The novel Prince of Afghanistan by Louis Nowra (2015) explores two Australian soldiers, Casey and Mark who are involved in a mission to rescue hostages captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, due to the unfortunate death of Casey, being killed by a Taliban rocket, his dog, Prince is left behind with no carer, other than Mark. With the brutality of war, and the race against hunger, danger and time, they both must rely on each other for survival. As the story reflects upon Australians engagement with Asia, it conveys themes of friendship, trust and the nature of courage and heroism through the character, character development and the relationship among each other. Prince of Afghanistan is a suitable text for a stage 5 class, where
Robert Ross’ is introduced to characters with varying outlooks on the world, based on their own social and economic backgrounds. The soldiers around Robert Ross differ greatly,...
The book Outlaw Platoon written by Sean Parnell is a soldiers’ tale of his platoon in one of the most dangerous places on earth. This book is a non-fiction riveting work that tells the story of a platoon that spent sixteen months on an operating base in the Bermel Valley, the border of Pakistan. This mission the men were sent on was part of a mission called Operation Enduring Freedom. This book is extremely relevant to the war that we are still fighting in Afghanistan and the humanitarian work that continues. We still have men in this area fighting and losing their lives everyday. It is the focus of ongoing political debates and the purpose of our involvement there is an ongoing question in the minds of many Americans. In writing this book, Parnell makes it clear in his author’s notes that he indeed was not trying to pursue one political agenda over another. His goal as not to speak of all members of the platoon and expose their identities and the types of soldiers they were but instead to showcase some of the men’s bravery and abilities during the war. Parnell believed that he owed it to the men to write something that would show the world what these men go through during combat in an honest and raw account. Another purpose of Parnell’s in writing this book is an attempt at making sure these men are given a place in American war history.
In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of personal responsibility as they struggle to cope.
In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses this story as a coping mechanism; to tell part of his stories and others that are fiction from the Vietnamese War. This is shown by using a fictions character’s voice, deeper meaning in what soldier’s carried, motivation in decision making, telling a war story, becoming a new person and the outcome of a war in one person. Tim O’ Brien uses a psychological approach to tell his sorrows, and some happiness from his stories from the war. Each part, each story is supposed to represent a deeper meaning on how O’Brien dealt, and will deal with his past. In war, a way to discover and to invent new ways to release oneself from the pressure of it, O’ Brien’s writing is all about it; this stories will makes the reader understand his burden.
In the text, “How to Tell a True War Story” Tim O’Brien expresses his thoughts about the true war story and how the war story is changed according to the person who tells it. Jon Krakauer illustrates Chris McCandless’s journey into the Alaskan wilderness and reasons for McCandless’s gruesome death in an isolated place, in his book “Into the Wild.” O’Brien relates introspection and a soldier’s war story by saying that the war story portrays the feelings of a soldier. A soldier’s war story is not the exact war story; it is the illustration of that particular soldier’s perception. Narrating a war story is not like inundating others with facts and numbers however, it is about the introspection of a soldier, because that soldier determines what and how to tell the war story. While he tells the war story, he questions his thoughts and feelings. O’Brien explains that when soldiers ponder the external environment they will contemplate their inner thoughts. Krakauer not only elaborates the journey of McCandless but also expresses his experience of traveling to the Alaskan wilderness. This vicarious act of Krakauer ponders the inner thoughts of McCandless. McCandless embarked the journey to detach himself from the social world in order to explore more about him. Both Krakauer and O’Brien analyze about feelings of individuals who were separated from their comfort zones. Introspection is the practice of self-observing one’s thoughts and feelings. When a person analyzes experiences of another person it just gives peripheral thoughts about that person and about the experience. Although it does not enlighten the complete idea, introspection of that experience gives a clearer perspective of that experience.
When a soldier goes to war, they see death everywhere and are in a place where survival is the first priority. They miss their country and family while they are across the seas fighting a war. Pen Farthing was one of the soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. While on patrol, he and his troops encountered a dog fight and broke it up. One of the dogs followed him home. The dog was a stray who had been surviving on the streets. Pen Farthing decided to take him in and named him Nowzad the town that he had saved him from. For several months, Nowzad and Farthing filled the voids in each other's heart. Farthing gave Nowzad a home while Nowzad gave Farthing a way to destress and disconnect from the war that was going on outside. When he was going back
There is a major change in the men in this novel. At first, they are excited to join the army in order to help their country. After they see the truth about war, they learn very important assets of life such as death, destruction, and suffering. These emotions are learned in places like training camp, battles, and hospitals. All the men, dead or alive, obtained knowledge on how to deal with death, which is very important to one’s life.
The book The Lovers: Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet, by Rod Nordland, is a true story about two couples who ran away from home to get married. Zakia and Ali are from two different tribes. As they got older they started to develop feelings for each other. After months of planning, they decide to run away. They lived and still live in a constant state of fear of being found by Zakia’s family. They have promised to avenge their honor and bring her back home so she can get what she deserved. Zakia and Ali are still hiding.
Had Tim O’Brien written the same story in each chapter or utilized the same perspective, his chapters would be highly ineffective to demonstrate the complexity of warfare and its effects on the human soul. Therefore, his chapters are not all the same story; instead, they are all a pieces of Tim O’Brien’s imagination that when put together form one coherent story. These chapters are not meant to be read alone. Only reading them together allows the reader to comprehend the paradoxical nature of war and its effect on people.
In The Things They Carried, an engaging novel of war, author Tim O’Brien shares the unique warfare experience of the Alpha Company, an assembly of American military men that set off to fight for their country in the gruesome Vietnam War. Within the novel, the author O’Brien uses the character Tim O’Brien to narrate and remark on his own experience as well as the experiences of his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company. Throughout the story, O’Brien gives the reader a raw perspective of the Alpha Company’s military life in Vietnam. He sheds light on both the tangible and intangible things a soldier must bear as he trudges along the battlefield in hope for freedom from war and bloodshed. As the narrator, O’Brien displayed a broad imagination, retentive memory, and detailed descriptions of his past as well as present situations. 5. The author successfully uses rhetoric devices such as imagery, personification, and repetition of O’Brien to provoke deep thought and allow the reader to see and understand the burden of the war through the eyes of Tim O’Brien and his soldiers.
After the fall of Amanullah Khan, Habibullah Khan Kalakani ruled for a short term and then the Musahiban family ruled over Afghanistan from 1929-1978. The Musahiban family halted the social changes that Amanullah Khan wanted to make which moved it away from developing the economy, state building and modernization. The economy was the same as it was at the turn of the century. The Musahiban family followed the policy of encapsulated modernization. They only focused on the centers the countryside areas remained untouched because of the fear of rising revolts. Under the Musahbian family they did not impose any changes or taxes, especially no taxes in cash which means they made the rural economy remain untouched. This means that there was no surplus to invest in the state, the state did not do that because they had no money and the private owners didn’t do that was because everyone was a small landowner and did not have money to invest into factories. Although, today the period from 1929-78 has been marked as a period of relatively political, social and economical stability, infrastructure development, and positive neutralism, this period also experienced some domestic and foreign policy failure like royal family fractions, political stagnation, political unstable reforms and Pashtunistan foreign policy failure. However, If Amanullah Khans reforms had continued we might have been able to modernize Afghanistan. Railroads, central bank, currency, modern bureaucracy, direct taxes, capitalist development, state land was given to people, private property, constitution, established one of the first factories for producing consumer goods (these changes would have transformed Afghanistan if they had continued under Musahiban, abolished slaver...
Storytelling has the ability to display the details and and events of war that is not easily depicted in any other way. O’Brien describes the misconceptions and truths that surround the experiences of war and stories about war. O’Brien’s stories are a way of preserving his memories from war, and also a method for soldiers in coping with their situations as well. Stories have the ability to reflect on the grief, struggles, and even satisfying events of war, especially on the front lines of combat. Storytelling is an important way to appeal to emotion and describe important details about the ugly truths that are hidden from the public eye, as well as serving as a coping mechanism in order to deal with one’s life situations.
Comparison will let us recognize our defects and learn from the good qualities when we take a deep insight into others’ virtues. In “Body-Building in Afghanistan”, Oliver Broudy makes a comparison between our high-quality life and Afghan’s poor-quality life conditions. He begins by asking the audience to think about how we start a new day. In general, when the alarm goes off at eight o’clock in the morning, sleep will pull us back towards the comfortable bed. However, people in Afghanistan get up before the alarm clock starts; around four o’clock in a dry, dirty place. The comparison between the morning scenes implies two opposite kinds of life, the easy and the poor. The poor appreciate what they have while the easy are wasting time on meaningless
towards the end of the month of Muharram 7 AH. He set out of Medina
In The Kite Runner both Amir and Hassan are heroes in their own ways. Amir put his life in danger for Hassan’s son, Sohrab, while Hassan put his in jeopardy for Amir. In his childhood, Amir always wanted Baba to love him only, but Baba felt guilty for the fact that Hassan, his son just like Amir, was living in his house as a servant. Therefore, Baba struggled to show his love for Amir. However, Amir, who did not know that Hassan was his half-brother, thought that Baba did not love him because he killed his wife when she was giving birth to him. Additionally, in Amir’s childhood Baba always questioned Amir‘s abilities, while he praised Hassan’s skills which made Amir bitter toward Hassan. Amir was brainwashed by the fact that Hassan was only a Hazara servant, and it did not suit him to play with a Hazara boy. Although Amir loved Hassan, he struggled throughout his childhood to show it to him due to lack of attention from Baba and the segregation between Hazara and Pashtun. But his entire life, he felt ashamed of what he did to Hassan. However, he showed his heroic personality later by putting his life in danger to only save Hassan’s son, Sohrab. On the other hand, Hassan showed his love for Amir openly as a good friend from the beginning to the end. He never lost an opportunity to sacrifice his life for Amir.