In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque’s use of irony and metaphors to prove that the horrors and evils of war outweigh any positives. When Paul, the main character, and the other men in his company move to the front lines to lay down barbed wire they are shot at and find protection in a cemetery. Paul remarks, “I merely crawl still farther under the coffin, it shall protect me, thought Death himself lies in it.” (67). Paul knows that his only protection from the shootings is inside of one of the coffins, which ironically, is where he would end up if he was shot there.
More indirect resistance on behalf of the soldiers was seen through search and evade missions as US troops still followed orders to search for the Vietcong but when they found them instead of engaging in warfare tactics they would give them an informal greeting and not notify their commanding offices (Handout: Glossary for the American War). This gave the Vietcong an advantage during negotiations because it became apparent that the troops were no longer obeying the combat orders given to them by their superiors. The atrocities experienced by our soldiers allowed them to finally see the Vietnamese as humans and not the enemies the U.S. portrayed them as. Additionally in response to the resistance movement within Vietnam a more passive strategy
All they wanted was “to save the soul of America” (King, Beyond, 42). Martin Luther King Jr is an African American preacher and civil rights activist that along with every other African American male and female in 1976 was waging a war in America for their not-so-natural born rights. Not only were they fighting for their own rights in 1976, but they were sending away the son, husbands, brothers of other Americans thousands of miles away to the country of Vietnam to fight an unjust war for the rights of the people in Southeast Asia. Martin Luther King Jr proves to all throughout his speech “Beyond Vietnam --- A Time to Break Silence” that the Vietnam war was unjust by his use of emotional diction, the allusion of Jim crow, and repetition.
In conditions of uncertainty, decision-makers use devices to simplify the issues in attempts to reduce and make uncertainty bearable. During the Cold War, United States leadership relied on metaphors for the development of a strategy. Metaphors as the base of strategy are ineffective, and nothing better reveals the failure of metaphors than the Vietnam War. The use of metaphors to reduce uncertainty was what led to the failed United States strategy in Vietnam. Jerome Slater outlines how metaphors domino theory shows the structuring of the United States strategy towards Vietnam.
"All Quiet on the Western Front" is a war novel by Erich Maria Remarque that reveals the ways in which war is not glorious, and the ways in which destroys a soldier 's happiness, innocence, and youthfulness. In addition, it uses imagery and characterization to describe some of the hardships the soldiers face in the trenches and at the front. Likewise, "Suicide in the Trenches" is a poem by Siegfried Sassoon that glosses over these topics as well, in the form of a poem. While both Remarque 's "All Quiet on the Western Front" and Sassoon 's "Suicide in the Trenches" portray war as a destroyer of innocence and youthfulness, Remarque 's use of characterization to illustrate the theme is more effective than Sassoon 's use of imagery and word play, because it is more
The transformative capacity of metaphors should therefore not be underestimated. Metaphors “do not merely actualize a potential connotation, but establish it ‘as a staple one’; and further, ‘some of the (the object’s) relevant properties can be given a new status as elements of verbal meaning” (ibid). The transformative power of the metaphor lies in the acceptance of its role of ‘logical absurdity’ that helps us recognize the genuinely creative character of the metaphorical meaning. “Logical absurdity creates a situation in which we have the choice of either preserving the literal meaning of the subject and the modifier and hence concluding that the entire sentence is absurd or attributing a new meaning to the modifier so that the sentence
The war in Vietnam to do this day has gone down as one of the influential and controversial wars in United States history. The war lasted from 1955 to 1975.The nation as a whole began to uproar over the war and the major consequences of the war. There were many reasons why so many Americans were against the war. Public opinion steadily turned against the war following 1967 and by 1970 only a third of Americans believed that the U.S. had not made a mistake by sending troops to fight in Vietnam (Wikipedia). Not to mention, many young people protested because they were the ones being drafted while others were against the war because the anti-war movement grew increasingly popular among the counterculture and drug culture in American society and
In this research paper, the author investigates Iconic images of the Vietnam war. Lovelace (2010) gives the reader an in-depth look into five images using semiotics. Along with how the world views and interprets them today. The photos analyzed by Lovelace (2010) were Kent state, Self-immolation, Tet execution, My Lai massacre and Accidental napalm. With each of the photos the author used semiotics to analyze them.
Forrest Gump is about a man in the late 20th century who is on the edge of having mental retardation. This is told by Forrest Gump while he sits and waits for a bus to go see Jenny. Regardless of his setbacks, Forrest does take part in several important historical moments such as being in the Vietnam War along with the Watergate scandal. Because of his naïve nature, the viewers come to fall in love with Forrest Gump as he struggles and triumphs in everyday life.
The quote shows how simply death could come in war, and how this text presents it in a quite brutal way. In “War Is Kind” the soldiers were extremely proud of killing, and were training to kill easier, “Make plain to them the excellence of killing” (22). This quote shows that the result of everything they were doing, and pretty much the result of war itself was death. The quote shows how death as I said for the other literary piece was a very subjective thing, no feeling attached. Death is something that came along with practicing the skill of killing.
An inevitable part of trench life was the tedious task of maintaining the trenches when not under fire. In one newspaper, a soldier reports that trench life is “simply, dull, dreary work...where there’s more mud than glory and more chills on the liver than cheers” (“Dreary Work in the Trenches”). The same type of complaint of dreary work is held by the soldiers in the play who complain of “twelve weary hours..and wasting hours...and hot and heavy hours” of transporting ammunition (O’Casey 34). The alternative, according to the first soldier, is “glory” and “cheers”. However, surrounding this scene are two sets of stage directions which detail past and future destruction.
The journey of death, suggested by the linguistic expression "sailed," is purposeful; it defines "light and clear" as its destination, which implies that the narrator seeks release from the gloom and agony inflicted upon his psyche. The line "Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn" proposes that the journey comes up against some obstacles that could hinder its progress. By "the entanglement," Owen may refer to the barbed wire encompassing the dugouts or even the dead bodies of soldiers scattered everywhere, and both would inch one's way forward. The following lines provide an extended reading of the DEATH IS A JOURNEY metaphor. Commonly, when somebody goes on a long journey, his people gather to see him off before his departure.
The poet compared the graves like a shipwreck that is the death will take the human go down and drowning to the underground like the dead bodies in the graves. The last line “as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.” is like the rotting of the dead bodies. The second stanza there is one Simile in this
This essay will investigate to what extent did the Strategies and Tactics used by the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Soviet Union influence the outcome of the Vietnam war? The Vietnam War was one of the most significant war in American History. It was a war that will not be forgotten in a long time due to its surprising outcome and length of the war. One of the key roles in the war that had affected the outcome of the war were the tactics and strategies that were used by different countries. To investigate this question you will need to know about the strategies and tactics that were used by different countries.
The stories of the World War Two air raids on Hamburg, Germany in the summer of 1943 has forever changed how the world views the Jewish race. The impacts they have had on the modern society’s recognition, views and beliefs of the horrific events have established a better understanding of what a Jewish Hamburger in the 1940’s had to go through during those times and how they had the will to survive. Marione Ingram’s ‘Operation Gomorrah’, relives an adult Jewish Hamburg looking back at their key childhood memories and constructs this survivalist identity through her use of textual form, figurative language, idiom/register and tone in her piece.
