Many people look at war as a way of showing who is the most powerful, who can claim what is theirs (or not theirs) or who is just always upset. Others look at war as the violent, horrific, gruesome act that it really is. No one ever thinks about the biggest down fall to war. People see war as a necessity when someone attacks another, but fall short to see the damage that is being done. War is fought by many brave men and women, who give up their life or their mental life to make others in their countries life better. However, there is two sides to every war. One American dies and one German dies, yet one country looks at it as only losing one of their own. The day that each one of those soldiers were lost, two men were taken from this earth. …show more content…
Many authors wrote about the devastation that took place during the war. One book called “Johnny Got His Gun” by Dalton Trumbo shares the tragic life of the soldiers who fought in the war as well as the generation who came after. People always saying that soldiers are serving their country. Dalton says “A man doesn't say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving. He doesn’t say I will spend all my money in order to save my money. He doesn’t say I will burn my house down in order to keep it from burning. Why then should he be willing to die for the privilege of living?”1 These men that fought in World War 1 did not know what they actually signed up for until they got placed in battle. The war became much worse than expected. When many of these Men went into war they were introduced into new warfare that they have never seen before. New technology allowed for more powerful weapons and more painful ways of dying. In a poem called “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, he portrayed the terrible ways that many men died. He showed how the new technology was used to harm many men. One of the new big ways of killing as many men as possible was using poisonous gas. Owen says “Many had lost their boots, but limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, …show more content…
Dalton said “How could you believe or disbelieve anything any more? Four maybe five million men killed and none of them wanting to die while hundreds maybe thousands were left crazy or blind or crippled and couldn't die no matter how hard they tried”.3 When it came to staying in a relationship, many of these young men could not do so because they were either overseas for so long or came home injured. In the poem called “Disabled” written by Wilfred Owen, Owen says “And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim, -- In the old times, before he threw away his knees. Now he will never feel again how slim Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands, all of them touch him like some queer disease”4. These men who served and lost body parts, or their mind also lost the life they had before the war began. During and After the war, it was not just the mal soldiers who lost their mind and saw things they have never seen before. Many of the women who fought in the war served as nurses for the injured men. These women had to see men that were bleeding out and dying right before their own eyes. In the article “Facts of Life” by Vera Brittain the nurse says “Although there was much to shock in Army hospital service, much to terrify, much, even, to disgust, this day by-day contact with male anatomy was never part of the shame”5. Alongside doctors, these women helped heal
Many soldiers who come back from the war need to express how they feel. Many do it in the way of writing. Many soldiers die in war, but the ones who come back are just as “dead.” Many cadets come back with shell shock, amputated arms and legs, and sometimes even their friends aren’t there with them. So during World War I, there was a burst of new art and writings come from the soldiers. Many express in the way of books, poems, short stories and art itself. Most soldiers are just trying to escape. A lot of these soldiers are trying to show what war is really like, and people respond. They finally might think war might not be the answer. This is why writers use imagery, irony and structure to protest war.
Demolished cities, torn families and decimated countries are a few of the destructive properties of war. Throughout history, the world has been through war after war, never ceasing. Two of the greatest and most destructive wars were World War I and World War II. These wars involved most of the world’s countries and ended with tragic results. The wars also left many soldiers with various mental and physical problems that ruined their social lives. John F. Kennedy once said that “Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.” For the most part, he is right; if war does not end, it will end humankind. The main problem with this is that most people barely even know how destructive war can be; people believe war is the only way to solve problems with other countries. The problem with that is that war often uncovers or starts new problems that can affect others more than the past problems. Literature has helped people grasp at the understanding of what happens during wars and the problems that it can create. Some go into deep aspects of significant wars while others go into wars that everyone fights within themselves. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Beowulf and John Milton’s Paradise Lost are a few pieces of the thousands of works of literatures that capture the tragic, destructive power of war, global and small.
The novel All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the poem, “In Flanders Field,” by John McCrae and the film, Gallipoli, Demonstrates how war makes men feel unimportant and, forces soldiers to make hard decisions that no one should half to make. In war people were forced to fight for their lives. Men were forced to kill one another to get their opinion across to the opposing sides. When men went home to their families they were too scared to say what had happened to them in the war. Many people had a glorified thought about how war is, Soldiers didn't tell them what had truly happened to them.
...y. Especially, in World War I where, a lot of bad things happened to soldiers as of being depressed, and mentally exhausted. One scene where I agree, with Remarque is when Paul and his friends are in hospital where they see the real side of war where everyone is injured. While reading, this book, I was very sad to hear all these gruesome things about a war that we never heard of and how it changed their lives. In today’s world, this happens to most of the people who have served in the war. Most of the people never come out of it. They are constantly are thinking about being at the battlefront and this leads them into sever trauma. They cannot live their life normally.
The poet Wilfred Owen was one of many poets who were against war. He reflected this idea of anti-war in his poems, one of his poems called “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, mirrors most aspects of war all put together in this short still deep poem. An example of that would be when the speaker stated,” What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”(1) The speaker asks is there any sound that marks our soldier’s death other than the sounds of church bell’s which are mostly rung to represent somebody’s absence? Clearly, the speaker sets anger as the tone of the poem through this question to show that soldier’s death is unremarkable.. The speaker compares the soldiers to a “cattle” which illustrates that soldiers are treated more like animals with no feelings and also shows how they are killed indiscriminately in war. Finally the line ironically contains an iambic pentameter which is a natural rhythm for such dark, grim, dull subject. The two novels, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, and All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, both present a similar idea of how soldiers are killed out there in the front comprehensively and the dehumanization of war towards its soldiers. The first novel is set during the Civil War, and it focuses on the psychological aspects of one soldier named Henry Fleming and how his naive thoughts about war constantly change through the course of the novel. The second novel presents the life of a soldier named Paul Baumer and his friends who were faced with the terribleness of war and how severely it affected their lives. The Red badge of Courage and All Quiet on The Western Front are similar in the way of how the main characters develop through the novel to change from naïve and innocent men ...
Why does the world need to kill two million men just because two countries can’t agree with each other? War is devastating to countries and most indefinitely to individuals and soldiers. A war can ruin families, friendships, education, economy, and the minds of innocent people. Most young men, who were just approaching manhood, were pulled of their innocence of childhood, and thrown into a world of rage and destruction. Soldiers that luckily survive a horrific war often find their lives turned completely upside down since they enlisted, and sometimes it is just impossible to forget the vicious past and start over again as a civilian. Many older men believe that wars being fought are wars of dignity and glory, but truthfully, wars are battles of death and gore. The novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque expresses dramatically the negative effects of war.
The two World Wars and civil wars within a nation already devastate human happiness and peace. In Slaughterhouse-Five also Kurt Vonnegut talks about war and peace. He hates war and every one wants to be free from war. Thousands and thousands of people were died during Second World War. Every year on November 11, the people give their gratitude to the Veterans, who had died in war. “The weekend was extra-long because the coming Monday was a national holiday, Veterans’ Day. It was in honor of people who had served their country in uniform.”
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.
World War One had an inevitable effect on the lives of many young and naive individuals, including Wilfred Owen, who, like many others, joined the military effort with the belief that he would find honour, wealth and adventure. The optimism which Owen initially had toward the conflict is emphasised in the excerpt, in which he is described as “a young poet…with a romantic view of war common among the young” (narrator), a view which rapidly changed upon reaching the front. Owen presents responders with an overwhelming exploration of human cruelty on other individuals through acts of war and the clash of individual’s opposed feelings influenced by the experiences of human cruelty. This is presented through the horrific nature of war which the
In Dulce et Decorum est, Owen offers a counter-narrative to the glorious tale of war offered by his country. His description of “...under a green sea, I saw him drowning / in all my dreams” (Owen) tells of a soldier dying from poison gas and seeing “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin”(Owen). In WWI, it was common for soldiers to come back having seen many grotesque deaths. Here, Owen addresses the potential trauma WWI soldiers experienced when seeing morbid things. Owen’s inability to suppress the images of the soldier’s death is literal and affects his mental health. However, the last lines of his poem also discuss“The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori”(Owen). While gore and death exist and impact the mental health of soldiers, they’re unaddressed in Owen’s society and ignored to create their own ideas of a “glorious” war. This purposeful refusal to address soldiers’ trauma and gory nature of WWI warfare marginalizes those soldiers affected by traumatic experiences and undiagnosed PTSD. While large-scale, explicit refusal to address trauma causes invalidation, individuals influenced by misconceptions can also discredit soldiers’ experiences. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim’s daughter Barbara doesn’t believe her father is traumatized by the war and writes off his Tralfamadorian ramblings as pure madness. Barbara, “thought her father was senile... because of damage to
World War One or “The War To End All Wars” was one of the most devastating events in the history of humankind. When looking back at such a gruesome war it is understandable that we might dwell on the key battles and tactics, which are often summarized by statistics on death tolls. However, we often forget that statistics create an illusion that warps our perception of death. As Stalin put it “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a statistic”. In the novel “The Wars” by Timothy Findley, the author draws away from traditional war stories by showing a true appreciation for life that truly touches the reader on a human and emotional level. Timothy Findley narrows in something anyone can relate to: a loving mother worried about her son risking his life in a war. This mother in the “The Wars” is Mrs. Ross, who represents the home front while her son, Robert Ross, fights for the British in World War One. As the book progresses and Robert gets further into the death trap known as the “Great War”, Mrs. Ross becomes increasingly obsessive and connected to her son as his fate becomes more clear.
In Paul Fussell’s book, The Great War and Modern Memory, he discusses some of the ways in which World War I affected the men who fought in it, specifically those in the trenches. One of Fussell’s main points in his book as he tries to characterize World War I was the widespread irony that spread in its wake. Even though the focus of his book is based upon the British perspective of World War I, Fussell also briefly mentions the effects of the war upon other countries involved in the war.
Owen’s brilliant execution on a wide variety of contrasts have made ‘Disabled’ a brutally effective poem. The continuous shifting of time and tone leaves the reader feeling not only sympathy towards the soldiers, but also anger towards the government for lying to them and towards society for betraying the soldiers. Owen’s ingenious use of language and poetic techniques, such as the multiple rhetorical questions at the end of the poem, leave the reader with a question – Who is to blame for the soldier’s fate, society or himself?
After reading this story you could easily draw parallels to famous poets such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sasson, Rupert Brooke and John Mccrae. All of these famous poets all wrote about the horrible brutal consequences of the war. Some of them even experienced the war. Some of them war scared because of the war. But they all wanted to show the genuine version of the war and not the glorified version that was used as propaganda.
In the United States' history, there have been many wars that have taken place. We live the way we do today because of the many brave men and women that have sacrificed their lives. There is no doubt that this is a huge price. One person's life is big enough! Just imagine losing your father, mother, sister, brother, or any other family member. Just imagine being drafted for a war that is known to be deadly. You know that when you leave you have a slim chance at coming back. These people have made the ultimate sacrifice by giving their life for the lives of other people. You can kind of relate this to the bible. God sent Jesus Christ to sacrifice his life so that others could be free and have a chance to live.