering, death, pain, and despair. There is a huge change in these men; at the beginning of the novel they are enthusiastic about going into the war. After they see what war is really like, they do not feel the same way about it. During the war the men experience many feelings especially the loss of loved ones. These feelings are shown through their first experience at training camp, during the actual battles, and in the hospital.
Lyons, Martin. Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution. London: Macmillen, 1994. Print.
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.
...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.
The author’s purpose is to also allow the audience to understand the way the guards and superintendent felt towards the prisoners. We see this when the superintendent is upset because the execution is running late, and says, “For God’s sake hurry up, Francis.” And “The man ought to have been dead by this time.” This allows the reader to see the disrespect the authority has towards the prisoners.
In the story “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, the reader is enlightened about a boy who was mentally and emotionally drained from the horrifying experiences of war. The father in the story knows exactly what the boy is going through, but he cannot help him, because everyone encounters his or her own recollection of war. “When their faces are contorted from sucking the cigarette, there is an unmistakable shadow of vulnerability and fear of living. That gesture and stance are more eloquent than the blood and guts war stories men spew over their beers” (Zabytko 492). The father, as a young man, was forced to reenact some of the same obligations, yet the father has learne...
Several stories into the novel, in the section, “How to tell a true war story”, O’Brien begins to warn readers of the lies and exaggerations that may occur when veterans tell war stories.
O’Brien’s unique verisimilitude writing style fills the novel with deep meaning and emotion. Analyzing the novel through a psychological lens only adds to its allure. Understanding why characters act the way they do helps bring this novel to life. The reader begins to empathize with the characters. Every day, the soldiers’ lives hang in the balance. How these soldiers react to life-threatening situations will inspire the reader. Life has an expiration date. Reading about people who are held captive by their minds and who die in the name of war, will inspire the reader to live everyday as if they are currently in the
Sassoon shows many examples of how the soldier in this poem gets pulled back into war-like terrors by meaningless things. The soldier is simply sitting in his home yet gets flashbacks of war and it haunts him. In this poem Sassoon is using a soldier as the example of repression as someone who has experienced war and the impacts it has on life after. “The poetic evolution related directly to Sassoon 's war experiences was initially gradual. His poetry became more serious and evocative in the early days of the war, but continued to inhabit the fatal logic of soldierly glory in poetic uniform” Avi Matalon claims (30). Poetry was influenced greatly by World War I and left poets creating new pieces that they never would have imagined
The detailed descriptions of the dead man’s body show the terrible costs of the war in a physical aspect. O’Brien’s guilt almost takes on its own rhythm in the repetition of ideas, phrases, and observations about the man’s body. Some of the ideas here, especially the notion of the victim being a “slim, young, dainty man,” help emphasize O’Brien’s fixation on the effects of his action—that he killed someone who was innocent and not meant to be fighting in the war. At the same time, his focus on these physical characteristics, rather than on his own feelings, betrays his attempt to keep some distance in order to dull the pain. The long, unending sentences force the reader to read the deta...
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...