A Hero's Journey Of Annihilation Short Story

As the crescendo of the clash of bloody battle fades, the voices of the brave fighters cease, and the drums halt their percussions. The sound of horns fades to an ever present whisper as our heroes lament their fallen brethren, the faithful and righteous dead. Though the cost was dear, and the wounds of battle still fresh upon their flesh and minds, the soldiers once again sing the praises of God for carrying them through their tribulation. Once again, the voices of the soldiers are joined by a victorious fanfare of drums and horns as the men, though wounded and grieved, now celebrate their triumph in the face of certain

Dawn broke through the tops of the trees; the fine rays of sunlight, glimmering off the needle-shaped leaves as they swayed in the soft winter winds. No more than a day ago the snowstorms had ceased. The blizzards had frozen men alive in their tracks, or as they slept through the night, life had drifted from their stone cold bodies. But now all was calm. Nothing stirred but the delicate snow falling upon the fields, capping the tall soldier pines and burying the glaze-eyed, petrified figures. The remaining troops were dwindling by the days. Too war-torn and starved to produce the usual racket that could be heard among the cohort. The only sound they ever seemed to make, was the constant cantankerous whining for a fire; or else the moans as

War is devastating and tragic. It affects the daily lives of the people that are involved in the war. In the excerpt from, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, it displays a man who is dreaming about war. When the man wakes up, he lays sweating on the ground, remembering the painful memories that the dream has brought. In the end, the man realizes that from now on he will have to live in three worlds; his dreams, the experience of his new life, and memories from the past. Meanwhile, in the image, “In Times of War” by The New York Times, there is an angel on a cloud looking over the dreadful war. Then the angel walks away because the view of people dying makes it sick. The theme of the excerpt A Long Way Gone, and the image, “In Times of War,” is that the war brings death, seriously injured, and psychologically broken people.

Through “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” the soldiers standing, watching as everything goes on around them, are not able to stop what is happening. The soldiers represent the unforgiving nature of war.

This remorse, “blue-black like poison”, kills them slowly until nothing is left but, “dead ashen hollows” (15). This first chapter describes a war from beginning to end, dealing with the events that transform the men from “Iron Youth” to “old folk” in a matter of two years (18).

The psychological effects, the mentality of fighting and killing another human, and the sheer decimation of human values is what makes war atrocious. War is not only fought on the battlefield though. This book also describes the feelings of a soldier fighting his own demons that war has brought on. The battle that the soldier has with himself, is almost if not more damaging than the physical battle of war. He will never forget his experience with battle, no matter how hard he tries the memories of artillery, blood, and death cannot be erased. “I prayed like you to survive, but look at me now. It is over for us who are dead, but you must struggle, and will carry the memories all your life. People back home will wonder why you can't forget.” (Sledge). This struggle still happens to soldiers today. Sledge’s words of the struggles still captures the effects of warfare that lingers today. The other effects that war has on the men is the instability that surrounds them at every hour of the day. They are either engaged in battle having bullets and artillery fired at them, or waiting for battle just so they can be deposited back in the pressure cooker of survival. “Lying in a foxhole sweating out an enemy artillery or mortar barrage or waiting to dash across open ground under machine-gun or artillery fire defied any concept of time.”

To soldiers, fighting on the front lines is a life changing event that can forever alter the way they look, think, and feel. By using juxtaposition, Erich Remarque is able to capture how feelings and behaviors can change while trying to become free from the war experience in Chapter Seven of All Quiet on the Western Front. The main character, Paul, faces three events that make him yearn to rid himself of the terrible weight of war on his shoulders. It is clear that you can never truly understand what it is like in a war until you are the one doing the fighting.

. . . Like I was losing myself, everything spilling out” (O’Brien 202). Provided with only laconic, expository definitions, an audience cannot truly feel the pains of war. O’Brien utilizes descriptions which evoke all the senses and submerge the audience in the unique and powerful sensations of war. Witnessing war’s pains through the familiar tactile crunch of an ornament or the splash of liquid spilling, the audience can immediately understand the inconceivable pressure placed on the soldier’s injured body. O’Brien continues, “All I could do was scream. . . . I tightened up and squeezed. . . . then I slipped under for a while” (203). His abrupt syntax and terse diction conveys a quickness to these events. Not bothering with extraneous adornment, his raw images transport the audience to the urgency of the moment and the severity of the pain. Now supplied with an eyewitness’s perspective of war’s injuries, the audience can begin to recognize the significance of the suffering. O’Brien tells his audience, “Tinny sounds get heightened and distorted. . . . There was rifle fire somewhere off to my right, and people yelling, except none of it seemed real anymore. I smelled myself dying” (203). In the same frame, O’Brien paints the rumbling chaos of the big war juxtaposed with the slow death of the small individual. His description emphasizes the purposeless discord and confusion of war and seeks to condemn its disorder. He argues that war’s lack of

I remember the smell, the sounds, the taste of blood. I remember seeing my comrades fall beside me, the sting of the cuts. The numbness as I fell alongside them, the sadness, the tears. The price of war, I believe my father said that to me before he died. I remember being lifted and carried, I remember a laugh. Then I felt my mind slowly becoming numb, and soon my mind was consumed by the darkness. Like a wildfire it spread from the farthest of places, destroying everything in its’ path. It was over, the war was lost, hope gone; at least until today….

Erich Maria Remarque did a phenomenal job of evoking imagery in his novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” His alluring use of adjectives and adverbs made his words jump off the page. The sweeping images of the dead and wounded, linger in my mind. However, sight is not the only sense that his writing induces. Whilst reading the passages that describe the death, destruction, and fighting, one can almost feel, and smell, as if they lived the very moment. The fact that Remarque describes how the soldiers slowly become disillusioned with the war, makes these images more impactful for me. He explains that the soldiers know that the war was not their fault, and the men they are killing are not actually the real enemy; they are just ordinary

In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque; Erich illustrates the brutal conditions on the front lines. Effects of war in the novel change the purpose these men have in life; their survival is priority, living with that mindset for years causes lots of social barriers and inhumane mindsets. For example the narrator states, “We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and kill” (116 ), showing how the soldiers see the cruelty at the front, yet feel helpless in stoping it as they are the problem. Most soldiers chose to fight blindly, wondering later, why were they fighting to begin with. Remarque portrayed the fear and distrust the soldiers had in the war throughout the

Palmiro and his sleeping son Josh are on a plane near South America when his pilot died. He started making weird noises over the intercom. Josh was curious what was going on so he asked his dad. His dad, Palmiro, said everything was going to be ok. All of a sudden they hear the wind whistling against the sharp edges of the plane. They both looked out the window and saw the ground getting closer and closer. The plane started to plummet to the ground. Josh started freaking out and had no idea what to do. He saw only one parachute and an emergency door. Palmiro told his son to quickly grab the parachute. They both strapped in together and jumped out. The plane crashed on an island, no one knows where.

Screams filled the air. Only then did Jessie Grant realize they were his. He had been having this dream for some time, his dad’s and mom’s death. Before they boarded a cruiser when he was seventeen, his parents were his best friends, now he had nothing.

The outcome of the actions of these warriors is battle and bloodshed as the way to achieve this glory.

Along his way out of the battlefield, the speaker is impeded by "sleepers" lying on the ground, either dead or caught-up in thoughts to notice him at all. It seems that the sleepers are not able to rest in peace, perhaps because their brutal deeds against their own kind haunt them, almost as if they are in purgatory. The speaker has a long conversation with an awakened sleeper who appears to be an enemy soldier the speaker killed the day before, and who later suggests: