EXTENDED RESOPONSE John Doyle’s Changi episodes are about the struggle of the Australian prisoners of war. The series mainly focuses on six young Australian men giving an insight of each character’s deepest struggle within the camp. There are many themes evident within the episodes, Seeing is believing, Curley, Private Bill and Pacifying the angels. Some of which include power and atrocities of war. These themes are also apparent throughout Edward Zwick’s 2006 film ‘Blood Diamond’, which is about a country torn apart by the struggle of the government and rebel forces. According to the Macquarie dictionary, the term Power is defined as possession of controlling influence that a person or object holds over someone or something. The theme …show more content…
Tanaka then shoots Lofty in the head as he failed to succeed. The camera is positioned in a bird’s eye view, portraying deceased Lofty, the rest of the POW’s surrounding him and the Japanese commanders walking away. This specific technique is used to allow the audience to witness the atrocity of war the Japanese commander just performed on Lofty Morgan. Similarly this theme is articulated within the episode ‘Pacifying the angles’. Within this episode, the Japanese men lose control after their defeat in the war, therefore resulting in their anger being released through a massacre on the POW’s. The technique of a bird’s eye view is used to illustrate the atrocity of war the Japanese people performed on the POW’s. The theme of the atrocities of war is also performed within Edward Zwick’s 2006 film ‘blood diamond’. Within a specific scene the R.U.F is shown teaching young kid’s to kill those who do not respect them. This is evident through the quotation aimed to the children, “shed their blood”. The use of descriptive language within the previous statement accentuates the atrocity of war that is being brought upon the children. The scene turns into a massacre which is viewed through a bird’s eye view, also to accentuate the atrocity of war that is being performed on the innocent villagers. In culmination it is evident that the themes of power and atrocities of war have been efficaciously embodied throughout John Doyle’s Changi miniseries as well as Edward
To someone just picking up this book, this scene would simply look like some poor soldiers developing a temporary and innocent coping mechanism to deal with Death as they face him head on. But
In conclusion, war threatens not just a country’s border, but also the people. A young man loses his temper when his freedom is threatened. The eager soldiers begin to distrust everyone after long days of little socialization and no news from home. Due to the efforts of the occupation, a beautiful young wife, Molly, has lost her loving husband. A woman from Brussels has lost her son. The excruciating pain of loss forces these women to act in ways they never would dream, resulting in revenge. War has forced temper, distrust, and revenge to guide these
Where innumerous catastrophic events are simultaneously occurring and altering the mental capability of its viewers eternally, war is senseless killing. The participants of war that are ‘fortunate’ enough to survive become emotionally distraught civilians. Regardless of the age of the people entering war, unless one obtains the mental capacity to witness numerous deaths and stay unaffected, he or she is not equipped to enter war. Kurt Vonnegut portrays the horrors of war in Slaughterhouse Five, through the utilization of satire, symbolism, and imagery.
The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.
William Dean Howells was an advocate of realism in writing; he believed that literary art should reflect the reality of the common man and demonstrate the truth of everyday current issues. He believed in truthful writing and he accepted very little at face value. He practiced this belief in his own writing, and his story called “Editha” is a good example of this. In this ironic tragedy, W.D. Howells shows the truth and nature of war. He uses a combination of metaphoric characters, irony, and the pathos appeal to create an almost grotesque parody of the reality of war. In final analysis, Howells is successful in highlighting the consequences of war and inspiring the audience to question the wisdom of those who advocate armed conflict.
Comparatively Lindsay Murdoch presents an article, They were only 19 ... and some were even younger published by the Sydney Morning Herald on the 16th of February 2012. It explores the non-fictional sorrowful memories of the Australian veterans of WWII stationed at “Singapore, the Fortress of the Empire” before being captured. The visual is of the five men along with their evocative but accurate comment drawn from memories of an absolute reality. Ultimately, these texts provide the individual histories of men and women that were captured by the Japanese during WWII. Thus displaying their joint suffering on and off the battlefield as that is the reality of their situation.
Penned during two distinctly disparate eras in American military history, both Erich Maria Remarque's bleak account of trench warfare during World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Tim O'Brien's haunting elegy for a generation lost in the jungles of Vietnam, The Man I Killed, present readers with a stark reminder that beneath the veneer of glorious battle lies only suffering and death. Both authors imbue their work with a grim severity, presenting the reality of war as it truly exists. Men inflict grievous injuries on one another, breaking bodies and shattering lives, without ever truly knowing for what or whom they are fighting for. With their contributions to the genre of war literature, both Remarque and O'Brien have sought to lift the veil of vanity which, for so many wartime writers, perverts reality with patriotic fervor. In doing so, the authors manage to convey the true sacrifice of the conscripted soldier, the broken innocence which clouds a man's first kill, and the abandonment of one's identity which becomes necessary in order to kill again.
The Wars, written by Timothy Findley, is a story about World War I, and consists of many shocking images passed over to the reader. Findley accomplishes to pull the reader into the narrative itself, so that the reader manages to feel an impact upon him/her-self about what is read. If it was not for this specific skill, or can also be seen as a specific genre, the novel would not have been as successful as it is now. Also, something that helps the book be so triumphant, there is the fact that Findley never overwhelms the reader with too many gruesome details about the World War I. Instead, he breaks the book down to help the reader calm down from everything that is happening. Throughout the essay, there is going to be some commenting on a
This scene is appalling and leaves the reader disgusted knowing they can only imagine the pain, and leaves them with an understanding of the effects the bomb had on the civilians. By using descriptions of the horrific aftermath Hersey also displays how helpless
In this essay, I will discuss how Tim O’Brien’s works “The Things They Carried” and “If I Die in a Combat Zone” reveal the individual human stories that are lost in war. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien reveals the war stories of Alpha Company and shows how human each soldier is. In “If I Die in a Combat Zone” O’Brien tells his story with clarity, little of the dreamlike quality of “Things They Carried” is in this earlier work, which uses more blunt language that doesn’t hold back. In “If I Die” O’Brien reveals his own personal journey through war and what he experienced. O’Brien’s works prove a point that men, humans fight wars, not ideas. Phil Klay’s novel “Redeployment” is another novel that attempts to humanize soldiers in war. “Redeployment” is an anthology series, each chapter attempts to let us in the head of a new character – set in Afghanistan or in the United States – that is struggling with the current troubles of war. With the help of Phil Klay’s novel I will show how O’Brien’s works illustrate and highlight each story that make a war.
Compare the ways in which R.C Sherriff and Sebastian Barry present relationships in war in Journey’s End and A Long Long Way. Through a play and a novel separated by seventy-six years, R.C Sherriff and Sebastian Barry have produced pieces that show how war created new relationships, destroyed old ones and introduced unique tensions between men and women that may not have existed otherwise. Both A Long Long Way and Journey’s
As long as there has been war, those involved have managed to get their story out. This can be a method of coping with choices made or a way to deal with atrocities that have been witnessed. It can also be a means of telling the story of war for those that may have a keen interest in it. Regardless of the reason, a few themes have been a reoccurrence throughout. In ‘A Long Way Gone,’ ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ and ‘Novel without a Name,’ three narrators take the readers through their memories of war and destruction ending in survival and revelation. The common revelation of these stories is one of regret. Each of these books begins with the main character as an innocent, patriotic soldier or civilian and ends in either the loss of innocence and regret of choices only to be compensated with as a dire warning to those that may read it. These books are in fact antiwar stories meant not to detest patriotism or pride for one’s country or way of life, but to detest the conditions that lead to one being so simpleminded to kill another for it. The firebombing of Dresden, the mass execution of innocent civilians in Sierra Leone and a generation of people lost to the gruesome and outlandish way of life of communism and Marxism should be enough to convince anyone. These stories serve as another perspective for the not-so-easily convinced.
Combining all these serious themes into a very entertaining book should attract many readers. However, there was some confusion with the story line. Since this book is a collection of interviews, it wasn’t a conventional story. When I first started the book, I wasn’t sure why I was jumping from country to country and why each story was completely different. As I continued to read the book, I was able to understand that these were a collection of eyewitness accounts of the war. Also, Max Brooks uses a rife amount of vulgar language which I think could have been kept out. However, it made it real and that’s what this book is about.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now lacks the impact of its inspiration, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. While the basic elements of imperialism and human nature remain intact, the characters of the film bare little resemblance to their literary counterparts. The film serves as a re-interpretation of Conrad’s novella, updated from 19th-century British imperialism in the Congo to a critique of 20th-century U.S. imperialism in Southeast Asia. Coppola’s changes in setting and plot structure, however, force the film to sacrifice the character development so crucial in the literary work. This detracts from the overall effectiveness of the film.
Crane, Stephen. “An Episode of War.” Great Short Works of Stephen Crane. New York: Harper