In the Ghost Road, one of the main characters, Billy Prior, is the one who crossing multiple boundaries in this novel. He is born in working class but, with his effort, he services as an officer. He has a complicated view toward the war: He thinks the war is “bullshit”, but he still willing to go back to the front. Also, he is engaged with Sarah Lumb, but at the same time, he is highly promiscuous. Besides, he is a bisexual. Therefore, sex scene seems appear frequently in the Ghost Road. When speaking of sex, it is common accompany with love, connection and passion. However, in the Ghost Road, sex is rarely related to those characteristics. What Pat Barker presents us in the Ghost Road is sex is like a function, with no emotional tie between both parties involved. Meanwhile, the background of the Ghost Road is the World War I. The cruelty of the war is presented to us by the end of the book when Billy Prior dies at the several days before the World War I ends. In the Ghost Road, Pat Barker shows us that sex with no connection can be seemed as a metaphor of war: there is no emotion in it; it is a link with death; but during the process, that unemotional excitement and satisfaction within Billy Prior is all he is looking for.
The sex in the Ghost Road is without any passion in it, but Billy Prior still continues to have sex with people to find that pleasure without affection. During the Prior’s sexual intercourse with the prostitute Neille, he “groped around in his mind for the appropriate feeling of disgust, and found excitement instead, no, more than that, the sober certainty of power” (Barker 40). Billy Prior is like sadism, looking for pleasure while causing pain. Pat Barker portrayals Prior in using sex as a punishment to pe...
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...f the story, his mission has accomplished. The country involved in World War I is like Manning and the Prostitute Neille, being abused and exploited by Billy Prior. Just like when Prior and his men take over the French village, shortly after Germen vacated it, he has sex with a young man who trade his body for cigarette very recently (Barker 246 - 248). The young man can be seemed as France, being abused and exploited by first the Germany and then the Great Britain. Only when they both left can it be able to find its own identity.
Works Cited
Barker, Pat. The Ghost Road. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.
Reusch, Wera. "A Backdoor into the Present." LOLApress. Trans. Heather Batchelor. Web. 26 June 2011. .
James, David. The Ghost Road. London: Philip Allan Update, 2009. Print. AS/A- Level Student Text Guide.
In An American Soldier in World War I, David Snead examines account of George Browne, a civil engineer who fought as part of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during World War I. Snead shares Browne’s account of the war through the letters he wrote to his fiancé Martha Ingersoll Johnson. Through Browne’s letters and research conducted of the AEF, Snead gives a concise, informative, and harrowing narrative of life as a soldier serving in the camps and front lines of the Great War. Snead attempts to give the reader an understanding of Browne’s service by focusing on his division, the 42nd Division, their training and preparation, combat on the front lines, and the effects of war on George and Martha’s relationship. As Snead describes, “Brownie’s letters offer a view of the experiences of an American soldier. He described the difficulties of training, transit to and from France, the dangers and excitement of combat, and the war’s impact on relationships.” (Browne 2006, 2) Furthermore, he describes that despite the war’s effect on their relationship, “their
Between the years of 1914 to 1918, the whole of Europe was locked in arms, not only for pride but mostly for survival. The years of war brought devastation upon all societies. Men were massacred in droves, food stuff dwindled, and at times an end seemed non-existent. The foundation of the first Great War, one can muse, began as a nationalistic race between rival nations. By the onset of 1914, once the Archduke Frendinad had been assassinated in Saravejo, the march for war became not just a nationalistic opinion, but now a frenzy to fight. In battle, unlike previous wars, new weaponry caused drastic alterations in strategy. No longer will armies stand to face their rivals on the plains. Now the war will be fought in trenches, hidden underground from the new, highly accurate artillery. In many respects, World War I was a war of artillery, gas, and mechanization. Except as new weapons were becoming essential for battle, the leaders, on all sides, appeared too inept to fight this new style of warfare. Generals, or any leader for that matter higher in the chain of command, sent their troops in massive assaults. Regardless of their losses there were no deviations from the main ideology of sending massive waves of men and shells to take a position. On an individual level, the scene of repeated assaults and mayhem of the front line did little to foster hope for their superiors or even for the naiveté of their fellow countrymen who were not fighting. I submit that in times of sheer madness and destitution, as during World War I, men banded together to form make-shift families for support and companionship when all seemed lost; as exemplified in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front.
O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. Other People's Myths: The Cave of Echoes. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1988.
Billy is also traumatized by the extreme loss in his life. Everywhere he looks, he experiences great loss. First his father dies in a hunting accident, then he gets in a plane crash and everyone aboard dies but him, and while he is in the hospital recuperating, his wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. There is so much death surrounding his life, that it is no wonder Billy has not tried to kill himself yet.
Whenever one reads or hears about World War I or World War II, you hear of the struggles and triumphs of the British, Americans or any of the other Allies. And they always speak of the evil and menacing German army. However, All Quiet on the Western Front gives the reader some insight and a look at a group of young German friends who are fighting in World War I. “This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.....” The soldiers of this war felt they were neither heroes nor did they know what they were fighting for. These soldiers were pulled from the innocence of their childhood, and thrown into a world of rage. Yet somehow they still managed to have heart and faith in man kind and could not look the opponent in the eye and kill him. For he was man too, he too had a wife and children at home, he too was pulled out of his home to fight for a cause he didn't understand.
One of the ways Billy shows his ineffective ways of dealing with death is by using Risa Walker as sexual escape from his daily life. For example he shows himself using Risa Walker for pleasure when he admits, “So, instead, we said, “I love you,”, and let it go at that” (Banks 40). Spending time with Risa is daily escape for Billy. It is the one time of the day where he completely forgets about the bad things that have happened in his life and focusses on Risa. Billy does not really like her but is using her for his sexual pleasure after his wife is dead. It is not like they love each other it is more like they need each other because they are both burdened with stron...
Bentley, Greg W. Sammy's Erotic Experience: Subjectivity and Sexual Difference in John Updikes "A&P". N.p.: n.p., 2004. N. pag.
Setting (place): Billy spends most of 1944-1945 in Germany in the war. He was in the Battle of Bulge, in Belgium, in the forest. He was then transported in a boxcar to a war camp in Luxembour...
Sex is more than just a physical act. It's a beautiful way to express love. When people have sex just to fulfill a physical need, as the poet believes sex outside of love-based relationship only harms and cheapens sex. In the beginning of the poem, Olds brilliantly describe the beauty of sex, and then in the second half of the poem, she continues reference to the cold and aloneness which clearly shows her opinions about causal sex. Through this poem, Sharon Olds, has expressed her complete disrespect for those who would participate in casual sex.
Thoumin, Richard, General. The First World War: A major New History of the Wreat of
Roediger, David R. & Foner, Phillip S. Our Own Time. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.
Though he was able to escape war unharmed, Billy seems to be mentally unstable. In fact, his nightmares in the German boxcar at the prisoners of war (POW) camp indicate that he is experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): “And now there was an acrimonious madrigal, with parts sung in all quarters of the car. Nearly everybody, seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done to him in his sleep. Everybody told Billy Pilgrim to keep the hell away” (79). Billy’s PTSD is also previously hinted when he panics at the sound of sirens: “A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting World War III at any time. The siren was simply announcing high noon” (57). The most prominent symptom of PTSD, however, is reliving disturbing past experiences which is done to an even more extreme extent with Billy as Slaughterhouse-Five’s chronology itself correlates with this symptom. Billy’s “abduction” and conformity to Tralfamadorian beliefs seem to be his method of managing his insecurity and PTSD. He uses the Tralfamadorian motto “so it goes” as a coping mechanism each time he relives a tragic event. As Billy struggles with the conflict of PTSD, the work’s chronological order is altered, he starts to believe
Many of our today as “normal” considered values are everything but self-evident. One of the most striking aspects in the novel is time; and our relationship towards it. “ We yearned for the future. How did we learn it that talent for insatiability. ” In this particu...
All Quiet on the Western Front is the story of Paul Baumer’s service as a soldier in the German army during World War I. Paul and his classmates enlist together, share experiences together, grow together, share disillusionment over the loss of their youth, and the friends even experience the horrors of death-- together. 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 only irrelevant facts if presented in a textbook.
The short story “In Another Country” by Earnest Hemingway is a story about the negative effects of war. The story follows an unnamed American officer and his dealings with three other officers, all of whom are wounded in World War I and are recuperating in Milan, Italy. In war, much can be gained such as freedom and peace, however war also causes a plethora of negative consequences. Cultural alienation, loss of physical and emotional identity, and the irony of war technology and uncertainty of life are all serious consequences of war that are clearly shown by Hemingway.