The Alexander Mosaic from the House of Faun I think that the Alexander Mosaic is a painting capturing the war that was going on during this time period. It seems as if the right side is doing better than the left. Also, the left side seems terrified since a lot of soldiers have been lost in the battle, which is shown by the lack of people on the left side of the painting. It also seems as if one of the men on the right side doesn’t want to be fighting in this battle and is reaching out to the…
the reason of wanting the thirst for war and wanting to go into battle should not be the reason for joining the army. The theme “there is no glory in war”, is portrayed in All Quiet on the Western Front by the acts of lying to the youth, forcing soldiers to change into animals, and showing the cruelty of losing a comrade. From the perspective of Paul and his classmates, joining the army seemed like the best decision. Though some of the students, like Joseph Behm, seemed nervous and not to…
The book “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien is based on multiple short stories all referring to his time during the Vietnam War. The author wanted the reader to perceive his memories from the war and to feel all the emotions that was associated with the word “war”. He described it as: death, love, mystery, adventure, terror, pity, despair, discovery, and longing; All of which I felt and detected while reading the authors short stories. The author also goes on about his stories and makes…
The texts that I have chosen for my summative work are “Dulce et Decorum est” by Wilfred Owen and “The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty and I will be comparing how closely related each text are about war. By evaluating these two short texts we can see how the wars that soldiers fight in are not what they think, in these short texts, the writers argue that the reality of war takes away their innocence as they are forced to do inhumane tasks. The texts that I have chosen for my summative work are…
War stories are gruesome. They capture the reality of war--death, grief, and pain. “The Sniper” and “Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy?” (by Liam O’Flaherty and Tim O’Brien respectively) are both shining examples of this; unpacking the glorification of victory to reveal how humans are dehumanized and trained to kill other people. Their differences outline a common theme: how war dehumanizes people from killing and guilt, and how that all builds into a catastrophe later on in life. “The…
Tim O’Brien is a critically acclaimed author that is known for his gut-wrenching stories of his time during the Vietnam War. In his award-winning novel The Things They Carried, he explains countless different instances of struggle and strife in the form of numerous short stories. O’Brien was born in Minnesota in 1946. He majored in political science, but was later drafted in 1968 and stayed in Vietnam about 8 months. After the war, he finished graduate school at Harvard and now, at 71, resides…
George Herring’s essay “The Legacy of Vietnam” is a fair portrait of one of the most notorious wars in the United States history – the Vietnam War. The essay starts with enormous figures of loss from both sides, and ends with the lessons we can learn from the war as well as from those losses. Herring keeps a neutral voice by providing different perspectives on the issues happened in both Vietnam and the United States. This neutral characteristic of Herring’s essay helps the author deliverers his…
Tim OBriens story, The Things They Carried, is more than just a war story. It beautifully depicts the shame and guilt that soldiers had to live for throughout the war, and unfortunately, the rest of their lives. Through the stories and experiences of soldiers in Tim OBriens vicinity, the Alpha Company, we get to know them not as mindless soldiers fighting for their country, but as people. Shame and guilt is a recurring theme in the book all soldiers in the story have experienced it one way or…
The citizens of ancient China had to provide the resources and labor to build the wall, and this caused them an immense amount of suffering. Emperor Qin Shihuangdi sent 300,000 conscript laborers and countless prisoners to build the wall (Langmead and Garnaut 2017). However, this number does not cover the full scope of the labor, as for each man working on the wall, “dozens must have been needed to build service roads and transport supplies” (Lewis 2007, 59). The leaders of the Qin and Han…
Yuval Harari’s claim that war is a specific experience only truly understood by those who have endured the experience themselves is a common conception that is frequently accepted even to this day. It is easy to understand how one would believe that war changes the people who have experienced it considering the wide range of literature that has been devoted to portraying this idea of the untouchability of war. The fact that so many artists and writers have dedicated their lives to creating…