6. INTRODUCTION: All is Quiet on the Western Front begins with Paul Bäumer's company at rest, five miles behind the front lines between Langemark and Bixschoote. They have had very little sleep for the fourteen days since they relieved the front line and seventy of their one hundred and fifty men are dead at the hands of Russian gunfire. The cook, Ginger, has fixed rations for the one hundred and fifty and, after arguing with the lieutenant, grudgingly consents to give all the food to the eighty soldiers left, including double rations of smokes. As the narrator remarks, "Today is wonderfully good."…
The novel I read is titled Soldier's Heart written by Gary Paulsen.The book consisted of 128 pages which seemed to be a fairly easy read in my opinion. Soldier's Heart is a historical war novel that is based on a true story of a boy who joins the Union Army. Gary Paulsen writes about his main character that takes you on an adventure from Winona, Minnesota all the way to the battle fields of Gettysburg where the novel ends. The location is also spread across the United States cities such as in Chicago, St. Louis , many of the main battle fields of the civil war for example the Battle of Bull Run. The book takes place in a span of about seven years from 1861 through 1868 when the main character finally dies from earlier war related wounds that at the time were incurable.…
Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, provides an incredible realization of what life was like for an American soldier who fought in Vietnam from perspectives before, during, and after the war. The story’s power draws you in. It makes the events in the story seem real and provides the reader with a sense of what it feels like to be one of the soldiers. O’Brien’s talent as a writer made a fictional story more than believable to the reader. When reading this book, the reader struggles with depicting what is factual and what is fictional. O’Brien provides this effect by blurring the line between reality and fantasy. The book recollects many stories from O’Brien’s own experiences as a soldier and includes fictional aspects to enhance the story and to help O’Brien get his point across. O’Brien teaches us in all of these stories that there is no difference between what is factual and what is fictional in war. By doing this, the reader experiences the feelings that O’Brien and his comrades felt. The Things They Carried describes what those men carried to battle and back home, both tangible and intangible. The novel questions what war is and what the individual soldiers received out of it. This novel is an eye opener. Any person’s perspectives on the war and its soldiers are most certainly to change after reading this book. The Things They Carried brings the Vietnam War to life like no civilian could have ever imagined.…
In the short story, “Soldier’s home,” the protagonist deals with difficult conflicts within himself and with others. Ernest Hemmingway shows us what it is like for the soldier, Harold Krebs, who returned home, to Kansas, from World War I in 1917, three years after the end of the war. He did not get celebrated like all the other soldiers that returned home causing some major conflict in the story.…
The privilege of being a child is only a lost dream to children in places like Sierra Leone where they are forced into joining rebel and militia groups. The children in those groups learn how to shoot guns when instead they should be learning how to ride a bicycle. In Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone he speaks about his time during the war and being recruited as a child soldier. Ishmael goes through numerous life changing events and commits awful things during his time in fighting in the war. Ishmael however is able to leave his horrible lifestyle behind, obtain his humanity back and start a new beginning along with the rest of society. Beah manages to withstand the effect of the horrors of war by accepting the loss of his family, and beginning new relationships with people such as his newly found uncle and Esther the nurse from his rehabilitation center.…
In “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway, the character’s emotions and behavior is most significant. The main character, Krebs describes his time since he has been home and expresses his emotions and thoughts as he comes back to regular life. He has a tough time with this however. When he first got home, he was willing to try and re-enter society, yet nobody wanted to hear the truth about what happened. They all wanted lies. Hemingway wrote, “ Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it…Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie.” (187) I believe this altered his mental state later. Lying and not being able to tell the truth made him nauseated as well as forced him to isolate himself from others and hold all…
Joseph Plumb Martin was born on November 1760 in western Massachusetts. He wrote a book in which he described the life of an ordinary soldier during the American Revolution.”A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier” not only informed about the poor conditions in which the troops lived but also is one of the few soldier's accounts of the Revolution in general.…
Wartime stories are often hard to tell in a narrative non-fiction piece due to the difficulties faced in said wartime conditions. Author Tim O’Brien attempts to address these issues in his novel The Things They Carried, which is a recollection of his war stories which are set in Vietnam. O’Brien’s method of circumventing the problems posed by relying on using imagination and invention to accurately display the truth, as he sees it. The concept of such can be seen in three chapters of the novel, “Good Form”, “How to Tell a True War Story”, and “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”. By critically assessing these three chapters, and the outlook of storytelling that they portray, O’Brien’s view on storytelling can be fully understood and comprehended.…
Soldiers coming home from war often have to overcome adversity when dealing with their inability to integrate back into their families and society, as well as coping with the loss of innocence.…
Most soldiers come back from war with physical injuries. However there are also the injuries without the physical scars; the “hidden” wounds of battle. The horrors of armed conflict and war often leave scars on the psyches of soldiers. Soldiers often come home diagnosed with psychological disorders. They are affected mentally by their war experiences. Ernest Hemingway’s, “Soldier’s Home” portrays war in a realistic and raw perspective because it focuses on the war’s true capability to mentally damage and drastically change a soldier.…
Cloning is a naturally occurring phenomenon, as well as a human induced process. A clone is a living organism deriving from another, with identical set of genes. A naturally occurring anthropological example of a clone would be twins, a set of individuals with identical DNA. A laboratory-induced clone would be stem cell production and animal cloning. In the movie The Island by Michael Bay, the concept of cloning is used as a life insurance policy to elongate the life of a natural born individual. This medical use of cloning has been under the experimental stage for quite sometime now and under ethical question. There are three different ways of cloning, recombinant DNA technology or DNA cloning, reproductive cloning, and therapeutic cloning.…
I have never been astounded by such marvelous architecture until I laid my eyes on Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois. Soldier Field seemed like a dragon, just engulfing everyone who was spectating the Mexico vs Bosnia game on May 2011. When I first laid eyes on the monstrosity, I was very intimidated. The thought of entering this behemoth marveled me and made me even more excited to enter and watch the Mexico soccer game that I was anxiously waiting for! Chicago itself is a marvelous city with hidden gems scattered throughout, like Soldier Field. The cold air of Lake Michigan stung my skin and felt like shards of ice piercing my body. Soldier Field, in Chicago, is a monstrosity of a place. Going there to watch a Mexico soccer game was like going into the eye of a storm.…
If You Survive, written by George Wilson, is a first person account of a US Army officer in the European Theatre during the Second World War. His account took place over an eight month period of constant combat which began days after the Normandy landings and up to the Battle of the Bulge. Wilson’s story begins as a young infantry lieutenant right out of Officer Candidate School, who was sent to war as a replacement officer. Only a few days after the Normandy landings, his regimental commander informs the group of replacement lieutenants that if they survive their first battle he will promote them.…
Feelings are when someone shows their emotion or sensitivity. Humans have the necessity to feel angry, happy, sad, etc. Is something natural and our body reacts in different ways, the body would cry with the feeling of sadness or happiness, or would become red with the feeling of anger and stress. In different situations our feelings take control of our actions and make us act in irresponsible way for example, a family situation. The mentality of a child is different from an adult, their Knowledge comes from experience and they believe to know what is best for children, but adults make the mistake of mistrusting, they make the children start to feel inferior and they start to have feelings of anger, sadness, and pity themselves. In the short story “war” by Timothy Findley, the main character goes through numerous of feelings that were a product of his father mistrust and his own understanding of war.…
“Band of Brothers: E. Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne From Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle Nest”…