As he kills his enemy and the light emerges, the light is shone upon his situation, revealing a tragically ironic twist. His so-called enemy has been revealed to be his brother. We know by the characterization of the story that the sniper is accustomed to death, he’s “used to looking at it”. This reveals a certain dark side of the man, the fact that he is so comfortable taking the lives of others. We see in the murder of the woman in the street that the sniper doesn’t seem to mind her shrieks of terror followed by the grim silence of death.
He becomes one of the negative byproducts of the war because it causes him to become “insane” and inconsiderate towards the sentimental values associated with death. In conclusion, both these texts share the common idea that war has the potential to make a person’ death seem to be not too big a deal and erase all the sentimental, emotional and humane feelings affiliated with
“You never know who your enemy is.” I found this statement to be a reoccurring theme in “The Sniper” while reading. I believe this is a perfect theme because the sniper had no idea who was on the other side and would not have known if he didn’t look at the dead body. The main character in this selection was not officially named but was referred to as the sniper. In the selection the sniper had both an internal and external conflict. The external conflict was that he was fighting in the middle of the war and the only way to survive was to kill all the opponents.
I believe Brady chose Why Marines Fight as the title because we all wonder why average men would risk there life for us. Or why they would charge into a spot where Death is patiently waiting for them. One good quote is the one he starts with, “Come on you sons of Bi*****”. “Half a dozen wars ago in France, on June 2nd of 1918, Marine gunnery sergeant Dan Daly stepped in front of the 4th Brigade of Marines, mustered for another bloody frontal assault on the massed machine guns of Germans that had been murderously sweeping the wheat fields at Belleau Wood. Death awaited.
The one word that best describes the mood of this vignette is shock. "O'Brien" is in shock from killing the man, and the rest of the world is moving around him, all in speech and imagination. O'Brien has his two American comrades, Azar and Kiowa, try to move around "O'Brien." Azar sees only a fallen enemy and compliments "O'Brien" on a thorough job — he cannot understand what "O'Brien" is feeling. Kiowa is more sympathetic, offering textbook comments, such as switching places with the dead man and that he would have been killed anyway, in order to console "O'Brien" whom he believes regrets his action.
Law of War During war, the soldiers exposed to too much pressure. Most of them try to deal with the enemy according to the law of jungle “kill or you’ll be killed”. They try to dehumanize the enemy to give themselves the right to kill him without felling guilty. However, after the application of this rule, most of the soldiers feel compunction because they realize that they kill a human been. In the story “The Main I Killed”, the author Tim O`Brien illustrates to us the reaction of three American soldiers after killing a Vietnamese man during the Vietnam War.
The movie “Paths of Glory,” portrays a war theme - more specifically an anti-war theme. The message of the movie is portrayed through the soldiers and the different “paths the soldiers took to get to victory and survive.” Every soldier went down their own path overall leading to somewhat “glory” which not all of them got to experience. Men died in battle, mental illness (and illness in genera), fellow soldiers doings, death sentences; just an endless amount of reasons. Soldiers believed that they were fighting for the glory of victory or “patriotism” which Sam Johnson described as the last refuge of a scoundrel. Soldiers were brainwashed with the idea of patriotism - leading their country to victory at all costs, even if meant going into battle knowing you were going to die enforcing the message of the movie that, “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” At first, the movie described the trench warfare situation of World War I.
These stories have similar motivations because the stories take place during a war, and they either want to do their assignments or unites with others if they have to. In “Sniper”, the main character learns that he, must always watch what you’re doing before you regret what you did later on. When the Sniper went over the dead body and he looked and see that it was
All they end up doing though is becoming another casualty, another statistic, dying in a war that had no real reason. The only thing those soldiers ended up doing was proving that war truly is futile. What about the families of those dead soldiers? Are they comforted by the fact that their family members are incredibly brave? No, they are not, all they know is that their son or brother is gone, and the only reason for their loss, is a war which is completely futile, a pointless war which destroyed an entire generation.
In the first eight lines (octet) a question is asked in the first line and answered in the remaining seven lines. The poet also uses the same technique in the sestet, asking a question in the first line and answering it in the remaining five lines. The first part, the octet, focus’ on the realities of war on the battlefield, giving us an experience of what it is like to see and hear the disturbing sounds and visuals. The second part, the sestet, focus’ on the effects that the war had on the families of the soldiers. In this poem Wilfred Owen describes many of the harsh sounds of war on the battlefield.