Approximately 20% of all war veterans suffer from a mental disorder called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD for short. This continues to affect many soldiers, just like it did in the past. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is a first person narrative set during World War I about a young boy and his friends’ journey to war. An anti war propaganda, Remarque’s novel debates the corruption of WWI.
At some point, all people must accept the harsh truth of mortality. When people realize it for the first time, they can go through a change in character. The young medic Rat Kiley, a character in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, exemplifies this. His reaction to the sudden death of his best friend Curt Lemon, as portrayed in “How to Tell a True War Story,” depicts the shift of character that accompanies loss. Moreover, it reflects the inability of soldiers to return to normalcy after experiencing the traumas of grief.
The grueling Vietnam War, disrupting the lives of soldiers and their families, un-packs its complexities through the journey of the soldiers. After the death of Curt Lemon, a fellow soldier, O’Brien exclaims, “War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love” (80). O’Brien’s metaphor conveys his perception of the Vietnam War while setting a strong precedent of what the war really was like. Furthermore, it is evident that the complexities of war are hard to navigate as soldiers, tearing away at their mental health, revealing soldier’s experiences at war that corrode their overall well-being. Furthermore, this toll on overall-well being can be self-inflicted when soldiers assign blame to themselves as guilt culminates into lifelong burdens.
All is Lost in War Before World War I, war was glorified and many a young boy hoped of becoming a soldier. After World War I, war had been given a new darkness of scarring memories from veterans of the debacle. All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, and In the Field, by Tim O’Brien, help shed the light on this shade that looms over war now. In All Quiet on the Western Front and In the Field, common themes of lost generation and horrors of war are present in a bold fashion.
In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the author skillfully presents a paradox about war and how it is both horrible and beautiful. Through O’Brien’s vivid storytelling and sorrowful anecdotes, he is able to demonstrate various instances which show both the horrible and beautiful nature of war. Within the vulnerability of the soldiers and the resilience found in the darkest of circumstances, O’brien is able to show the uproarious emotional landscape of war with a paradox that serves as the backbone of the narrative. In the first instance, O’Brien explores the beauty in horror within the chapter “Love.”
The lives of soldiers, Norman Bowker and Curt Lemon, illustrate how the war pressures the human spirit to a standard it can’t resemble. The pressure and responsibilities of lost friends and lost acts of courage heavily weigh Norman Bowker down,
When faced with war soldiers change, for better or for worse. Modern culture celebrates the glory of patriotic sacrifice. However, this celebration often leaves out the gritty details and trauma of violence behind war and the way it affects people. Homer’s The Odyssey and William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives clearly discuss these details. Both debate the long-awaited return of warriors that went off to fight a war and the way the experience changes the protagonists.
Through Farquhar, Bierce shows how soldiers on both sides were merciless in their acts, a fact that would never be mentioned if Romantic writings were all that remained from this era. Fast forward several decades, World War Two has consumed the planet, and officers are just as cruel as they were in the Civil War. “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell, announces, through the form of a poem, the callousness of the military in WWII. A man thinks he is safe under the protection of the State, but the poem tells that, “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” (“Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell).
War has a profound and lasting impact on individuals and society. In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, he tells different stories of before, during and after war and how it affects the soldiers, mentally and physically. In these stories Tim O’Brien illustrates these traumas and the long-lasting effects and impact that the war will always have on these men. Even though all the men didn’t survive the ones that did continue to have traumatic flashbacks. War has a lasting impact on individuals and society, affecting not only the physical but the mental and emotional well-being of those involved.
The authors' message of how important storytelling was to soldiers as a way to cope is seen in
Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way
Chris Hedges, a former war correspondent, has a memory overflowing with the horrors of many battlefields and the helplessness of those trapped within them. He applies this memory to write War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, where he tutors us in the misery of war. To accomplish this goal, Hedges uses impactful imagery, appeals to other dissidents of war and classic writers, and powerful exemplification. Throughout his book, Hedges batters the readers with painful and grotesque, often first-hand, imagery from wars around the globe. He begins the book with his experience in Sarajevo, 1995.
The war novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque depicts one protagonist, Paul, as he undergoes a psychological transformation. Paul plays a role as a soldier fighting in World War I. His experiences during the war are not episodes the average person would simply experience. Alternatively, his experiences allow him to develop into a more sophisticated individual. Remarque illustrates these metamorphic experiences to expose his theme of the loss of not only people’s lives but also innocence and tranquility that occurs in war.
The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.
Humans do not control war, rather, war controls humans. In less then ten words, the reader understands that The Yellow Birds is not a glorified memoir of a soldier’s accounts in Iraq. Bartley is not a hero, and Powers never destines him to be one. As Bartley, the main character of the novel, confesses, the American soldiers “were not destined at all” (Powers, ch. 1). Bartley is the war’s prey.
