In our lives, we can have a lot of joyful and beautiful moments, but we must not forget that sooner or later, challenges appear on our way. Louise Erdrich's "The Red Convertible" gives an example of life's most difficult challenge: Lyman must accept that his brother, Henry, has lost the will to live after fighting in war. The purpose of this essay is to use Erdrich’s story to show how much war can change someone’s life for worse. When young men go off to war, they painfully become aware of their own mortality. Many 18-year-old boys are drafted off to fight for their country-when most had never picked up a gun.
They do not ever want to show fear. Even after the war, the men still carry the grief of the war. Tim O’Brien carries the image of the young man that he killed, and it haunts him every day. Jimmy Cross tells Tim that he still has no forgiven himself about Ted Lavenders death. “At one point, I remember, we paused over a picture of Ted Lavender, and after a while Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death.
They say this because of the non-stop war that is taking place. Every day, all day people are trying to constantly cross the border to the United States. Few are lucky enough to do so successfully; others are faced with various horrifying consequences. If caught by the border patrol, and you were fortunate, you would often be transported back to Tijuana. You are left with no food, no money if you had been robbed, no belongings and little clothing, with no place to sleep.
Life in poverty is hard enough without having to worry about a civil war in your country, let alone around the corner from your village. And also having to flee from town to town in search for safety, leaves him in charge of finding ways to survive by any means necessary. “Things changed rapidly in a matter of seconds and no one had any control over anything. We had yet to learn these things and implement survival tactics, which was what it came down to.” (Beah Chapter 4, p. 29 His mental state of mind becomes a major internal conflict and also is a product of all the environmental conflicts that he is put through. His internal conflicts include not being able to go back home, not knowing what happened to his family, if the
Columbus enslaved the people, demanded every adult Taino to bring gold to him every three months, and forced Christianity. When the Tiano people came back empty-handed with no gold, Columbus would cut off their hands. There was not much gold at all because they were not in Asia, they were in America. Columbus believed they were in Asia searching for the land of gold, but was never in India or Japan or China. Columbus never stopped searching for gold even when they grew hungry and sick.
The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our heart. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in war” (87-88). Paul was living life as a civilian for eighteen years, not knowing the horrors of the world, and as a young adult in the war, he witnessed his first horror, such as his first bombing, his first explosion, first exposure to numerous of dead bodies etc, which will traumatize him in future civilian life since one does not simply forget the first raw, gory images. The age of eighteen can be considered the age of a young adult that is still growing and experiencing life, and when teengaers are thrown into the abyss of war, it prevents young soldiers from striving and progressing; as being an adult is heavily weighed on an adolescent
Although O’Brien is unclear about whether or not he actually threw a grenade and killed a man outside My Khe, his memory of the man’s corpse is strong and recurring, symbolizing humanity’s guilt over war’s horrible acts. Norman was right on the side of him when he died, after about a couple of years passed by after the war he was in Kiowa home town he started crying because he didn’t do anything to try to save him. In Fallen Angels Richie see’s how almost his whole team died he and Peewee were the only ones that survived, which emphasizes the theme of youth and innocence. In calling the novel Fallen Angels, the author implies that the soldiers’ youth and innocence are more important than any of their other aspects, such as their religion, ethnicity, class, or race. They wanted them to know what war is really like and wants to help them understand what is experienced.
Moral Duty The novel Johnny Got His Gun written by Dalton Trumbo focuses on the life of a young soldier who encountered a dramatic change in his life. The solider that we know of by the name of Joe Bonham gave up his life for something that he did not know was going to change it forever. There were two parts to Joe that questioned his sense of morality. In other words there was a bolt of energy that gave him hope of living in the state in which he currently was while there was another part of him that made him believe there was no point in living. Joe had two different mind sets about dying in the war.
Artie feels that he will never live up to his parent’s expectations of Richieu, because he was never in the War. An example of this is shown on the last page of the graphic novel, where Vladek turns over to go to sleep and calls Artie, Richieu. “I’m tired from talking, Richieu, and it’s enough stories for now…” The way Spiegleman has represented this in the text suggests to the reader that Vladek never fully loved Artie, as much as he loved his first son Richieu. This has obviously had major impacts on Arties life, and it has all primarily been caused by the Holocaust, because Vladek and Anja never fully healed after the Holocaust. Although ‘The Complete Maus’ is based around the interviews that Spiegleman has conducted with his
Reflecting on SiCKO Mark Karasin Rutgers University March 15, 2013 I was about 8 years old when it took three fractures within six months for me to realize that I do not have a future as an Olympic gymnast. The fortunate aspect of that experience was that my family did not pay for the x-rays, pins or casting of my brittle bones. Growing up in what used to be Soviet Union, and now a small Eastern European country called Lithuania, we did not have to pay for healthcare. And while many public services were free, the government owned system did have some major underlying flaws. Perhaps the biggest shortcoming was that there was no incentive for performance.