War shapes all moral trajectories in this story in many ways. War defines peace and tragedy due to the use and action of disagreement. In Billy Budd, (The movie), Billy ended up getting hung because he was accused of killing a member on the H.M.S. Indomitable. While these men were on the ship, they had certain rights that were stated under the Articles Of War. Each individual was punished under these statements.
Ratcliff states, “Go find the captain and report to him the wind’s abeam. Respectfully suggest we ought to take in topsails.” (Coxe and Chapman page 46). This quote relates to the suffering that these sailors have to deal with while they are out to sea at war. They have to respect the captain’s orders at all times otherwise they will be punished. This kind of life that they are going through is kind of ridiculous because it’s so dull and boring. I would hate to be treated like that because it makes you fell miserable.
O’Daniel states, “Ah, I do love to see two Englishmen fighting each other. It’s fonder they are of killing themselves than fighting their proper foes. (Laughs hoarsely) (Coxe and Chapman page 13) The meaning of this quote has to do with the presence of a fight. The main object of war is “fighting”. If O’Daniel was a good man than he shouldn’t even bring up this statement because he is heating up conflict. I think that he has some inner problems because he tends to be a little stubborn with others.
I think that this quote that Billy states is rather fascinating because it has a lot of meaning to it. “I’d rather be buried at sea than on the beach, when I come to die. Will you stand by the plank, Tom, So I’ll shake a friendly hand before I sink? Oh! But it’s dead I’ll be then, come to think! (All Laugh) (Coxe and Chapman page 29) Billy is telling the reader’s in this quote that he really doesn’t care if he dies or not because he knows that he did the right thing. When he killed the man, he knew in his heart that he had to do what he had to do. He would rather be buried at sea than at the beach because at least he knows that he would be dead somewhere where he feels that he did the right thing in his power.
...his novel believe war to be the most disgusting and most distructful thing in the universe, the Tralfamadorians enlighten one human on their thoughts of war. They don’t feel Billy should put as much time as he does into dwelling on something like war that is inevitable. They ignore it and rate it relatively low on a scale of importance. From World War II, Billy is left with many vivid memories that he would rather not have. He has first handedly seen what he thinks is the most evil thing in the universe. He is frequently haunted by images of his experiences. But maybe if he would just tell himself that there is nothing he can do about war, maybe if he just looked the other way and ignored it, maybe then he would be happy and in a state of peace like the Tralfamadorians.
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.
...es like,“So it goes” and at the end of certain sentences repeating certain words in the paragraph. He not only showed the evils war can bring, he also referenced the good that comes out of the war. He demonstrates the effect of war to many people by adding different characters like Edgar Derby, or Roland Weary who remained affected in a negative way in the war. Vonnegut wants the reader to feel as if he or she aren't bound by predetermined destiny, he want them to write their own destiny. He evidence this by making several mistakes with Billy in this novel to show us the outcomes from someone who can time jump. Vonnegut makes his readers feel as if they stand truly limitless.
In this story Billy is faced with a wide range of undeserved punishments, but shows good through all of them with his strong will and determination. He accepts the things that happen to him in a levelheaded manner, which works to keep the story from becoming a tragedy. The first instance of undeserved punishment is the death of Billy’s family. Not only was he unable to help them in any way, there was no good reason for it to happen. While Billy could lose all hope, become depressed, and angry at the world or at God for this injustice, he instead sets out to right the wrong.
...and wounds soldiers but murdering their spirits. War hurts families and ruins lives. Both stories showed how boys became in terrible situations dealing with war.
Billy is so pessimistic about life that after each character's death Billy says, “so it goes” (20). This shows that death, to Billy, is hollow and inevitable. He is used to the emotional suffering so he is just casually dealing with it, which ties it back to the anti-war theme. The use of the satirical motif represents how war has taken something such as death, which is so drastic and made it so meaningless. In other words, he is just going through the motions without thinking too much because he is physically and mentally drained. Vonnegut shows that war does not only affect the soldier but also his family. After the war, Billy commits himself to the mental ward and he feels embarrassed when his mother visits him, “he always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward… she made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all” (102). This quote displays that Billy is battling mental illness and dealing with devastation. Parents work hard to raise their kids up and teach them to be grateful and to love
The book is clearly an anti-war according to most of the proponents. The illusory version that the narrator, O’Brien, puts in writing regarding his imagination as a fighter in World War II, depicts him as not exclusively a peace lover. However, hostility in Vietnam appeared erroneous. The character does not have the proper audacity to flee to Canada. It is in this regard that The Things They Carried can be seen as a clear-cut calamity whose major fault a rather likeable protagonist being the cause of his demise (Kock 115). It is in this line that all the horrors addressed in the book such as killing, losing friends through being slay, boredom interspersed by terror following such a decision.
In the text it states “To them a chip of it was as a piece of the Cross. Ignorant tho’ they were of the secret facts of the tragedy, and not thinking but that the penalty was somehow unavoidably inflicted from the naval point of view, for all that they instinctively felt that Billy was a sort of man as incapable of mutiny as of willful murder.” This quote from the book shows how the sailors felt about Billy Budd after his death; they thought he was wrongly punished for a crime he didn’t commit. They saw him as a christ-like sacrifice for the good of the rest of the crew. The narrator compares Billy’s gallows to the cross Jesus was crucified on to exaggerate how much the sailors valued Billy and his sacrifice for them. If Billy hadn’t sacrificed himself, I think some of the other crew members would have been hung as well for conspiring to mutiny. Even though Billy was in the end hung for murder, the slightly ignorant crew viewed the hanging as a false punishment for leading a
“Now every road and highway…was littered with the corpses of human beings and animals…the wounded were left to die. Children ran frantically, shrieking for their mothers…there was no food, water, soap, or medical supplies. Like polluted waters became carriers of disease (Kasenkina 93).” This is a typical scene of war demonstrated in literary works. In literature war is a very common, yet important subject and it is generally demonstrated in plays, short stories, and novels. Some of the pieces of literature in where war is shown include: The Crucible by Arthur Miller, “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, and Leap to Freedom by Kasenkina. In these pieces of literature war is shown as a horrid event that always has both physically and psychologically bad outcomes. In many literary works including the ones mentioned above the good outcomes in war are misrepresented and suppressed by the bad outcomes in war.
The book I read was Billy Sunday. It consists of 189 pages and was written by William T. Ellis in 1959.
Billy the Kid is one of the most famous outlaws in American history. He has been a widely told figure in American history as well as folklore. The have made movies from his history and have also wrote many books on him. Most of Billy the Kids life remains a heated controversy throughout America.
Through out the novel Vonnegut presents the concepts of predestination along with the reality of free will and uses the ideas and actions of Billy Pilgrim along with some other characters to express these ideas as well as his antiwar opinions. He successfully utilizes Billy Pilgrim to illustrate how war can alter the human mind as well as experiences. He uses Billy to show that we are all slaves of time. So it goes.
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.
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain ...
Behind every war there is supposed to be a moral—some reason for fighting. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. O’Brien relays to the readers the truth of the Vietnam War through the graphic descriptions of the man that he killed. After killing the man O’Brien was supposed to feel relief, even victory, but instead he feels grief of killing a man that was not what he had expected. O’Brien is supposed to be the winner, but ends up feeling like the loser. Ironically, the moral or lesson in The Things They Carried is that there is no morality in war. War is vague and illogical because it forces humans into extreme situations that have no obvious solutions.