He feels very alone, but then comes to terms with the fact that there are others fighting the same war at home as well. The standing reminder of a monument is of a great deal of importance. Not only does it show that these men are not forgotten to the pages of time, but it stresses the importance of the cost of war. The author was trying to show that war wares a heavy burden long after the last shots are fired. The author, Yusef Komunyakaa, set out with intent of painting a picture of what the men coming home from this war were encountering; as well as how it was affecting them physically and psychologically.
In “Dulce Et Decorum Est” there is a shift in pace where Owen exemplifies the immediate calling of “GAS! Gas! Quick, boys” conveying the tone of how the war is chaotic to support the overall meaning of how war is not what people believe it is (9). As the stanzas change, they each accentuate the idea of how the war takes a toll on the soldier, and in the last stanza focuses on how people believe the old lie of how dying for a country is glorious. “Epitaph on a Soldier” is written in iambic pentameter with a more rhythmic nature to impose a more positive impression on the reader.
This signifies that they all eat the same way, they all train the same way, and they all react the same way to right and wrong situations. In the final analysis, the author of Fallen Angels incorporates imagery, irony and metaphors to convey the theme that warfare often forces soldiers to reconsider their traditional notions of right and wrong. This theme is important because it helps show what soldiers had to deal with. After reading Fallen Angels and contemplating the theme, the reader cannot help but wonder what their opinion on right and wrong would
The Changes of the Western Front War, irrefutably, changes the mentality and ableness of a person beyond recognition. Through the hardships recruits and veterans face on the front lines, many come back as different people. Through their experiences, they take back gruesome images, and traumatic experiences. Many do not even return from the battlefield. German casualties in World War I were around “1.7 to 2 million”, and about “65% of all mobilized men were casualties” (Rabideau 1), many of whom were young recruits enlisted straight out of school.
People’s personalities are often the result of the environment that they’re in. Harsh environments such as war can foster negative personality traits in people. You see examples of this in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. In the novel, Paul Bӓumer is a 19 year old soldier in the German army during World War I. During the story he has to learn how to deal with the harshness of war.
This connects to the theme by showing age can have an impact on somebody. As I kept reading, in the middle of the book RIchard Perry and his other soldier and friends who were older, began to get injured and killed in action from the war. Another quote from the book shows that Richard was happy that he hasn’t severly injured anyone or killed anyone else, “I’m not a killer,” I said. He looked at me and smiled. I hated him saying that.
O’Brien depicts a picture in which men are required to perform as brave soldiers, but they become overwhelmed and are consumed by their environment. O’Brien states “they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth” (18). He then continues to describe that after the chaos, they must compose themselves and put on a brave façade for each other. O’Brien is trying to emphasize to his readers that the men and women who fight in war are human- they carry their own emotional baggage and still react to fulfil social expectations of their roles as infantrymen. During the violence they can be seen reacting as humans.
A heroic couplet structure within the poem provides a degree of clarity while still asserting the chaos and cruelness of war. Once again, it can be inferred that Owen himself serves as the speaker. However, this time his audience is more focused on young soldiers and families rather than plainly the public in general. In contrast to the previous work, this poem is set primarily in a World War I training camp, signifying the process young soldiers go through prior to deployment to the front line. The tone of this poem is more foreboding and condemnatory, not only describing the training soldiers but outright degrading their forced involvement as morally wrong.
Due to the significant amount of hardship, I believe that the theme is lost of innocence. A defining moment in the theme loss of innocence is when Jethro changes his mind about war. At first, “ He liked stories of war”(15). At this point in the book, Jethro enjoyed the thought of war because he imagined war as brass instruments playing and uniforms on all of the soldiers.
This pattern is evident in the real life wars which are the reason most soldiers are often greatly affected when they come back to their real home after being in the war for so long. War habitually changes boys to soldiers through the desensitizing and inhumane occurrences they have
The novel With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge is an account that voice the story of training and two battles fought by Eugene Bondurant Sledge during his time as a private during World War II with Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine regiment, and the 1st Marine Division. When reading this novel its helps you to fellow a common American soldier, going through boot camp, and through both of his battles. This firmly shows the sentiments, conditions, and horrors that took place in infantry division that was fought in the pacific. The novel discusses the mind boggling hardships and sentiments of misery that were felt by men during battles, and also shows the trust and friendships that were created between soldiers as they fought together. All through the novel Sledge wrestles with general fierceness of the war, and regularly thinks about whether its fundamental or if there is even a
When a gear has been fully developed and created it is moved from the assembly line into a machine. This machine slowly begins to wear at the gear and degrade it. By the end of its time in the machine, the gear is nearly unrecognizable, rusted and disfigured. Much like a gear and its machine, soldiers are often left unrecognizable by war. In Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried, the author depicts stories from his time in vietnam and his time after.
World War I is a gloomy and cruel place; it obliterates the beliefs of fighting for one’s country and transforms the minds of the soldiers. This realization is found in Erich Maria Remarque’s book All Quiet on the Western Front. In the book, a young teen named Paul Baumer and his friends join in the war believing it’s going to make them become important and that fighting for their country is such a great privilege, but once they are in the war, they all realize it’s not the same as what they were told. The young soldiers witness what war is truly about and they reflect on what they were told, knowing the truth makes them see they were told lies, so they are the same which obliterates their trust in the adult world. Remarque employs symbolism,
War is the graveyard of innocence for boys who become men through the loss of humanity. The book “Fallen Angels,” by Walter Dean Myers, is a story about Richard Perry, a young man who mistakenly joins the Vietnam War to avoid the shame of not going to college. As the book goes on Perry discovers his mistake and in the process, not only loses his innocence, but also his humanity. Wars will always be the dark parts of our history and no war is devoid of horrors that can strip anyone of everything they are, and in war soldiers must use coping mechanisms to deal with these very apparent horrors.
Josselyn Palma Ms.Fox LA (H), 3rd Period Character Analysis March 29, 2016 The Things that Changed Tim O’Brien In the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a collection of short stories about a group of soldiers marching in the Vietnam war including the author himself in and after war. Each soldier is described by their stories and what each individual carried that kept them alive like the emotional burdens of memories, stories, fear and guilt.