Adolescents And War : How Youth Deal With Political Violence

To be engaged in war is to be engaged in an armed conflict. Death is an all too ordinary product of war. It is an unsolicited reward for many soldiers that are fighting for their country’s own fictitious freedom. For some of these men, the battlefield is a glimpse into hell, and for others, it is a means to heaven. Many people worry about what happens during war and what will become of their loved ones while they’re fighting, but few realize what happens to those soldiers once they come home. The short stories "Soldier's Home” by Ernest Hemingway and "Speaking of Courage” by Tim O'Brien explore the thematic after effects of war and how it impacts a young person's life. Young people who

Society must unite and stand against youth violence with all the strength that we can muster. In the book BUCK, it shown the high level of brute force used by those who took young

Imagine going to war right after graduating high school. How would you feel if you or your friends had to go to war right after graduating? How do you think a war would impact your life if you had to go to war right after graduating? War plays a key role in the story, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. Throughout A Separate Peace, the outcome of the war is showcased. The impacts of war can be overwhelming and disheartening but can also be beneficial for some individuals. War is capable of completely changing an individual's life. In A Separate Peace, this message is seen when war impacts Phineas, Leper, and Gene remarkably.

The thought of going to war excites many young men that have not experienced or have been a part of one. Individuals want to find a way out of the routine, mundane lifestyle that plagues many suburban households. People that just want some excitement enlist in a military branch that will not benefit them or anyone for that matter. In Philip Caputo’s book titled A Rumor of War, the true side of how war demolishes the human spirit is shown. His nonfiction novel captures the nasty side to war. Philip informs us how the mentality of a young man can change with the constant thought of death and fear as a daily ritual. Men do not think about death occurring to them at a young age. This changes when death is surrounding them on a daily basis during wartime. Caputo intended to inform the young public about the horrible nature of war. Mistakes are doomed to repeat themselves if people are not well informed and Caputo is trying to avoid future mistakes. Death surrounded him and many of his comrades during the Vietnam War. When the life of anyone is on the line, one tends to do drastic and sometimes unthinkable things to cope with the fear of death.

War can destroy a man both in body and mind for the rest of his life. In “The Sniper,” Liam O’Flaherty suggests the horror of war not only by presenting its physical dangers, but also by showing its psychological effects. We are left to wonder which has the longer lasting effect—the visible physical scars or the ones on the inside?

After experiencing the death and destruction caused by World War I, young men and women were ready for a change. They wanted to forget about misery of wartime and instead, focus on enjoying themselves as much as possible. The youth of this time wanted to rebel against the restrictive pre-war attitudes of their parents and society. In an effort to challenge tradition, they exhibited

Even though the soldiers join the war as naive youths, the war rapidly changes them and they develop into young men. Surrounded by death, the boys are bound to foresee the fragility of their own lives and are stripped of the carelessness and brazenness of youth. The dreadful horrors around the boys bound them to consider a world that does not accommodate to their childish and simplistic view. They want to only see a separation between what is right and what is wrong, they instead find moral doubt. Where they had wanted to see order and meaning, they only found senselessness and disorder. Where they wanted to find heroism, they only found the selfish instinct of self-preservation. These realizations destroyed the innocence of the boys, maturing and thrusting them into their manhood.

“My Imagination at 10 years old didn’t have the capacity to grasp what had taken away the happiness of the refugees” (6). A child is naïve, innocent, and can’t grasp the idea of war, much less fathom joining it. So the military must find tactics to rework their minds into apathetic killing machines. In the memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah drugs, emotional manipulation, and pop culture are some of the main tactics employed by the militia.

In regards to war, Gandhi once commented, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.” In other words, violence masks its potential impairment by seeming innocuous at first; however, the true damage, often permanent, can be seen chronically. The idea reflected by Gandhi’s quote can be proven through an examination of World War I and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Although soldiers and governments in both worlds initially saw honor and security of their countries as valid reasons for going to war, what ultimately came of that conflict were both immediate consequences, such as loss of innocence and development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (often referred to as PTSD) among young soldiers, as well as permanent, long-term consequences, like the hatred the war had spurred in Germans which ultimately ensued to Hitler’s rise to power.

Nonetheless, the conditions children observe during a time of war and experience through violence around them are frightening and astonishing.

not a memoir--but an angry postwar statement about the effects of the war on the young

Millions of people pay to watch violence every day. In today’s society, violence is often glamorized and used as entertainment. And, it is frequently the topic of young adult literature. However, violence is not always shown in a positive light. In SE Hinton’s The Outsiders, the author uses the conflicts of Ponyboy verses other characters, Dally verses society, and Johnny verses outside forces to convey the theme that violence causes more problems than it solves.

attached to youth violence, from the modern era to present day. Based on this meaning,

violence in their own institutionalized way. Violence is the opposite of Peace as peace is

A Post-First World War occurrence, the concept of youth emerged as a historically comprised debate in response to the social, political and cultural shifts at the time. Youth became a label used to categorize a particular age group, with education and perceived life progress used to mark the unfixed period between childhood and adulthood. It has been suggested that there has been disruption in the general 'life patterns’ for young people present around the time of, or born just after the First World War (White & Wyn, 2008). The statement is helpful