However, when all dignity and values seem lost, signs of their former selves can, and do return. During the war, the men are forced to face many dehumanising situations, and this challenges their dignity and morals. The soldiers were expected to live in the most degrading of conditions in their muddy, lice
This notion is further emphasised through the use of jargon in the lines, “The Japs used to weigh us, to see how thin our bodies could get before we started dying”. This statement implies the nature of the camp to be brutal and unforgivable. Misto has incorporated both visual images and jargon to create an effective sense of authority to therefore relive their experience of war through memory. Likewise, the poem Dulce et decorum est by Wilfred Owen is how the post himself saw war with no knowledge, imagination or training which prepared Owen for the shock and suffering of front line experience. Its horrifying imagery has made it one of the most popular condemnations of war ever written.
Analysis The author lists the objects the soldiers carried to represent the emotional burdens the soldiers bear. One is the necessity for the soldiers to face the tension between fantasy and reality. These emotional burdens are intensified by their young age and experience; they no perspective on how to rationalize killing someone or witnessing their comrade’s death. One major effect the war has had on these soldiers is turning them cynical or gloomy. In the story “Love,” O’ Brien’s tells the story of the reunion of Martha and Cross; this is a reference to the fallout of Vietnam.
The physical and emotional toll of war, of blood, of killing, of fallen soldiers, are too difficult to put into words. Tim O’Brien’s, The Thing They Carried, effectively exemplifies these tolls and the devastating consequences of them. The collection of short stories show that we must appear composed in war, in times of emotional distress, and through these unexpressed emotions, a story emerges. The lines between “happening-truth” and “story-truth” become blurred as the soldier incorporates both the seen and the unseen parts of experience. The emotion a soldier experiences cannot be understood by anyone except those in war.
The true war story has no moral; ask one’s self, “Is war truly moral? How is killing others justifiable by society or god and how is it moral?” Citizens, as well as most frontline soldiers, try to find this moral to soften the cold hard truth of it all; While they try to soften the blow of reality, the stories lose their truth, they are bent, they are “skewed” as O’Brien would say. It is simply another way to lose a true war story. The last way of telling a true war story is through belief. O’Brien stated: “It comes down to gut instinct.
Remarque’s novel is a insightful statement against war, which focuses primarily on the devastating affect both psychologically and the humanity of soldiers. Paul’s narrative reflects persistently on the romantic ideals of warfare. Paul and his fellow soldiers are tempered with the reality that their bonds come at the high price of relentless suffering and terror. Most of the prominence events that refer to character altering situations occur in the final chapters of the book. Paul’s analogy between minting coins and the effect of the war on veteran soldiers is a significant event.
In the end I believe it turned into a complete anti-military novel as Caputo tried to understand the purpose of the war. The inevitable answer was that America had no reason to be in Vietnam and only put their people at harm as the government ordered them to stay. Before entering the war, the country truly did not understand what war meant. “So I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war, to endure the same old experiences, suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own” (81). Caputo reveals his true feelings throughout the story.
The Movie, Dear America, questions the relevance of the Vietnam War by depicting the daily struggles of the soldiers in Vietnam. Focusing on the struggles of the soldiers shown by the movie Dear America, highlighting the selfish reasons behind the war and vividly emphasizing the war’s effects on society and soldiers indicate that the negative effects of war, citing Vietnam an example, outweigh the benefits. Throughout the movie, there are references to the hardships endured by the soldiers so as to emphasize their endurance over the war itself. The most memorable reference, made during the movie, is that all the soldiers need is “a razor and a bar of soap for comfort,” which is quite gruesome when one takes into consideration that most of them were teenagers. In addition, the death toll that is shown at intervals strengthens the sense of suffering and
"The letters in Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam recount the personal experiences of their writers, they also challenge the assumptions of mainstream America towards the war and those who fought it. Discuss." The text Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (Dear America) is an emotional tabloid of personal letters from combatants in the Vietnam war. Bernard Edelman uses these letters, detailing their experiences, to challenge the assumptions of mainstream America towards the war and the people who served in it. The erroneous assumptions about the value of war as a political mechanism made by the large conservative body of America are challenged and subverted by the encounters by our encounters with real soldiers in this anthology.
Some say that the soldiers' immune systems were weakened by malnourishment. The influenza pandemic circled the globe. Most All of these illnesses were the main cause of torture that the soldiers of World War I had to go through and were mainly caused by the life in the trenches. Trench foot and Trench fever were something more usual in the life of war. Unlike The Spanish influenza, which had more serious side effects.