ipl-logo

A Brief Review Of William March's The Bad Seed

1317 Words6 Pages

William March, born William March Campbell, was an American author and serviceman who was born in 1893 in Mobile, Alabama and passed away in 1954 in New Orleans, Louisiana. March grew up in a family with eleven children that was extremely poor. Due to his low-income upbringing, March was forced to leave school and join the workforce early. Eventually, March finished his high school degree and studied law for a year at the University of Alabama. After World War I broke out, March enlisted and became a well decorated soldier due to his bravery in France. Despite his military honors, March’s service is clouded with the multiple injuries he endured and the severe trauma he attained. Because of his military service, March acquired a very anti-war view that would impact his writing and perspective for the rest of his life. In addition to Company K, William March has written several novels that both reflect on his time in the military and his time growing up in Alabama. The Bad Seed, his most famous work, is a novel that was eventually adapted into a play that was performed in both London and Broadway. Sadly, March’s work did not reach its full impact until after his death, nevertheless he has received posthumous praise of his stark war perspective and his storytelling techniques. …show more content…

Using the perspective of countless soldiers allows March to paint images of the war from a variety of different points of view allowing the reader to be taken on the journey from boot camp to the return home. Additionally, March can use the various narrators to discuss social and military issues, while making each section of the book unique and important. Company K attacks the social view of war as glamourous head on, and describes military history throughout. March truly crafts a novel that can speak to both social history and military history by depicting military action in such a brutal and realistic

Show More
Related
1174 Words | 5 Pages

Colder Than Hell: A Marine Rifle Company at Chosin Reservoir was written and published by Joseph R. Owen in 1996. This book gives us a riveting point-of-view of the early and uncertain days of the Korean War through the eyes of Owen himself, as a platoon leader (PL) in a Marine rifle company. As a PL of a mortar section in Baker-One-Seven-Baker Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment- Owen witnessed his hastily assembled men of a few regulars and reservists (who to mention some that have not gone to boot camp) quickly harden into the superb Baker-One-Seven known today. He makes it known quickly (in the foreword and the preface) that some of the major problems he initially encountered was due to how unprepared his unit was. Owen makes the

Read More
524 Words | 3 Pages

Every war is hard to survive. In the end of Milkweed, a historical-fiction book written by Jerry Spinelli, Misha gets married, has a kid, his wife leaves him, and he grows up a mirthful life with his daughter and granddaughter. Milkweed’s ending may have not been joyful to every reader-or every character- but in the end, Jerry Spinelli did a prodigious job illustrating what it was like in the will of survival of the

Read More
1500 Words | 6 Pages

A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo shows the hard work and difficult tasks the men had to go through to prove themselves and protect their country. The war will change the men’s attitudes and the way they do everything. Men made sacrifices in the Vietnam War most people would never make in a lifetime, they will not just sacrifice but push themselves physically harder than most any other men. The men will also emotionally change from constantly watching other men die, or killing other men. The mens first kill was always the hardest for them, mentally they had so many thoughts of the other mans close ones back home and what they would go through and how it would be all their fault.

Read More
844 Words | 4 Pages

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. This chapter also contain a lot of psychological lens. From the way Tim O’Brien felt when he was shot and separated from his unit to a new unit to when he wanted revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost “killing” him.

Read More
648 Words | 3 Pages

Kiowa, Ted Lavender, and Jimmy Cross are three very different people who were brought together to fight for a common purpose. They not only carried their own belongings, but each other too. This story shows how war can affect people and tells of the burdens that weigh soldiers down for a

Read More
1097 Words | 5 Pages

“Silent Scream” In war conditions, sometimes soldiers are forced to do what they don’t want to do. This action, sometimes makes them feel guilty even if they weren’t. In the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the author emphasizes that the things soldiers carry in war, the people they killed, the soldier’s feelings, psychology, and the moral of what they have done cannot be all of the soldier’s responsibilities. Soldiers fear that they would be excluded from the society, and they’d be accused from all the wildness of the war because of what they have done.

Read More
665 Words | 3 Pages

Present throughout the book is the theme of disillusionment. In the school, they’ve been told by their schoolmasters and parents that unless they join the war, they would remain cowards. They see propaganda after propaganda, all alluding towards the glory of battle and warfare. Out on the front, they realize that nothing was further from the truth. Their dreams of being heroes shattered, like when they compare themselves to the soldier on a poster in chapter 7.

Read More
747 Words | 3 Pages

O’Brien’s intended audience was young people who were not educated about the war and he discussed the themes shame/guilt and mortality/death. The chapter “The Things They Carried” gives an introduction about the men in the group, it also shows shame/guilt. The chapter talks about the equipment each soldier carried and how it affected them. During this chapter it focuses primarily on LT.

Read More
1091 Words | 5 Pages

The author compares the soldiers because he wants the readers

Read More
1284 Words | 6 Pages

Tim O’Brien never lies. While we realise at the end of the book that Kiowa, Mitchell Sanders and Rat Kiley are all fictional characters, O’Brien is actually trying to tell us that there is a lot more truth hidden in these imagined characters than we think. This suggests that the experiences he went through were so traumatic, the only way to describe it was through the projection of fictional characters. O’Brien explores the relationship between war experiences and storytelling by blurring the lines between truth and fiction. While storytelling can change and shape a reader’s opinions and perspective, it might also be the closest in helping O’Brien cope with the complexity of war experiences, where the concepts like moral and immorality are being distorted.

Read More
907 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
772 Words | 4 Pages

The tribulation the soldiers have to endure with all the violence in O'Brien's novel brings a tremendous slap of psychological trauma in their lives. This psychological trauma has been

Read More
1375 Words | 6 Pages

In Phil Klay’s Redeployment, the war in Iraq is described as an intense masculine experience. Through the pages, the presence of women is marginal, if there is any woman in the short stories, and the reader enters in a realm of men and, more important, of what it means to be a real man. The assumption of war as a complete masculine experience might seem pretty obvious; however, Phil Klay is able to offer a crude and clear depiction of it. The author tells twelve different short stories of men who have only one thing in common: the experience of the Iraq War. But this is not simply a book about the war, but also about the consequences that this terrible experience has on the soldiers.

Read More
1906 Words | 8 Pages

War, something that sounds so cliché yet endeavours a greater meaning; a meaning of finding your true self within yourself, and seeing your natural, brave or mediocre side. The concept of bravery and heroic men is often the label associated with war; however, in Timothy Findley’s The Wars, it is in fact the exact opposite. The Wars is an anachronistic example of what one goes through both physically and mentally. Findley accurately portrays the protagonist, Robert Ross, as a naïve nineteen year old who wishes to escape his excruciating feelings of reality for being held accountable for Rowena’s death by enlisting into war, as well as to adhere to societal norms. Robert is an incompetent young boy that achieves most of his knowledge of war from

Read More
999 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More

More about A Brief Review Of William March's The Bad Seed

Related Topics

Open Document