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The emotional and physical effects of soldiers at war
The emotional and physical effects of soldiers at war
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Redeployment, a national book award winner by author Phil Klay it is a powerful informative book about the Iraq war. It is compose of twelve incredible stories. The most memorable story for me is title “Bodies.” The title got my attention emotionally and logically. Making sense of life to readjust in the civilian world is the main theme of the story, which I believed it is a struggle to find direction to continue to live life and not just existed. Manipulation was another theme that maked the process of connecting with people less stressful.
By reading the title of the story, “Bodies” I was expecting a horrific, disgusted war story with disturbing mental pictures of mutilated and discompose bodies. However, deep inside me I was craving for scene where I could place myself and experience a grips of what soldier are expose to. In addition, I was expecting to feel sad and goosebumps.
This is a story of a young marine that serves time Iraq War. He is a mortuary affairs specialist. After experiencing the horror of war and collecting remains of his fellow soldier, he returns home to A...
As David Hufford said, in Beings Without Bodies, much of folk belief about spirits is found to be reasonable. This account is reported under his experience-centered theory. Hufford said much of the belief of spirits is reasonable as it is established on logical understanding from a person’s own experience. However, Hufford said not all beliefs are backed up by experience or even evidence. Some beliefs are made purely on faith. (Hufford p.11)
The consequences and effects of war, may be psychological, physical, or emotional. Can effect directly, for example, a solider or indirectly, for example, that soldier’s relatives and friends. “The Things They Carried” and “The Red Convertible” exam these matters. “The Things They Carried examines the psychological, physical, or emotional side of destruction that the Vietnam War bought. While “The Red Convertible” focuses on the psychological strain on soldiers they endure after the war as well as their families. These stories raise the questions is really war really necessary and can a solider back out of duty. Both stories are initiation stories or coming of age stories. These aspects are most effective when analyzing these works. The pieces may go deeper into the issues and questions at hand. The Centering on characterization, the point of view, symbolism or imagery, and significance of the title all help support the theme of these works and develop thoughts and opinions on the stories issues.
O’Brien, Tim. “How To Tell a True War Story.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2003. p. 420-429.
‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’Brien provides a insider’s view of war and its distractions, both externally in dealing with combat and internally dealing with the reality of war and its effect on each solder. The story, while set in Vietnam, is as relevant today with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as it was in the 1960’s and 1970’s in Southeast Asia. With over one million soldiers having completed anywhere from one to three tours in combat in the last 10 years, the real conflict might just be inside the soldier. O’Brien reflects this in his writing technique, using a blend of fiction and autobiographical facts to present a series of short narratives about a small unit of soldiers. While a war story, it is also an unrequited love story too, opening with Jimmy Cross holding letters from a girl he hoped would fall in love with him. (O’Brien 1990).
BANG, BOOM, BLAM,TAT-A-TAT, TAT. My ears are assaulted with noise, my eyes witness squirting blood a soldier is shot. I observe soldiers blown away by bombs. I see blood that saturates an infantry man. I view maimed men and observe limbs with fragmented bone. I witness militia dead on the ground. I listen to screams, grunts and gurgling blood in a man's windpipe. WHOOSH, flame throwers make a path with flames blazing burning men instantaneously. My eyes reveal the emotion that rips through my heart, tears drip down my cheek. I turn my head. I cannot watch a soldier cradle his buddy as he dies.
In Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone, Beah’s imagery represents the struggle and misery of the Sierra Leone people are going through with the rebels invading. To begin, after Beah spends two days straight walking he arrives at a village that has already been condemned by the rebels. In the village Beah sees dead bodies everywhere, which fills his mind with the gruesome ways of death the men and woman suffered through: “I had seen heads cut off by machetes; smashed by cement bricks, and rivers filled with so much blood that the water ceased flowing… my body twitched with fear”(49). During this event Beah could not get these gruesome images out of his mind. Beah tries closing his eyes trying to hide away his vision to help the thoughts leave.
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 die” 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 taking place in the psyche of the narrator is directly repressed by the war.
Erich Maria Remarque's classic war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with the many ways in which World War I affected people's lives, both the lives of soldiers on the front lines and the lives of people on the homefront. One of the most profound effects the war had was the way it made the soldiers see human life. Constant killing and death became a part of a soldier's daily life, and soldiers fighting on all sides of the war became accustomed to it. The atrocities and frequent deaths that the soldiers dealt with desensitized them to the reality of the vast quantities of people dying daily. The title character of the novel, Paul Bäumer, and his friends experience the devaluation of human life firsthand, and from these experiences they become stronger and learn to live as if every day were their last.
Greene, Bob. Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned From Vietnam . N.p.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1989.
Tina Chen’s critical essay provides information on how returning soldiers aren’t able to connect to society and the theme of alienation and displacement that O’Brien discussed in his stories. To explain, soldiers returning from war feel alienated because they cannot come to terms with what they saw and what they did in battle. Next, Chen discusses how O’Brien talks about soldiers reminiscing about home instead of focusing in the field and how, when something bad happens, it is because they weren’t focused on the field. Finally, when soldiers returned home they felt alienated from the country and
The novella, The Body, written by Stephen King is quintessential for portraying the overarching coming of age theme, however within this theme a more specific theme of innocence vs. experience is present. This theme can be seen within the book’s plot, symbols, and Chris Chamber’s character. Taking a look at the historical time period of when this novella was written, and taking a look at the biographical history of Stephen King himself helps the reader to understand why this particular approach to the theme was chosen. The novella itself travels with four young boys as they begin their journey in search of a dead body, and along the way they not only discover the cruelty of the real world, but they also face the cruelty that can be see within
In the story “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, the reader is enlightened about a boy who was mentally and emotionally drained from the horrifying experiences of war. The father in the story knows exactly what the boy is going through, but he cannot help him, because everyone encounters his or her own recollection of war. “When their faces are contorted from sucking the cigarette, there is an unmistakable shadow of vulnerability and fear of living. That gesture and stance are more eloquent than the blood and guts war stories men spew over their beers” (Zabytko 492). The father, as a young man, was forced to reenact some of the same obligations, yet the father has learne...
The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.
Redeployment and Bodies are both short stories by Phil Klay that vividly illustrates the experiences of soldiers in war and on the homefront. Redeployment tells the story about a man named Sgt. Price who tells about his experiences on the battlefield and how he tries to readjust to society in America. He struggles at the end of the story when he has to put down his dog. The narrator of bodies tells the story of how he processed dead bodies in the war. The story reveals his character development and how he tells the "what really happened" to a man at the bar. Redeployment is a war story that is melancholy because it gives a glimpse of what marines go through. Similarly, Bodies is another war story that is gloomy because
For much time the gruesome, jaw-dropping nature of war stories has lead readers to question their truth. This is particularly true in the emotional anecdotes told about the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, is one of the first to address the idea of truth in his novel itself. Since O’Brien never confirms whether the factuality of his tales, many readers question whether the stories he weaves are actually true. O’Brien does not want for his audience to read so deeply into the facts and figures. To him it should not matter whether his tales truly happened. O’Brien’s greater purpose in writing of Vietnam is to share the stories he physically could not tell in a way that saves himself and society. He aims to use writing as self-release while also warning his audience of the horrors of war.