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Wars effect on literature
War's effect on literature
What is the effect of war in literature
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In John Home’s Douglas and James Macpherson’s Fingal, the inheritance of war from fathers to sons, infighting between brothers, and a warrior’s incessant craving for glory, induce distress to those left after the battles have ceased. In the finale of both texts, Lady Randolph and Ossian are left feeling dejected and solitary, albeit Ossian still has the ability to recite the songs of his heroes, allowing them to persist. Lady Randolph’s situation, on the other hand, is truly hopeless as she finds no reason to live after Douglas’ death, so she kills herself. These endings are unequivocally caused by conflict, and although it may seem like there—because of the woe felt by Lady Randolph and Ossian—is a clear anti-war mentality in the texts, in fact there are differing, often contradictory views presented. It is crucial to first examine the views of inheritance, infighting and obtaining glory in order to comprehend the effects upon Lady Randolph and Ossian. Only after an analysis of these topics will it be shown that conflict, ultimately, is a destructive force, inflicting pain upon Lady Randolph and Ossian.
Inheritance is not always predicated on something tangible. Instead, as both texts exhibit, a father’s fate is to be his son’s as well, a concept first encountered in the preface of Douglas when the narrator states, “And ev’ry hero was a hero’s sire. / When powerful fate decreed one warrior’s doom” (Home 157). Society has constructed the belief that war is the highest social position possible, so those whose fathers were of military glory also wish for the same glory. Conflicts are transferred from father to son, illustrated infallibly in this passage from Fingal: “My soul brightens in danger . . . I am of the race of steel; my f...
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...n their families and friends away from them. With their pasts erased, they are left to mourn the lives of the fallen, lost in war all too soon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Home, John. “Douglas, A Tragedy (1756 edition).” English 320: Eighteenth-Century Literature
and Culture. Comp. L Davis. SFU Document Solutions: 2011. 154-205.
Macpherson, James. “Fingal: An ancient epic poem, in six books: together with several other
poems, composed by Ossian the son of Fingal.” English 320: Eighteenth-Century
Literature and Culture. Comp. L Davis. SFU Document Solutions: 2011. 223-266.
Mulholland, James. “James Macpherson’s Ossian Poems, Oral Traditions and the Invention of
Voice,” Oral Tradition 24:2 (2009): 393-414.
Jung, Sandro. “Lady Randolph, the ‘Monument of Woe’: Love and Loss in John
Home’s Douglas.” Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research, 20 (1-2): 16-27.
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 discovers that war and death can never be understood.
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...
The powerful poem ‘Weapons Training’ showcases a sergeant, through malicious words, guiding his troops. However it is through ‘Homecoming’, where Dawe exposes the brutal hopelessness brought forth by the futility of war. Therefore it can be seen that war has an emotional toll on both families and the soldiers. Both poems have a recurring message that all war does is bring loss, death and mourning, showcasing Dawes strong opinions about a futile
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.
Another unique aspect to this book is the constant change in point of view. This change in point of view emphasizes the disorder associated with war. At some points during the book, it is a first person point of view, and at other times it changes to an outside third person point of view. In the first chapter of the book, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien writes, “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity (2).
The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger once said “Perjor est bello timor ipse belli”, which translates to: “the dread of war is worse than war itself”. With this quote, Seneca identifies that war has both its physical and mental tolls on its participants. The psychological and emotional scars of war do much more damage to a solider than the actual physical battles. Tim O’ Brien repeats this idea many years later in his novel “The Things They Carried”, by describing how emotional burdens outweigh the physical loads that those in war must endure. What keeps them alive is the hope that they may one day return home to their loved ones. Yet, the weight of these intangible “items” such as “grief, terror, love, longing” overshadow the physical load they must endure since they are not easily cast away.
The narrator in “The Things They Carried” deals with the subjective conditions of war. Throughout the story, straining emotions often brought O’Brien’s teams emotions, especially after a death, causes a “crying jag” with a “heavy-duty hurt” (O’Brien 1185). The fury of emotion associated with death begins to erode the sharp minds of the soldiers and become mentally effective. 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 dies” 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 taken place in the psyche of the narrator is repressed directly by the war. The protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is also faced with the task of coping with mental
...eing killed by the land owner. Although his father dies, Sarty’s decision frees him from terror but not grief and despair. Sarty rationalizes the death and evil of his father by thinking, “He was brave!... He was in the war!. . .He was in Colonel Sartoris cavalry” (349). The young Sarty did not know his father was a mercenary soldier and fought only for money, not honor.
... horrors of war such as, his parents who still view war as glamorous and idealistic. War takes a heavy toll on soldiers who fight in it and in these dangerous moments anybody would have gone insane. It takes a very special type of soldier to be able to handle both the psychological and physical challenges that a soldier has to face in everyday battle. A soldier such as this must be capable of handling the sight of a mutilated comrade and not immediately chatter to pieces. The author conveys this message in his extreme use of words with negative connotation such as shells, typhus, dysentery, and trenches. In this portion of the novel a great deal of emphasis is placed on the word death which is repeated several times and standing on its own it holds a great deal of negative connotations. Therefore, due to the severity of the situation and the extensive use of words with negative connotations the overall tone of the novel appeared to be very depressing or serious. This selection also demonstrates just how mythical the character of war that many individuals who have not experienced the tragedy of battle believe to be true by illustrating just how appalling and grim war is in reality.
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.
“Every war is everyone’s war”... war will bring out the worst in even the strongest and kindest people. The book tells about how ones greed for something can destroy everything for both people and animals leaving them broken beyond repair, leaving them only with questions… Will they ever see their family again? Will they ever experience what it’s like to
In Birdsong, Faulks considers the idea of the War as an ‘exploration of how far men can be degraded’ in terms of the impact that war had upon the individual characters, resulting in dehumanisation. The main feature of being human is individuality. During his three-day-rest, the character Jack reflects that each soldier had the potential to be an individual, but because of the ‘shadow of what awaited them, [they] were interchangeable’ which is an allusion towards the politics of the War; the men were simply seen as statistics. The men search for a fate within the War, demonstrated when Stephen plays cards with the men and claims that Weir would rather have a ‘malign providence than an indifferent one’ which suggests that the men want to feel that someone is planning their future. During a heavy bombardment, Faulks describes that Tipper’s ‘iris lost all light and sense of life’ during his ‘eruption of natural fear’ when the shells land near him. The eyes here are a metaphor for life; it is a human’s eyes which represent individuality and are often described as the window to the soul. Faulks’ description of the loss of light in the eyes suggests that, as a result of the War, Tipper has lost what makes him human. The natural fear and ‘shrill demented sound’ that arises from Tipper is a ‘primitive fear’ which su...
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...
...turning back. Once they have been robbed of their innocence, they are unable to revert to their previous selves. War and facing the inevitable reality of death can change a person and disturb them for the rest of their lifetime. Many soldiers are naïve when they decide to serve their country; they plan on becoming a hero like their role models of the past. But when one truly experiences war for themselves, they find it unimaginable how people continue to declare war and urge young men to fight and honor their nation and family. One will remain innocent until he experiences the genuine emotional trauma of war.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNotes on A Farewell to Arms.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.