Often times, when I think about war, I only think about the protagonist going against the antagonist. I think that the only thing worth worrying about is the enemy and their position. We never stop to think about the weather and terrain that these soldiers face on a day-to-day basis. My vision of war is clouded by what comes out of the Hollywood movies. Luckily, such war veterans like Norman Mailer write and publish novels like The Naked and the Dead, which gives me a better insight as to what war is really like. Mailer's description of the weather and terrain throughout his novel shows that the weather and terrain is the soldiers' main enemy.
Sometimes, just crossing the terrain to get to the next battlefield is the biggest challenge. Rivers and large creeks are always a real challenge for any platoon to cross successfully. Norman Mailer illustrates the difficulties of crossing rivers and creeks in his novel when he writes, "The water was close to his waist, swirling powerfully about him" Mailer (458). At first I did not think about this being a big problem for soldiers to do, but after thinking about everything these soldiers had been through in the book I soon realized why this was so hard to do. The soldiers are crossing this river with heavy packs on their backs, wearing wet boots, and have just marched and crossed several miles of jungle, beach, and other terrain. After realizing everything they had done prior to crossing the river it is easy to see why rivers and creeks poise such difficulties for infantryman.
Rivers and creeks are not the only difficult terrain the soldiers had to cross in Norman Mailer's novel. The I&R platoon, short for intelligence and reconnaissance platoon, had to beaches, jungles, open fields, and even a mountain. Ignacio Schwartz, a writer for The Reviews of Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Humanities, concurs, "There are many battles throughout the book, but maybe the most powerful one is the battle with the jungle" (1). Mailer shows good examples of most of these terrains in his book, and the dangers of crossing them. Even though the men are not fighting throughout the entire novel the men are suffering from injuries suffered from the long journey.
If the terrain is not hard enough for a soldier to deal with then the weather will always be.
Soldiers must deal with harsh conditions and mud makes it even more difficult to fight.
All of these hardships the soldiers faced caused an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and constant fear. To counter this sense of despair, the soldiers had many ways of coping with or avoiding the reality of the war. Tim O’Brien, with Going after Cacciato and In the Lake of the Woods, addresses th...
So said German World War I Veteran, Erich Maria Remarque, in his book All Quiet on The Western Front. War is an extremely complex and corrupt affair that many can’t even begin to comprehend. This juxtaposing quote perfectly depicts how Remarque’s detailed and personal novel allows the reader inside the mind of a soldier, giving unique insight on war. The novel follows the events narrator Paul Bäumer encounters whilst at war and shows Bäumer’s reflective thoughts on these events. This form of narration is a large part of what makes the book so effective. The book conveys many strong messages about war but the most prominent ones in the story line are:
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.
I could never see a totally extinguished winter field without thinking it unnatural. I would tramp along trying to decide whether corn had grown there in the summer, or whether it had been a pasture, or what it could ever have been, and in that deep layer of the mind where all is judged by the five senses and primitive expectation, I knew that nothing would ever grow there again." (A Separate Peace:139) Here the field symbolizes Leper; the weather is the war. This enhances the others' fear of going to war, "We members of the Class of 1943 were moving very fast toward the war now, so fast that there were casualties even before we reached it, a mind was clouded and a leg was broken - maybe these should be thought of as minor and
Charles Yale Harrison’s “in the trenches” and mark twain's” two ways of seeing a river” are both autobiographical narratives that use descriptive language. In Harrison’s “in the trenches,” his brilliant use of sensory imagery lets the readers mind experience the treacherous and horrendous reality of war, with just the use of words. On the other hand, in twains “two ways of seeing a river,” the use of sensory imagery is carefully used to help the reader visualize the change in twains perception of the once “majestic river.” Both authors effortlessly utilize imagery to illustrate the realities of their topics. Harrison uses all the aspects of sensory imagery to display the life men are living in the trenches; meanwhile, in twains essay, he partially
This is shown through how the jungle warfare that took place at Kokoda was unfamiliar to the troops; the dense shrubbery hid enemies from sight, consequently forcing the soldier to constantly be on alert (Mason 2014, p. 175). This demonstrates the sheer bravery of the soldiers to persevere through these circumstances. Paul Ham, an Australian historian and journalist, corroborates this in Kokoda (2010) as he states that mental collapse was rare and only 10-25% of small hand and foot wounds were found to be intentional (Australian Government Department of Defence 2012). This reveals the strength of the soldiers in the face of heavy pain and grief. A soldier’s diary from the Kokoda track campaign provides a first-hand account of the time. Although biased to the Australian perspective, he provides a useful description of the warfare at Kokoda, stating, “bullets everywhere - hell on earth amongst the clouds” (State Library of Victoria 2018). The phrase ‘hell on earth’ evokes the sense that the warfare was abhorrent and horrific. This evidently displays the courage of the soldiers who persevered through the adversity they experienced. Moreover, an example of this courage is presented by the Victoria Cross quotation for Private Bruce Kingsbury, a soldier at Kokoda during World War Two, which states, “he rushed forward, firing the Bren Gun from his hip through terrible machine-gun fire and succeeded in clearing a path to the enemy. Continuing to sweep enemy positions with his fire and inflicting an extremely high number of casualties… then seen to fall to the ground shot dead” (Australian Government Department of Defence 2012). Kingsbury’s exhibit of initiative as he acts without thinking and blindly attacks, gaining significant progress for the Australians and ultimately making the greatest sacrifice, clearly demonstrates his immense bravery and courage as
From sunrise to sunset, day after day, war demolishes men, cities, and hope. War has an effect on soldiers like nothing else, and sticks with them for life. The damage to a generation of men on both sides of the war was inestimable. Both the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and the poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” by Alan Seeger, demonstrate the theme of a lost generation of men, mentally and physically, in war through diction, repetition, and personification.
Jünger’s opening chapter recalls the enthusiastic first thoughts on entering the war, upon arrival in Champagne, “Grown up in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary. We were enraptured by war .” Though the illusion was soon dispelled, throughout the novel Jünger did not seem to be phased by the reality of his mission. When Jünger described reaching Orainville, he wrote, “We saw only a few, ragged, shy civilians; everywhere eels soldiers in worn tattered tunics, with faces weather-beaten and often with a heavy growth of beard, strolling along at a slow pace, or standing in little clusters in doorways, watching our arrival with ribald remarks .” This is Jünger’s first of a pattern of acc...
Galloway’s vivid imagery is the main component that successfully creates the feeling of an authentic war environment. In the middle of the novel, readers are shown the harsh reality of war through imagery. Kenan, a middle-aged husband and father, finally makes it to the only water source available to him, the brewery. Kenan almost completes filling up all his containers when the “men on the hills” attack the brewery with shells. “On the pavement in front of him there is a foot. The shoe is
War as seen through the eyes of Ambrose Bierce in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge depicts it as truly gritty. The author successfully sends a message of how death is a part of war, and it is not as noble or glorious as one would think it is. Due to popular media, we have this attitude that the protagonist is going to go down in a blaze of glory, and while it may be true for some, it is not like that for everyone. War is rough, dark, and gritty but no one ever wants to talk about those parts of war because it would ruin the fantasy of it.
... 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.
...nal lives, but O'Brien's choice to focus one soldier, Lt. Cross, lets the reader scope the depths of the human mind during an extremely stressful situation. As a young lieutenant, this man shoulders his own longing for love, the death of a fellow soldier, the guilt he places on himself, as well as the added duties of responsibilities for a platoon of men. The narrator provides one specific quote, which perfectly summarizes the mental aspects of war: "They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing -- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight" (443). Indeed, the intangibles in this story do have tangible weight -- weight that Lt. Cross must carry for the rest of his life.
“The vapors suck you in. You can’t tell where you are, or why you’re there, and the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity. In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true.” (Pg.88)
Though the book is a novel, it gives the reader insights into the realities of war. In this genre, the author is free to develop the characters in a way that brings the reader into the life of Paul Baumer and his comrades. The novel frees the author from recounting only cold, sterile facts. This approach allows the reader to experience what might have been irrelevant facts if presented in a textbook. This book is written from a perspective foreign to most Americans.