Character Analysis Of Adam Mako's A Higher Call

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.

1. “In any war story, especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told the way. “ (71)

The true horrors of World War I are difficult to convey through traditional written word. David Malouf’s Fly Away Peter is a novella which uses relatable characters and stereotypes to provide a window for audiences to engage with warfare. This is enhanced by an array of poetic and descriptive language with vivid imagery to truly channel the anguish and confusion of soldiers in war to the audience. Juxtaposition is Malouf’s greatest asset, along with religious symbolism and allusion add subtext to the novella. These techniques allow Malouf to condemn war, create a novella of dualities and illuminate the true meaning life.

Imagine you’re lying on the muddy, damp Earth and all around you can hear the screams of people you know dying. Shells explode, bullets race through the air, and poisonous gas seeps around you, all with the intent to harm you in some way. Yet, you willingly put yourself in that position day after day, year after year. The question surrounding this situation is, why? Who would be masochistic enough to choose to put their lives in danger and live in the most perilous environment possible? Two very different books give us insight into the thoughts of the soldiers who continuously put themselves in these environments. Your Death Would Be Mine by Martha Hanna and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque lets us into the minds of Paul Pireaud and Paul Baumer as they try to survive life as a soldier in the Great War. I argue that Pireaud and Baumer had very different reasons for continuing to fight despite having suffered beyond belief. In this paper I will analyze how the varying degrees of patriotism, brotherhood, family life at home, and age affected how these two men endured the treacherous life on the front of World War I.

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.

These two men were at one time friends. Again during the war, officers make a realization about the war.

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.

Memoirs of war often reflect the positive or negative experiences endured throughout battle. Considered by many to be one of the best memoirs of World War I, Hervey Allen’s “Toward the Flame”, recalls his own experiences of battle. His recollection of events shows that he had a negative image of war and that there was nothing glorious about it. What started out looking like a man’s greatest adventure turned into a shell-shocking reality that war is actually horrible and trying. Allen’s experiences with consistent hunger, mustard gas, and artillery shellings led to his disillusionment with war, and left him with a permanent hatred of battle.

Through the soldiers’ experiences, the narrator shows only the dark side of human nature. Discuss.

In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of

From two different perspectives of the war, the author of this book showed that, depending on location and timing, everyone can be affected differently by warfare. It followed the story of two children who grew up on opposite sides of World War II. When their paths crossed, they developed feelings for one another, disregarding the fact that their historical circumstances placed them on opposing sides of the war. In the book All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr depicted how internal principles were able to overpower external pressures.

Often times war is depicted in a victorious, triumphant manner when in reality war is chaotic; full of destruction and death. In Stephen Crane’s “A Mystery of Heroism” and Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge,” we witness the harsh reality of the war and the common human reaction to the havoc. Fred Collins simply wants water, but the well is on the other side of the battlefield. Peyton Farquhar, a loyal civilian to the South, just wanted to help in the war but instead was hanged for his good-intentioned attempt to destroy the bridge to help the Confederates. Ambrose Bierce and Stephen Crane wrote “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge” and “A Mystery of Heroism” to show the natural human condition in adverse situations.

Following his rape, he starts to do what he feels is right, and in one case, goes directly against direct orders to stand for what he believes in, as well as to reconcile everything he’s been through as a soldier; the violence, the pain, and everything that has emotionally and physically scarred him.

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.

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.