The year is 1954. Government agencies resurrect secret plans previously discarded until a more forceful administration comes to power. Behind the scenes, the CIA and State Department are fervently working in over time trying to engineer a government overthrow against a populist nationalist in their own backyard who has the dare audacity to threaten both US economic and geopolitical interest. Accusations of communism and Soviet penetration permeate the discourse and heat up the rhetoric; swift action must be taken to stabilize the hemisphere. Intervention by any means necessary. Exiled opposition leaders are paid off, trained, equipped, and installed. Propaganda transmits through jammed radio towers and warns the peasant population of invasion and liberation. Psychological warfare in conjunction with paramilitary covert operation is launched. The target—Guatemala, a third world poverty stricken country in which the fruits of revolution and conflict are as ripe as the bananas that dot the landscape. Such a riveting story could easily fill the pages of Tom Clancy’s next best-selling and fictional political thriller but instead, it is the true story unearthed through extensive investigation by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, who with Bitter Fruit, meticulously detail a thought provoking and well-documented historical account of the Guatemalan coup d’état. The sowing of the seeds, subsequent cultivation, and ultimately the dangerous harvest of these bitter fruits is the basis for this compelling chronicle of one of the most controversial and…
Just like every other war, the Vietnam War was a tragic age where blood was spilled and sorrow filled the hearts of people from both sides of the battlefield. Yusef Komunyakaa was one of the many who mourned over lost loves and friends. His poem describes the heartache he encounters as he visits the memorial for all the lives that were lost. Post-traumatic memories flood him all at once and he envisions some of the slain veterans and citizens reflecting in the wall of names. He is bitter at the war that has scarred his life, but the poem ends with a tender scene of a woman brushing her child’s hair, which overpowers the grudge he holds. The message Yusef Komunyakaa implies in his poem “Facing It” is that enjoying life’s beauty and warmth is stronger than mourning over regrets and mishaps, and he displays the theme by powerfully utilizing metaphors, imagery, and symbolism.…
“All Quiet in the Western Front” is a social commentary on how soldiers are effected emotionally and socially throughout the war and are conflicted on how to readjust to their lives after the Great War. Soldiers are conflicted by their character and do not know whether to pick back life up as a youth or as adults who have endured hard circumstances. The book does not focus on battles and it does not focus on a specific time frame, it rather evaluates what goes through the minds of a soldier. These men are literally being bombarded in the war front by explosives and in the home front by misinformed public who want to know the extremity of the war. Bystanders set High expectations for soldiers to be tough and to know how to behave in order to survive, yet those who did not participate in the Great War could only speculate what was going on in the soldier’s minds. The Great War damaged these soldiers physically and mentally, however certain elements gave the survivors the ability to pull through the war. The youth shifted its mentality and lost its innocence in the Great War. Therefore, Remarque did not focus his book on the combat that took place during the Great War, rather he presents social issues, which does not belittle his experience rather it presents a different view of the…
‘A Hero of Our Time’ and ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ present the decay of the human spirit, as both novelists propose the corrosive effects of war, with Erich Maria Remarque focusing more on the after-effects and Mikhail Lermontov on the process in action. The characters Paul Baumer and Pechorin can, in some ways, be considered products of their time.…
In the autumn of 1918, a 20 year old german soldier contemplates to himself: “Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear” (295). These last few thoughts happen right before this soldier, Paul Baumer, dies. In the book All Quiet On the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque creates the character of Paul Baumer in order to illustrate a generation full of men who are well known throughout our history, of what we all know of, the “Lost Generation.” About eight million soldiers lost their lives in combat and millions more were injured under the occasion of what we call today, “The Great War.” Remarque wrote this book about what these fighters at war deal with first hand; like with their teachers, families, and government. All Quiet On the Western Front expresses a story filled with the beauty of comradeship between each of the soldiers by finding solace in one another and the extenuating gestures of raillery throughout the book that help keep them from completely being taken over by the fear of death, or even war itself.…
In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque progressively shows the brutality of war through the eyes of soldiers claiming their innocence, and also the effects of war on the people in the home front . In this essay I will be discussing the effect of war on both the combatants and non combatants in this novel.…
Tastee Products is a middle sized company at the national candy market level. The Tastee Bar, made of caramel and nougat with a milk chocolate coat, makes up 50% of Tastee’s revenue. As a result of the Tastee Bar’s popularity the company is aiming to compete with larger candy markets within U.S market. However, a recent inspection reported that a plant in Delaware, where most of the Tastee Bar is manufactured, has produced the chocolate in equipment that is used to make other chocolates containing peanuts, almonds and walnuts. The problem with this is the threat for allergy-sensitive consumers coming in contact with the bars that have been compromised.…
The novel The Wars by Timothy Findley is one that expresses the emotional agony that the First World War had brought upon many. Many themes are evident throughout the novel that are able to enhance the significance of emotional pain and suffering felt by the characters. The use of fire imagery, in particular, is utilized as a symbol of emotional distress, and is used very dominantly among all of the images mentioned throughout the novel. This type of imagery is important towards developing the main theme and tone of the novel – the emotional pain that the war had inflicted upon humanity. In The Wars, the way in which fire had been represented had provided a mirror to Robert Ross’s emotional distress, the lack of effect of violence on Robert’s humanity, and the emotional pain felt by Mrs. Ross, Robert’s mother.…
The poem “beyond the snow belt” by Mary Oliver conveys to us the ignorance of people towards deaths and disasters unrelated to them through the lens of one of them. In the first stanza, Mary paints a seemingly peaceful and happy picture of people’s life by pouring a series of imagery, metaphor and personification. People show no concern about the sufferings and feel no connection to them. As illustrated in the sentence “sweep down their easy paths of pride and welcome ”, those people’s ease and happiness stand in stark contrast to the sufferings experienced by people living in disasters. The second stanza starts with a thought-evoking rhetorical question, revealing the truth of people’s indifference “forget with ease each far mortality”. The bad news comes from a distant place and eventually passes people’s mind with no trace. People living in peace are not able to feel connected to the deaths happening not around them since their lives stay unaffected. In the last stanza, the author echos the theme with an accepting tone “all news arrives as from a distant place”. She points out that it is a usual thing for people to ignore tragedies because of the long distance between them. In their view, all the disasters and sufferings seem to exist in another world; as long as their lives stay the same, all the pains have nothing to do with them. In conclusion, this poem expresses a sad truth that people are more likely to ignore deaths and tragedies happening far away from them and stay totally unrelated.…
Robin Jenkins effectively conveys loss of innocence and ant war through sophisticated symbolism in the short story “Flowers”. It tells the story of a young girl, Margaret, who was evacuated from the city of Glasgow to the highlands of Scotland in an attempt to avoid the inhumanity of war, but it is in the highlands where she truly witnessed the brutality of war.…
Imagery is an effective technique used in the by the poet in “War Photographer”. As well as feeling pity towards the photographer, we also feel pity towards the victims of war. “...running children in a nightmare heat” The word nightmare suggest that the victims of war are having to live out their worst tribulation. Also, the fact that children are mentioned makes us feel compassionate as children are associated with innocence. The children had no involvement in the starting of the war yet they must live out the inferno of war. Another example of imagery being used to create a sense of pity towards the…
Most novels on war usually perceive only one side in the realm. An author like Timothy Findley can make a novel less about war but more about the physiological impact on ones mind because of war. The Wars is a very powerful and disturbing book with plenty of linguistic contexts. Timothy Findley’s Governor General's Award-winning novel of the First World War tells the story of Robert Ross, a young Canadian who enlists himself in the army after the death of his sister, Rowena. Robert has to cope with challenges of war, and make the transition into manhood and develop new beliefs in order to survive the war. Robert encounters numerous challenges along his journey that forces Robert to re-evaluate the truths that serve as the foundation of his life. This is what exemplifies deconstructive criticism; the moment one questions their truths, and realizes that there is no one central truth, instead, many linguistic oppositions of the same event that changes according to one’s perspective. With the title of Timothy Findley’s novel being The Wars, many false interpretations are suggested as it is just another book about World War I; however, The Wars, by Timothy Findley, digested through a lens of Deconstructive Criticism, one is able to surpass this barrier to find the ambiguities and contradictions of the internal battles illustrated in the novel: the psychological battle of sanity and insanity, the distinction of friend and enemy, and the illusion and reality of the war itself.…
All Quiet on the Western Front, written in 1929 by Erich Maria Remarque, is superficially the story of one soldiers’ journey in World War 1 and his eventual death. Beneath this, however, Remarque has composed a literary treasure which, above all, seeks to illustrate war as that which is engrained in the nucleus of humanity and through the hugely negative effects of war depicted, seeks to question humanities apparent advancement through its need to engage in such a futile exercise as war. Remarque’s Liberal Humanist ideology is given expression through the correlation between war and nature, thus emphasizing the innate position of war within man, the ultimate paradox contained within an advanced mankind engaging in primitive conflicts and the ironic search for an omniscient being derived from man’s reduction to the barest quest for survival. In addition through the examination of the negativities surrounding the social institutions and hierarchies set up in the absence of god, All Quiet on the Western Front becomes much more than an emotive and well constructed piece of historical realism. In All Quiet on the Western Front, the connections between war and the natural surroundings in which it is fought give rise to the position of war the collective psyche of mankind. The military jargon of the ‚the white puffs of smoke from the tracer bullets‛ is followed by the natural imagery of ‚the sun shining on them‛ in order to emphasize the apparent synchronization between war and nature. The colour imagery of white of the bullets and yellow of the sun, being light colours, connote the harmonious relationship between nature and war. Through the proximity of phrases describing both war and nature in an endearing fashion we are led to conclude that war and nature, or that which is primitive, are fundamentally linked. The gaian imagery ‚Earth, with your ridges and holes and hollows into which a man can throw himself , where a man can hide‛ is ironic as it takes a man-made…
Sylvia Plath establishes a link between her suicide and the Holocaust. It is made of private and a public matter which widen the reader’s narrow point of view. Her attempted suicide and the Holocaust are kept overlapping with her a gentle voice throughout the poem. “A sort of walking miracle, my skin/ Bright as a Nazi Lampshade” (“Plath” 4-5) is one of the good examples. She could maximized the wavelength of her death because of the…
War is cruel and war is kind. One one hand, lives are ended pointlessly and cruel regimes have no mercy; but on the other, there is an odd sort of kindness, contrary to the cruelty that war can bring, people putting themselves in danger selflessly and the war itself brings about these sudden and extreme acts of generosity. Albert’s struggle to find his horse Joey in the trenches of World War I and Liesel’s hardship as she understands and use literature to combat the issues in the world in World War II show that some people can still be kind in the cruelty of war. These are stories that are set in wars that show the relentless cruelty people, and at the same time, the heartfelt kindness of people.…