“Tomorrow When The War Began” is a novel written by the author John Marsden which includes valuable lessons of resilience when hardships arise and courage over fear to save other lives. Two characters that portray these themes are Ellie and Robyn. Ellie overcomes the hardship of killing young soldiers and Robyn overcomes fear in order to save other lives, by putting her life at risk. John Marsden’s story emphasizes the life lessons which Ellie and Robyn have to experience to save their hometown of Wirrawee.
One of the main themes in the novel “Tomorrow When The War Began” written by John Marsden is resilience when hardships arise. Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. Ellie, the main character, strongly demonstrates
Our history books continue to present our country's story in conventional patriotic terms. America being settled by courageous, white colonists who tamed a wilderness and the savages in it. With very few exceptions our society depicts these people who actually first discovered America and without whose help the colonists would not have survived, as immoral, despicable savages who needed to be removed by killing and shipping out of the country into slavery. In her book, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, Jill Lepore tells us there was another side to the story of King Philip’s War. She goes beyond the actual effects of the war to discuss how language, literacy, and privilege have had lasting effects on the legacy that followed it.
Atkinson, Rick. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume 1 of the "Liberation Trilogy." New York: Henry Holt, 2002.
Tony Palmer, the author of “Break of Day”, tells a story that takes place in and out of war. The story follows a man named Murray Barrett who lives in the times of ww2. He ends up finding himself in the middle of it, down at Port Moresby. During the midst of war, Murray ends up coming across an injured Sid Archer, a childhood enemy and the man who stole Will’s (Murray’s older brother) childhood lover. Murray helps Sid instead of abandoning him, despite their childhood drama. In this book, Palmer really focuses on the themes of family, death, and bravery. He presents to us how complicated families can get, how people deal with death differently from others, and how there are many forms of bravery.
“It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how you life’s story will develop” (Dieter F. Uchtdorf). Most people can deal with difficulties, but their reactions to the hardships are different. Only some people can manage their problems. We should try to manage our behaviors in tough situations. If we can deal with our situations, we can overcome difficulties easily. In the story of Farewell to Manzanar written by Jeanne Wakatsuki, the story shows how war can change humans, their life, and their ranks. Although all of the characters of her book face the same problems due to the war and the camps they had to live in, they responded to those situations differently. All of them presented
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.
Throughout the life of an individual most people would agree that dealing with tough conflict is an important part in growing as a person. In “The Cellist of Sarajevo” all the characters experience a brutal war that makes each of them struggle albeit in different ways. Each of them have their own anxieties and rage that eventually makes them grow as characters at the end of the book. Steven Galloway’s novel “The Cellist of Sarajevo” exemplifies that when an individual goes through a difficult circumstance they will often struggle because of the anger and fear they have manifested over time. The conflict that the individual faces will force them to reinforce and strengthen their identity in order to survive.
Fussell believes that the soldier of world war two, "suffers so deeply from contempt and damage to his selfhood, from absurdity and boredom and chickenshit, that some anodyne is necessary", and that the anodyne of choice was alcohol. I would argue that Fussell is correct, especially regarding the connection between the absurdity of the war and the associated damage to soldiers image of themselves as good and patriotic, and the use of alcohol to block out the reality of the war. I think this connection is evident in the interviews presented in Terkel’s "The Good War", especially those of John Garcia and Eddie Costello.
The non-fiction book Hiroshima by John Hersey is an engaging text with a powerful message in it. The book is a biographical text about lives of six people Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamura, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki and Rev. Tanimoto in Hiroshima, Japan and how their lives completely changed at 8:15 on the 6th of August 1945 by the dropping of the first atomic bomb. The author, John Hersey, through his use of descriptive language the in book Hiroshima exposes the many horrors of a nuclear attack.
War always seems to have no end. A war between countries can cross the world, whether it is considered a world war or not. No one can be saved from the reaches of a violent war, not even those locked in a safe haven. War looms over all who recognize it. For some, knowing the war will be their future provides a reason for living, but for others the war represents the snatching of their lives without their consent. Every reaction to war in A Separate Peace is different, as in life. In the novel, about boys coming of age during World War II, John Knowles uses character development, negative diction, and setting to argue that war forever changes the way we see the world and forces us to mature rapidly.
War has been a constant part of human history. It has greatly affected the lives of people around the world. These effects, however, are extremely detrimental. Soldiers must shoulder extreme stress on the battlefield. Those that cannot mentally overcome these challenges may develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sadly, some resort to suicide to escape their insecurities. Soldiers, however, are not the only ones affected by wars; family members also experience mental hardships when their loved ones are sent to war. Timothy Findley accurately portrays the detrimental effects wars have on individuals in his masterpiece The Wars.
There were many important events that occurred in between the First World War (1914 – 1918) and the Second World War (1939 – 1945), but the event that is the most significant to Canada's history is the career of Emily Carr (1871 – 1945). Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Emily helped shape Canada as we know it today, her art serving as a doorway into Aboriginal culture even as she became an inspiration for women in particular and is now very well-known in Canada and even internationally (The Canadian Encyclopedia, paragraph #1). This report will explore the muses, challenges and eventual success of possibly one of the most important women in Canada's history.
Lawrence Hill Books, c2009 Bracken, Patrick and Celia Petty (editors). Rethinking the Trauma of War. New York, NY: Save the Children Fund, Free Association Books, Ltd, 1998.
Tim O'Brien is confused about the Vietnam War. He is getting drafted into it, but is also protesting it. He gets to boot camp and finds it very difficult to know that he is going off to a country far away from home and fighting a war that he didn't believe was morally right. Before O'Brien gets to Vietnam he visits a military Chaplin about his problem with the war. "O'Brien I am really surprised to hear this. You're a good kid but you are betraying you country when you say these things"(60). This says a lot about O'Brien's views on the Vietnam War. In the reading of the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien explains his struggles in boot camp and when he is a foot soldier in Vietnam.
When the war breaks out, this tranquil little town seems like the last place on earth that could produce a team of vicious, violent soldiers. Soon we see Jim thrown into a completely contrasting `world', full of violence and fighting, and the strong dissimilarity between his hometown and this new war-stricken country is emphasised. The fact that the original setting is so diversely opposite to that if the war setting, the harsh reality of the horror of war is demonstrated.
In “War and Massacre” by Thomas Nagel, Nagel argues that there are limits on what can be done to an enemy even its for the sake of overall good. He believes that such an idea is grounded on the principles of Absolutism, where morality is determined by the action itself (deontology). This is contrary to the view of Utilitarianism, which relies on the premise that Morality is determined by its consequences (Consequentialism). Although could one in fact generate such a moral structure around war? Do the ends justify the means in War? Through identifying with a real-life example, I will look to expand on Nagel’s account where an action taken by a country in war would be prohibited even if it were for the overall good.