Through this detailed description, Gurganus adds to his argument, making the war sound even more horrific. He is trying to get people to see his perspective, and to make all the glory of war seem meaningless. We send these men over to live in terrible conditions and they don’t even know why they are there
He also talks strongly about how the sufferings are being “prolonged” as he tired of witnessing men “being sacrificed” to this awful war. Further more into chapter one, we are properly introduced to Siegfried Sassoon, when he is on the train the Craig Lockhart waiting for Graves. When he sees Graves on the train inside the door way, Pat Barker tells us that Sassoon “thought he was hallucinating again”. Hallucinating was one of the terrible side effects that happened to many soldiers during the war. This allows the reader to start to understanding what the horrors of war could be.
Throughout Birdsong, Destruction of man is a constant theme conveyed by Faulks. In part two, Stephen is showed as distant to his to his men, lacking the ability to comfort his men, specifically when Weir refers to Stephen as a “cold bastard” as Stephen is not capable of comforting him. This is completely contradicted in part four, as Stephen expresses that “the grimmer, harder, more sardonic they became, the more he cared for them.” As they have fought together and killed together, the bond between the soldiers is forever growing. Negative diction is used to enforce the terrors of the war and enforced with the ‘rule of three’ showing the forever degrading effects to the soldiers on the front line. The destruction of man is also shown in a more psychological way.
Steinbeck wants the reader to understand the harsh and difficult living conditions the soldiers are living in. Also, Steinbeck wants the reader to feel the emotion and physical pain the soldiers are feeling, “Under extended bombardment…the eardrums are tortured by the blast…your skin feels thick and insensitive. There’s a salty taste in your mouth. A hard, painful knot is in your stomach with undigested food…This is how you feel just after a few days of constant firing.” Steinbeck’s writes such a strong description that the reader can fully understand and even feel the pain the soldiers feel. The essay “Why Soldiers Won’t Talk,” is marked by a clear narrative description of what war is truly like and gives the reader a strong sense of perspective.
We see, a great deal of resentment towards the arrogance with which the public treat the conflict, displayed in “where old men aired their military opinions […] and agreed about politics”, This is exemplified by Hilliard’s own father and perhaps more pertinently the Old Major, who irritates Hilliard with his fervent talk about his time “in the cavalry”. We see also how Hilliard is aggravated by the thought that the public do not only know so little and form opinions based little more than hearsay, but also that they do not care. We are given an insight into Hilliard’s childhood, a large amount of which he spent with his
“I hate that drum's discordant sound” is the source of his tension and fear at the war; the use of the word “discordant” mirrors his own inner conflict at the war and how he feels about it. Significantly, Scott, like Carson, uses strong imagery to convey feeling of conflict and tension in his poem “The Drum” The imagery is one of horror and death. “And when Ambition's voice commands,” The word “Ambition’s” is like the recruiting officer for an army. It is personifying “Ambition” and showing that the men who want to fight are pushed into it by an officer that makes it sound very enticing. The word commands talks of how the men really don’t have a choice in joining the fight or not as if they are already in the army.
His biggest fear is being attacked by the enemy and the thought of deserting occurs to him more then once. Eventually he becomes friends with two soldiers, a tall man named Jim Conklin, and a loud man named Wilson. When they hear rumors that the Confederates are attacking, Henry asks Jim and Wilson how they’ll do. Jim isn’t worried and believes they “won’t be the best, but certainly not the worst of the regiments.” Wilson says he would never run under any circumstances. When Henry gets caught in the middle of the charging soldiers, he realizes there is no where to run even if he wanted to.
What things would a soldier experience to totally change him? In Harrison’s novel Generals Die in Bed, the horror of war is a basic theme and has been described through many of the challenges the narrator faces in the novel. The horror of war has been described through the novel of the things such as having a constant fear of the unknown, inhumanity, and the most important thing is: death. | | First of all, unknown is a big problem in the war. Not knowing what’s around the soldiers and the narrator makes them feel terrible.
In the novel, ‘Regeneration’ by Pat Barker, the themes of horror and futility are significantly explored. As a result of the horrific events in the war, many soldiers developed psychological problems such as shell shock. In effect, many soldiers such as Siegfried Sassoon reacted against the war and the fact that it was futile, as the motives turned from ‘a war of defence and liberation to a war of aggression and conquest’. In his war poetry, Siegfried Sassoon shows the horrors of war through vivid imagery, and the futility of war, as non combatants such as civilians and generals do not understand what the soldiers experience at the front. In many ways, Barker’s ‘Regeneration’ contrasts with Sassoon’s poetry, due to the fact that the novel is written in the 20th Century, where the characters recount their horrors of war in the safety of Craiglockhart Hospital.
Wilfred Owen had a good education as well, but (unlike Rupert Brooke) he went to war, and saw what it was it was really like, the bad conditions, the lack of food and meaningless deaths, Wilfred Owen realised that the war was cold and cruel, not like people imagined it. This poem is very negative, and quite sad, unlike ' The Soldier' it expresses the tormented thoughts and recollections of a teenage soldier in the 1st World War, who has lost his limbs in battle and is now confined, utterly helpless, to a wheelchair. I think Wilfred wanted people to realise that the war was not as glorious and victorious as people thought, there were so many men whose lives were thrown away even if they did physically survive it.. Unfortunately Wilfred Owen died on the 4th of November 1918, before the end of the war. To conclude, these two poems are different in many ways (attitude, mood, tone, ect..) One was to encourage the people to fight for their country and go to war, one was to make people see that the war destroyed many men's lives, it had no mercy.