World War II is frequently labeled the ‘Good War,’ as it is characterized as one of the few wars in history that is justified by a majority of the world. Throughout the entirety of the war, the Allied forces worked to defeat the nefarious Axis powers. Paul Fussell’s book The Boys’ Crusades exhibits the truth about World War II, and it shows the harsh reality of combat. Young servicemen in America risked their lives in battle, and while they are respected for their work, few people understand the brutality they endure. The Boys’ Crusades argues that the brutality of war must be understood by the public, and as a result of the harshness of combat, World War II cannot be classified as the ‘Good War.’…
It takes a lot of guts to make sacrifices and the effects of them can stay with you forever. Especially in war, Sacrifices are made on a daily basis to try and keep you alive and the people around you. Sometimes those sacrifices pertain to someone's life and that guilt can last a lifetime. In the story The Things They Carried, two soldiers turned good friends Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen were faced with a hard decision when Lee was struck with a mine. They made a pact that if one of them was to get really messed up, the other will get them out of it.…
“The Last Letter” The strategies used by Tomas Young to draw the attention of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were pathos in connection to sadness, parallelism to grab the reader’s attention, rhetorical questions for the President, and the use of anaphora “I write this letter [...]”. These strategies together were used to show the major issue of the ignored and fallen soldiers of the Iraq War, even after 10 years when Young wrote this letter.…
Adrian Thomas ”Young infant mortality comprises 40% of estimated 10.8 million child deaths worldwide annually. ”(Newton) Adrian Thomas is a 29,now 33, year old African American father of 7 children accused with the murder of his 4-month old son, Matthew Dante Thomas. The doctors said that Matthew suffered from head trauma. Adrian Thomas was falsely accused with 2nd degree murder, because in a police video he confessed to throwing his son to the bed on 3 different occasions.…
The American Revolutionary War has been well documented by historians, especially the lives and feats of well-known patriots like George Washington and Paul Revere. However, an under researched topic is the study of the average soldiers who fought the battles and lived through the Revolution. This is an analytical biography of one of those soldiers, twenty eight- year old William Davis. William Davis enlisted in the Virginian militia “previous to the landing of British Gen. Thomas Gage at Boston.” He served for eighteen months in the Company of Capt.…
An unfortunate staple in civilization, war, hurts almost every aspect of society. War causes a lot of harm to its partakers, however the group that receives the most damage are usually the people in the front lines: foot soldiers. The importance and suffering of common soldiers are highlighted by Joseph Plumb Martin, a soldier himself for the Revolutionary War, in his memoir “ A Soldier’s View of the Revolution.” Foot soldiers are oftentimes disregarded by history, in contrast to officers, due to their large numbers making them dispensable and also easily replaceable; however, without…
As I stared across the bullet-torn battlefield I wondered how I ended up here; hiding behind a crumbling wall, clutching my gun as though it were a lifeline. How the young kid I'd once been now bore a dirty, camouflage patterned uniform. There I was, contemplating my life in the middle of a battle. I shouldn't have been surprised when a hand suddenly shot out in front of my face and smacked me upside the head. It was so unexpected that I nearly stumbled out from behind the rubble and right into the bullet whizzing by.…
At first, all of Doss' fellow soldiers hated him. They did everything they could to discourage him. The text stated that they "considered him a pest, questioned his sincerity and threw shoes at him while he prayed. ' They saw him as a slacker, someone who shouldn't have been allowed in the Army, and somebody who was their weakest link in the chain'. " They did everything they could to discourage Doss.…
Often time, wars are believed and seen as a mean to defend the home nation from physical catastrophe of foreign land and soldiers are praised and honored for their sacrifice. Not often enough do the common people take the time to scrape the surface with sayings like “thank you for your time” to look at the understanding that even though a war “makes men” and unites them, Hynes says that it isolates and cuts them off from other people. We are also controlled into believing that we understand exactly how a soldier feels from what the media broadcast to us, and then we take that false understanding and channels it to a way that we think may help soldiers deal with their traumas or past. The truth that the media provide has been filtered out enough…
A civilian once bombarded me with question over my war experience. As days began to drift by with no immediate end, I rebutted with a question. “When I say war, what do you think about?” He was hesitant, but he responded: Soldiers, enemy combatants, ships, tanks, Humvees, helicopters, jets, weapons, chemical weapons, the atom bomb, and death. I smiled, as if to say, that’s it.…
He depicts these soldiers coming together despite their radically different backgrounds to overcome the horrors they have witnessed while apart of the…
Soldiers that lose their life in war deserve the utmost respect. Their precious life was lost so ours can go on. Ultimately, actions like those define bravery. Tim O’Brien seemed to truthfully respect his fellow soldiers and demonstrated bravery in his book. In Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried, bravery can be defined by soldier’s decisions, comfort, and sacrifice during the…
Nannie Doss Nannie Doss was a serial killer who killed a lot of her relatives and husbands in the time span of 27 years. She grew up with a very controlling family, and she did not receive a good education. Nannie had 5 husbands in total, four of which she killed along with six other family members. She was driven by the desire of finding a perfect husband, and since she was convicted of murder in 1955, she never did find the guy for her. Childhood Background…
Regardless of the fact that this novel is essentially a war story, these moments are pivotal and further develop the humanity of soldiers in Vietnam. Tim O’Brien uses…
Annotated Bibliography: The Things They Carried By Tim O’Brien Thesis: In “The Things They Carried”, the author, Tim O’Brien argues that the emotional burdens of fear, grief, terror, love and cruelty reality about war hardens the soldiers, and the psychological effects that these soldiers will have to carry for the rest of their life. "Looking Back at the Vietnam War with Author, Veteran Tim O’Brien." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web.…