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What is the importance of character development in literature
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Joseph Martin Plumb had to steal food from the citizens and collect it from wherever he could because the army was not providing it for the men: “Our stomachs being empty…I soon became very faint” (Martin 101). The army was not taking care of the men properly and that is why he was acting the way he was. Throughout the entire book his number one complaint is food. Everything circles back to him not having food and he seems to worry/focus about that a lot. His daily life consisted of not eating: “I had now to enter again on my old system of starving; - there was nothing to eat” (Martin 102). From the very beginning they kept the men starving: “… excepting starvation…” (Martin 41). All the above reasons go to show why he ends up stealing …show more content…
Being in any kind of war would be a difficult thing to do between missing family, facing death daily, and the hardships of being treated like garbage by the people who need the army. These men were out in the field all the time trying to keep the British at bay. Courage and will was eminent: “[We] wished nothing more than to have them engage us, for we were sure of giving them a drubbing, being in excellent fighting trim” (Martin 86). The men were clearly ready to see some action on the field. There was another point where the men were about to engage with the British and the sick/gimp men were told to stay behind but they were so ready for a fight that the they were having trouble keeping them at bay. The thought of plunder brought up a great deal of enthusiasm: “the men did not need much haranguing to raise their courage, for when the officers came to order the sick and lame to stay behind as guards, they were forced to exercise their authority to the full extent before they could make even the invalids stay behind” (Martin 109). The guys in the army had copious amounts of energy and will to fight off the British. The entire time in the war conditions were extremely poor and these men could have just said they quit and walked off, but they were in it because they wanted to have the thrill of taking down the enemy and doing something
“The war correspondent is responsible for most of the ideas of battle which the public possesses … I can’t write that it occurred if I know that it did not, even if by painting it that way I can rouse the blood and make the pulse beat faster – and undoubtedly these men here deserve that people’s pulses shall beat for them. But War Correspondents have so habitually exaggerated the heroism of battles that people don’t realise that real actions are heroic.”
Overall McPherson’s reasons for the soldiers motivations were clear and concise, easy to follow and understand allowing for easy interpretation of the book. McPherson also includes multiple quotes from various letters and diary entries to support his statements which gives his statements credibility. The reasons for motivation presented in the book were convincing and were supported by numerous quotes.
Throughout the story, the author goes into great detail about the heavy physical loads that the soldiers had to carry with them. Even the way O’Brien describes the many loads seems to grab your attention on the extreme conditions these men had to go through just to survive another day. The most interesting thing I found while reading this story is that even though the soldiers carried a ton of weight around with them, they insisted on carrying as much as possible to insist they were prepared for any given situation. Also, just as we are all different individuals, each soldier carried their own personal things that depended on their own habits and hobbies. Some examples of the necessities the soldiers had to carry with them include, “Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pockets knives, heat tabs, wrist-watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C-rations, and two or three canteens of water (O’Brien 125). These were just some of the things these men had to carry with them just to undergo some of the conditions surrounding them. Besides those items I explained things like weapons and magazines made up most of the majority of the weight. What really shocked me at this point is that with all this weight the soldiers had to carry with them, they were expected to be very mobile and able to haul around everything for miles at a time. The only benefit I could possible see coming out of all the things they carried is the protection the backpack gave the soldiers from the spraying of bullets during battle. Other than that, the more the men carried, the more their moral went down under those conditions. I think that the author brilliantly described this story. It was almost like I felt my backpack getting heavier as I was reading on and the items kept increasing. Towards the end of the story I kind of felt just as the soldiers did, weighed down and dead tired.
The entire training course was marching, which does not help them at all fighting in the trenches. “I have remade his bed fourteen times in one morning. Each time he had some fault to find and pulled it to pieces” (26). Here Baumer describes how his commanding officer makes him do a simple task over and over for absolutely no reason. Throughout the middle of the book Baumer saw many actions that were pointless acts of war.
Although the soldiers were united and served for the same goal, each of the men had a different motivation. For O’Brien, his motivation to join the war was the shame of running away. Almost all of the characters were afraid of being ashamed, and that served as a drive for them to do acts of heroism and similarly acts of stupidity. For example, in the story “On the Rainy River”, shame drove O’Brien to do an act of heroism as a fear of being ashamed. O’Brien wrote “For more than twenty years I 've had to live with it, feeling the shame, trying to
pushed men to enlist as a way of getting revenge for all the deaths in
“Historian John Shy writes of the common Revolutionary soldier that: As a group, they were poorer, more marginal, less well anchored in society. Perhaps we should not be surprised; it is easy to imagine men like these actually being attracted by the relative affluence, comfort, security, prestige, and even the chance for satisfying human relationships offered by the Continental Army.” As stated previously, even Martin himself joined for this exact reason. Throughout Martin’s accounts he recalls the experiences of not only himself but the stories of other young men he encountered throughout his journey. The stories of their past lives, why they joined, and what they were experiencing shows the contrast between the past and present. Even though the young men were poor and from the bottom of society these men were involved something that was beyond themselves and contributed to the
Author, historian and collector Michael Zomber's passion about arms and armor is evident in all of his endeavors. As an author, Zomber's antique Japanese arms and armor expertise is evident in Shogun Iemitsu: War And Romance In 17th Century Tokugawa Japan, while his interest in American history, especially the Civil War, is evident in Sweet Betsy That's Me: A Child of the Civil War and A Son of Kentucky. Zomber has also written The Soul of the Samurai,a full-length documentary, which he also produced.
The soldiers make it known that they feel they are “ordinary men in what they see as ordinary work” early on in the scene. One man says "ye woot yourself as well as I how lords and leaders...has given doom this dote shall die," (3-5) suggesting that they are obliged not primarily by personal decree, but by higher ranks, to satisfy the deed. In the following lines the soldiers continue to discuss the swiftest way in which they can fulfill the deed. The men are furthermost concerned with the honor they will receive if the “job” is done in a quick manner. They are not at all mindful of the man, patiently awaiting his death, beside them. This shows how the technocratic or “daily labor” concern that tends to supersede humanism. A humanist is known to choose reason over faith. It’s unlikely that such humanist would commit to this job without a clear understanding of what they would be doing. A Humanist chooses reason over...
Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place” (O’Brien 21). The soldiers did not go to war for glory or honor, but simply to avoid the “blush of dishonor” (21). In fact, O’Brien states “It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor.
The war scarred the soldiers permanently, if not physically then mentally. After the war the soldiers usually never recovered from the war. Two of the most common side affects of the war were shell shock and stir crazy. When suffering from shell shock a soldier’s brain doesn’t function properly and the man is a “vegetable”. This means the man is alive but he can’t do anything because he is in a state of shock because of the war. Stir crazy is a mental illness caused by the firing of so many bullets that when no bullets are heard by the victim he goes insane. Everyone was scared to go to war when it started. Young recruits were first sent because the veterans knew they were going to come back dead. "When we run out again, although I am very excited, I suddenly think: “where’s Himmelstoss?” Quickly I jump back into the dug-out and find him with a small scratch lying in a corner pretending to be wounded.” (P 131) Even the big men like Himmelstoss are scared to go fight. They too go through the mental illnesses like stir crazy and shell shock. “He is in a panic; he is new to it too.
Young men were so eager to leave their families to fight for France for various reasons. Some wanted to be independent, to seek adventure, to have the opportunity to fly an airplane, and some felt the need to serve America by fighting against the Germans. Their attitudes when they arrived in France was excited and that this would almost be no big deal, but as soon as they lost someone their ideas and attitudes absolutely changed. They no longer we're excited and they realized that this was going to be the hardest thing they have most likely ever experienced. A lot of the time these boys had no idea what they were actually getting themselves into.
feelings of the soldiers as they were confused as to what to do in the
Most of the soldiers in Pride and Prejudice are ones that have the money to shed for a position instead of having the risk of shedding theirs for king and country. The men in Meryton and Brighton (Denny, Chamberlayne, Pratt, and the newcomer Wickham, etc.) were young men who had a low but noble rank and most likely had no field experience (Breihan). The men of experience and higher importance who probably did earn their way to a great rank were not present at the camps mentioned in the book (Breihan). Not knowing this, Mrs. Bennet says, "If
First, During wars, people don’t show much value for life. This statement is expressed for example in “The Four Brothers” through this passage: “I heard one say, ‘I am ready to be killed’| I heard another one say, ‘I am ready to be killed’”(“Sandburg And World War I” 15-16). With this passage, Sandburg expresses to his readers that many soldiers lose the value of life and prefer death over living because of the harsh reality of wars. In fact, many WWI soldiers committed suicide in order to escape the life of a trench soldier (“Military Suicides, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Birth Trauma”). Secondly, soldiers are brain washed and turned into killing machines. They are “Eating to kill,| Sleeping to kill” (“Sandburg and World War I” 36-37). This passage from “The Four Brothers” demonstrates the absolute dehumanisation of soldiers during WWI. It expresses how soldiers were