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Society and war
Reality of war
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Words that we use to dehumanize people as the time progresses become more and more accepted. High School students often use names to classify each other into groups called cliques. After a clique is formed that makes it possible for bullying because that makes a barrier between groups of people. “Once language draws that line, all kinds of mistreatment become imaginable, and then justifiable”(Lakoff 16). author Robin Lakoff states in From Ancient Greece to Iraq, the Power of Words in war time. Over time the words in war we use become more and more accepted for example the word Communist-derived from the word communism meaning a "society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs" as Google states. Commie is used to describing a person who is a citizen or a party member …show more content…
That statement is true but even after we use it to help make the other side more killable sometimes we keep it and end up using it in everyday life as insults, degrading phrases, and stereotypes. It is also true with a clique in high school when a term like a nerd or jock is used it creates a barrier between groups. In my life I found it hard to put myself into a clique so I fit in with the nerds and geeks, I wasn 't bad at sports so I could be a jock, I help with theater in the shop building sets for the plays so overall I had friends who belonged to every clique. I saw the stigmas associated with each clique and how people would interact with each other and how that a popular kid sometimes wouldn 't talk to a nerdy kid or a hick, country boy, would stay away from someone playing a trading card
Within his novel The Wars, Timothy Findley, deconstructs the concept of friend and enemy. Jacques Derrida, the founder of deconstruction stated, “Deconstruction takes place, it is an event that does not await the deliberation, consciousness or organization of a subject, or even of modernity. It deconstructs it-self. It can be deconstructed.” (Mapp, 781). Jacques Derrida believed deconstruction happens on its own, and therefore one does not need to consciously deconstruct a text, as it is an unconscious process that one need not deliberate. In the text The Wars, Findley makes the assumption that one’s enemy is their closest friend. Oxford Dictionaries defines the term “enemy”, as a person who is actively opposed or hostile to someone or something. Within a war the concept of friend and enemy is certainly evident; soldiers are deployed from all around the world fighting alongside their country and their allies, this being their “friends”, to ultimately defeat the “enemy”. In the text, the protagonist, Robert Ross and his men are commanded by Captain Leather to set up gun beds close to the German lines. While setting up, Robert Ross and his men are unmasked by the Germans, and after luckily surviving a gas attack, Robert Ross and his men encounter a German sniper sent to watch and kill them, who instead, ended up risking his own life to free them all. “He could have killed them all. Surely that had been his intention. But he’d relented. Why” (Findley, 131)? Robert Ross realizes that the German soldier had a rifle beside him the entire time, which he could of used to kill them all, but did not. As an enemy of Ross and his men, this young German soldier should have, being inimical to these soldiers, shot and killed them as he intended....
Moreover, the racial terms can be a projection of more positive definitions and interpretations that can establish individuality. In “Meaning of a Word” by Gloria Naylor, she talks about instances where adults of her community/race have references of the ‘n-word’ that differs from how society or individuals who may use it.
are simply meaningless words meant to damage, humiliate and degrade certain groups of people. To prove those words worthless, the same groups of people that those hate words
We’ve all done it: walking down a hallway, judging someone or thinking someone is less than what we perceive ourselves to be based on the color of their skin or how they are dressed, or even their physical features. The author of The Language of Prejudice, Gordon Allport, shares how we live in a society where we are ridiculed for being less than a culture who labels themselves as dominant. This essay reveals the classifications made to the American morale. Allport analyzes in many ways how language can stimulate prejudice and the connection between language and prejudice.
John F. Kennedy once said “mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.” (Brainy Quotes) This quote describes the message Timothy Findley was trying to convey using the four elements in his novel “The Wars.” The four elements are water, fire, earth, and air. Findley uses Water to show the reader that as Robert goes through the war he slowly loses both his freedom and his clarity. Fire conveys the message that as the war continues people change how they show passion, and how some of the soldiers have lost their humanity. Earth shows the reader that the Earth is human’s home which is supposed to support and protect them, but in times of war, it does the opposite. Lastly, air displays how war disrupts human sanity and sense
Tim O’Brien states in his novel The Things They Carried, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat” (77). This profound statement captures not only his perspective of war from his experience in Vietnam but a collective truth about war across the ages. It is not called the art of combat without reason: this truth transcends time and can be found in the art produced and poetry written during the years of World War I. George Trakl creates beautiful images of the war in his poem “Grodek” but juxtaposes them with the harsh realities of war. Paul Nash, a World War I artist, invokes similar images in his paintings We are Making a New World and The Ypres Salient at Night. Guilaume Apollinaire’s writes about the beautiful atrocity that is war in his poem “Gala.”
A name is a mark of classification, a basis for self identity. Able to elevate or annihilate a persons' perception of herself and the surrounding society, these designations can uplift, joke, chide, mock, insult, degrade. "Society" implies the people and the atmosphere encompassing an individual in her daily life. "Culture" is closely tied to the society of a person--it is the aspects of her life which are directly influenced by such issues as race, color, nationality, religion, sexuality, and any other number of things that mark a person as distinct. Culture, though an integral part of everyone's lives, is frequently misunderstood or seen as threatening by people outside of the group in question. This ignorance of other people leads to judgments and assumptions, which frequently cloud daily issues. The most ignorant people stoop to name-calling, a painful slap of hatred. Stereotypical, racist, religious, and sexist name calling, especially, can affect the victim's views and opinions for life. Most vulnerable to these taunts are children, innocent and uncallused, who hear these names and know neither their true meanings nor the depth of senseless hatred behind them. As shown by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Gloria Naylor, these labels can be taken in and their meanings rendered harmless. By seizing and possessing these hateful words, a group can reshape the meaning of the slurs once wielded so forcefully against them.
All Quiet on the Western Front was a sad tale of Paul Bäumer, a lad just entering adulthood, who
Review of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read, but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all the wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
Throughout the history of mankind there have been numerous cases in which people were victims of oppression or hate. Among these cases the sole reasoning behind this oppression or hate being based on the perception of others. History has shown that society is responsible for labeling groups of people, generally these labels are misleading.
Going to War The arrival of winter is well on its way. Colorful leaves had turned to brown and fallen from the branches of the trees. The sky opened to a new brightness with the disappearance of the leaves. As John drove down the country road, he was much more aware of all his surroundings.
Language is the glue that keeps people together. It helps us to connect, learn, describe, express, and advocate for ourselves. Without this tool people have little control over how they’re treated in the world. In this paper I’m going to discuss the ways language has been used as a mechanism of oppression against minorities, women, and victims of crimes.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” This is a saying you have heard all your life, from parents, to songs. But, have you ever really thought of it? That is wrong. Words and names will hurt, and nothing can stop them from hurting. They hurt people physically, even causing some people to kill themselves, they hurt people mentally, they worry about what everyone thinks about them, and they can cause worldly problems, accidental crashes, or wars. The first example of how words have affected the lives of humans is people actually losing their lives from words said to them.
In today’s society, high schoolers are split up into wide varieties of cliques. In high school, people label you in some kind of group or clique. People are either considered a goth, jock, stoner, nerd, loner etc. The reason why people are labeled as those things is because of what their interests are, what they wear, what their personality is, and the people that they associate themselves with. People tend to migrate towards certain kinds of cliques because they like to do certain things. Consider this, the jocks will hang out with other jocks and play or practice the sport they play, the stoners will hang around other stoners and smoke as an interest, and the nerds will get together with other nerds to study and practice things. High school is filled with drama and arguments, but hanging out and doing
War is controversial, unfortunate, and certainly misunderstood; it is a transforming agent, a catalyst for change. Nonetheless, many people focus on war's negative consequences, while positive effects are downplayed. War is a necessary evil in the sense that it stabilizes population, encourages technological advances, and has a very high economic value. Without war, the overpopulation of the human race is inevitable. It is this reason that war is a useful tool by not only Mother Nature, but also humans themselves to institute population control.