Ira Whelan's False Hope

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.

In the book Fallen Angels Walter Dean Myers tells the story of soldiers who struggles with a problem involving what is right and wrong in war. Fallen Angels set in Vietnam during the Vietnam war, the story introduces the main character Perry, who faces obstacles, including death and killing. The author’s use of literary devices, specifically imagery, irony, and metaphors convey the theme warfare often forces soldiers to reconsider their traditional notions of right and wrong.

The American Revolution marked the history of many heroic events that immaculately stand as true inspirations for the generations to come in the United States. Even today, the gallantry of a few soldiers that won independence for the country is not only kept in the hearts of the people but run in the American blood to demonstrate acts of valor at times of war and hardships. One such story recorded in the history dates back to 1776, about a sixteen-year old juvenile, Joseph Plumb Martin, joined the Rebel Infantry and recorded his tribulations about forty-seven years in a memoir titled as “A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier”.

David Laskin’s The Children’s Blizzard explains the devastating force of an intense blizzard, which caught several people unprepared, and it tells the tragic stories of these people. On January 12, 1888 a massive blizzard struck the center of North America, killing between 250 to 500 people and affecting thousands. There were many factors that made this blizzard exceptionally deadly. Many farmers and children who were outside were unprepared to deal with any cold conditions, “a day when children had raced to school with no coats or gloves and farmers were far from home doing chores they had put off during the long siege of cold” (Laskin 2). The reason for this is because they had no idea the blizzard was coming. In this time the weather forecasts

The Holocaust was one of humanity's darkest events and was the most devastating genocide in history. Even in the darkest event in history, there were those who didn’t give up hope and survived. One of these survivors was Elie Wiesel. He recounts the horrors he faced in Night, a retelling of what happened inside the concentration camp Auschwitz. Elie was only fifteen when he was deported in 1944. He tells the story about how he survived through the camps. With Night, Wiesel hopes that it can convince future generations to not make the same mistakes that were made which caused suffering and death. They often dealt with issues like starvation and selection. However death always loomed over them. Wiesel often uses words with dark connotations and meanings to describe the horror he experienced and to get his message across.

“I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” For many Jewish people in the time of the Holocaust, this was the case. As the Nazis attacked the Jews, they treated them harshly. No matter how old or young or whether they were a male or female, they were treated like animals. The Nazis believed that Jews were a nuisance to them. In the book Night, they describe events that happened to one individual, Eliezer Wiesel. The three acts of dehumanization in Night are how the Jews were forced out of Sighet,how all families were separated, and having to travel by foot in freezing conditions.

It’s the winter of 1777 and 1778, George Washington and the Continental Army have set up their winter camp at Valley Forge. It’s freezing, we have little meat, and food is terrible. Men have to sleep on the cold hard ground of their huts, that are full of smoke from the fire. Some no longer have shoes, almost blinded from the smoke, and nasty clothes all because of the freezing winter air (Waldo, 151). Everyday, men are leaving, dying, and getting sick. The question is: Do I re-enlist or do I quit? Do I stay and fight with the army or do I go home to my aging mother and my family that I miss dearly? I am choosing to re-enlist, because the Army needs as much help as possible, things were beginning to get better, and there is George Washington

Throughout the ages, wars have wreaked havoc and caused great destruction that lead to the loss of millions of lives. However, wars also have an immensely destructive effect on the individual soldier. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, one is able to see exactly to what extent soldiers suffered during World War 1 as well as the effect that war had on them. In this essay I will explain the effect that war has on young soldiers by referring to the loss of innocence of young soldiers, the disillusionment of the soldiers and the debasement of soldiers to animalistic men.

This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him.

“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected,” Paul Fussell wrote in “The Great War and Modern Memory,” his classic study of the English literature of the First World War. “But the Great War was more ironic than any before or since.” The ancient verities of honor and glory were still standing in 1914 when England’s soldier-poets marched off to fight in France. Those young men became modern through the experience of trench warfare, if not in the forms they used to describe it. It was Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Joyce, and Lawrence who invented literary modernism while sitting out the war. Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen—who all fought in the trenches and, in the last two cases, died

Prior to arriving in America, Medina had never experienced snow. As he takes his first few steps into this new country he sees this clean, fresh snow. He describes

We as humans find conflict to be rash and futile, but to the soldiers that fight for our freedom, it is an honor and a privilege, but it is dreadful nonetheless. We are going to be discussing Tim O'Brien's intentions in writing the short story “Where Have You Gone Charming Billy.” It is my understanding that he wrote the story to tell us about war as it is hard to imagine its entirety and that war takes lives. Finally, I believe that he wants us to see how dangerous and terrifying war really is. So let’s explore this complication.

Through centuries of great wars and battles, history has displayed brave men and women who have fought for their countries. These audacious people have helped propel countries for the greater good. However, the weight and responsibility, of the war, takes a heavy toll on soldiers that is often overlooked. Tim O’Brien, author of the novel The Things They Carried, records his stories, and the stories of his fellow soldiers during the war. However, three of these soldiers are affected in an outlandish way. The lives of soldiers, Norman Bowker and Curt Lemon, illustrate how the war pressures the human spirit to a standard it can’t resemble.

When Medina first arrives in New York, he could not contain his excitement because he has never seen snow. Looking through the window, he describes the snow as “white” and “furry”(72). Medina uses the snow color as an indicator of his tone towards each of his new encounters while in the United States. “I rushed down the steps of the plane and sink my bare hands into the snow, press it into a ball, and throw it at my sister”(72). Medina compels the reader to infer that the white color symbolizes his great feelings. As the story progresses, readers get a taste of Medina’s different moods and colors of the snow.

In the book “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien admits to killing only one man during his war career, and relays it in the chapter “The Man I Killed”. In this chapter, O’Brien surveys the mangled body of the Vietnamese man he has just murdered, and desperately attempts to humanize the dead man as a coping method for his guilt. The chapter embodies a unique, and extremely detailed repetitive writing style which serves as a symbol of O’Brien’s scrutiny over his irrevocable action.