War is sacrifice. To be human is to sacrifice. When life is at stake, all strength is siphoned from hearts to act against the most powerful human intuitions-to protect loved ones from harm, survive to support them, and help those in need. One carries these instincts from inside a mother’s womb like the permanence of birth marks and wrinkles upon skin. Letters from World War II hold expressions of concern and sentiment, a delicate symbol of hardship for soldiers and their families back home.…
As History shows us, war at times can be preventable and at time it is not. In the long run, war has an everlasting effect on soldiers whether it is directly or indirectly. In some cases, the horror of war is at time difficult for us to understand how men and women in the battlefield cope in times of fear. The poem "Facing it" by Yusef Komunyakaa allows us the readers to see what happen during and after the war, and what mentally goes through one 's mind in terms of how one copes with the war and how one deals with their mental breakdown during and after the war. The Poem "Facing It" demonstrates how the effect of war can most likely damage one 's life due to PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder).…
Furthermore, it influenced the people at home and the families of the casualties. In this book, the author presents many examples of soldiers that either have guilt feelings or they cannot sleep. O’Brien writes about all the dead people that he encountered along his journey in Vietnam, and how in the military every casualty is just a number. All the killing and the unnecessary killing was justified by saying “This is war”. Death was part of everyday life when you are in battle and being a soldier you have to live with it on a regular basis.…
War raped the soldiers who were involved in the conflict as well, making sure all participants encountered some form of deep suffering. The impact that war has on a soldier’s mentality is similar to the impact that rape has on innocent civilian mentality. “Often, several senses and one’s core personal identity are scarred by traumatizing wartime events” (Webel 87) just as one’s core identity is scarred from rape. Significantly, although war and rape are two independent events, they are linked at the root of their outcome, both causing permanent physical, emotional and personal trauma to their…
War will take its toll on a soldier. In the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque, the soldiers of Second Company come out of the war damaged in many ways which are almost unpreventable. Their bodies are hurt, their minds are full of fear and they are eventually molded to think that being surrounded death is a normal day to day thing. The soldiers relationships with people and places are destroyed their generation is lost. War leaves them alone and afraid.…
War can be a triumph to victors, but leaves survivors traumatized. There is a duality as no combat is entirely abominable nor completely…
Therefore, readers are able to conclude that war affects the lives of soldiers as well as the citizens. Turner’s use of anaphora forces the readers to reflect on the true meaning of war and as well as how it can affect a soldier’s life. In addition, Turner’s use of anaphora depicts the traumatic experience as well as the aftershock of war that American soldiers undergo during and after combat. The readers are also able to argue that before combat a soldier has his or her peace, freedom, and strength; however, after combat, his or her minds are no longer stable; therefore, their peace, freedom, and strength has been jeopardized—life is no longer seen the same. Based on my perspective and Turner’s poem, “The Put Locker,” I am able to argue that a war veteran’s state of mind will forever remain in the “aftershock” stage, until his or her death, especially, since war is a traumatic experience.…
This shows how harmful the war was to the soldier’s psyche, where all feeling seemed to become more intense and cause them to act rashly and try and control their…
From 1955 to 1975, American soldiers were fighting a war in Vietnam. During this time Marine Lieutenant Philip Caputo landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Months later, having served on the line in one of history’s ugliest wars, he returned home. Physically whole but emotionally impacted, his adolescent beliefs forever gone. In his book, A Rumor Of War, Philip Caputo offers an insightful analysis regarding the psychological damages a soldier faces post-war.…
“We see men living with their skulls blown open... we see men without mouths, without jaws, without faces… on every yard there lies a dead man”(Remarque page 134-135). The war has inflicted so much trauma that some soldiers try putting themselves out of their misery, so they don’t have to live in a never ending nightmare. When they fight, they become inhuman not caring about the causalities and the aftermath. “We have become wild beasts”(Remarque page 113).…
War can make the happiest person we know turn into someone completely different. It can affect them in different ways, causing them to go insane and to change. As noticed in The Things They Carried, readers were able to witness such changes in someone’s mental and physical state. O’Brien took his readers through a journey of different stories from his fellow war mates. Whether or not they were true, completely false, or only showed a little bit of the truth, the stories still go to show us how such an event can alter a person’s state of mind.…
The Truth Lies Within The Story When faced with trauma, every individual reacts differently and chooses to express their emotions distinctly. This is especially evident in soldiers and how they deal with loss during wartime situations. In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores different coping mechanisms for those in traumatic situations. O 'Brien explores the various ways with which soldiers cope with wartime experiences such as through social dependency , through denial and through storytelling in order to deepen one’s understanding the effectiveness of these coping mechanisms. He argues that the only true way to cope is by accepting the reality of the situation one is facing.…
Such raw emotion says a lot about the vulnerability of humans, despite how they were trained to fight. Even though Corporal Himmelstoss promises to “make you soldiers, make you tough,”, no amount of training can prepare a person for the mental scarring that comes with participating in a…
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.…
War never changes, it only causes change in the lives of the people affected by its outcome. War brings expected physical weight upon soldiers, but physical weight is not the only burden that soldiers carry. Soldiers carry unexpected emotional burdens that can cause them to become distracted from the real danger which is war. Emotional burdens can also outweigh the weight of physical burdens. In The things they Carried, O’Brien illustrates how emotional burdens are a weight that cannot be escaped in life, demonstrated through the use of imagery, strong emotion symbolism, and the voice of the speaker.…