Et Cetera

In Isaac Babel’s short story My First Goose, the narrator struggles to fit in to the world of war. Babel illustrates the paradox and duality of war as a heroic and brutal endeavor, and in order to properly display this paradox, the narrator must travel to a world separate from normal civilian life. Here, he initiates himself into the brutal practices of this new world in order to fit in. Babel then reveals the consequences that the narrator faces from sacrificing, or not sacrificing, an integral…

War’s existence has occurred during the rise and falls of innumerable civilizations. People often view war as necessary, profitable, and patriotic. Whereas, on the other end of the spectrum individual’s opinions see war as mundane, wasteful, brutal, and reckless. Voltaire’s attitude through Candide enlightens the reader on the darker aspects of war and portrays his disgusted conceptualizations of it and its treatment of others. Voltaire’s attitude is evidently sickened by the atrocities of war…

“Contact rear, enemy, three hundred meters, open fire!” The command could be heard by the troops, who were crouched low behind a sandbag wall, providing covering fire until reinforcements arrived. All at once Alpha section raised their rifles over the cover and fired off all their rounds in rapid succession at the shout of their commanding officer. Bullets whipped through the air at the enemy, neutralizing the targets one by one without any casualties. “Alpha section, prepare to move!” The voice…

Tim O’Brien and Wilfred Owen both seek to convey to their readers the obscene brutality and wastefulness of war by presenting their own personal war stories. Through the intermingling of both past and present experiences and emotions in their texts, these writers are demonstrating the impact of war had on themselves as a means of conveying its horrors. O’Brien chooses to focus on the specific memories of the war itself while Owen chooses to reminisce on the happenings that took place before the…

In War Photographer and in Refugee mother and child, Duffy and Achebe both witness the deadly war in Northern Ireland, the Lebanon and Cambodia, and Biafra respectively. Duffy and Achebe sympathize with the victims of the war as people are suffering from war. They look upon the idea of anti-war, which stops any further suffering and death. Duffy is viewing the war through the eyes as a photographer while Achebe is looking through the perspective of the mother, where a mother lost a child due to…

War- glorified, deemed necessary, and plastered with the image of heroism. Medals, ceremonies, and positions give war and battle and prestigious image. But, in the book Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley, the true inhumanities and unnecessary acts of war are shown through the characters’ first-hand accounts and perspectives on battle. The book highlights one of the most prestigious battles in American history, the battle of Iwo Jima. Most did not know what this tiny one square mile island was…

Carry On My Wayward Son The name the British gave the First World War speaks for itself; the Great War, it sounds like a title to an epic where battle is romanticized. Many men who enlisted expected the war to be great indeed, it would be quick and they would return as heroes. The reason the British men expected a great war was partly due to the fact that Britain had not been involved in a full-scale war since 1871, and ever since the idea of war had become a mythical journey, where boys became…

The horrors of conflict include events from World War One and post-apocalyptic environments, both events can be presented through the harrowing and saddening works of both Wilfred Owen and Cormac McCarthy. Both texts look at the horrors that have derived from conflict including: nature turning against humanity; the loss of civilisation; the loss of faith and the idea of morality. Steven Frye notes that the themes within The Road “deal directly with violence, human degradation, and both human and…

“The Things They Carried” Essay At war, a battlefield is a perilous place, a place where blood is stained red. It is where men and women carry physical as well as emotional loads such as grief, love, terror, longing and etc. In "The Things They Carried", by Tim O'Brien, the American novelist tells his readers about the transformations of Lieutenant Cross. At the beginning of the story, Lieutenant Cross was on the battlefield of the Vietnam War with his comrades. While he was there, Cross keeps…

Zacary Calvetti November 13, 2017 6th hour The theme of this poem, would be a soldier who thinks of war as beautiful rather than it being a dreadful and sad environment. I would think that the author wrote it in a descriptive style, because he describes what has happened by using tone and imagery. In the first part of the poem, Ehrhart wrote, “What if I didn’t shoot the old lady running away from our patrol, or the old man in the back of the head, or the boy in the marketplace?” (Ehrhart). He…