Death of the General in O’Connor’s A Late Encounter with the Enemy

The “Palace” portion of the poem attempts to provide insight into the general’s decision to kill the migrant workers (Dove). The narrator tells us about the general’s mother and how he is mourning her death. “[W]hen thoughts turn to love and death[,] the general thinks of his mother….”(Dove). The narrator leads us to believe that the general either associates love and death or doesn’t seem to notice a stark difference between the two, which is why he can order the massacre of 20,000 people. The structure of the poem -- being broken up into the two viewpoints of the parties involved -- is an effective way to contrast the two sides and emphasize the socioeconomic issues in the Dominican Republic at the time.

Company Aytch, a memoir written by Sam Watkins, tells the personal tale of a lowly private fighting four long years in the American Civil War. Watkins was from Columbia, Tennessee, and was a part of Company H, 1st Tennessee Infantry. He recounts his military career in chronological order, from before the Battle of Shiloh in 1862 to the day the Confederacy surrendered at Nashville in 1865. Watkins is a humble writer, often reminds the reader that he is not aiming to provide a comprehensive account of the entire war, but rather a collection of personal stories. Military history books often recount the lives of generals and of great strategies, but this book insists that history should not exclude the common men who filled the ranks of the military.

Many people choose a side of the speech, but others will stay neutral and agree with parts of both arguments. Should people let the past be the past and not do anything else to remember how our nation became one? Or should people still celebrate the lives of the soldiers who fought in the Civil War? Some say people need to leave the land and history as it is. This means not doing anything to make people think about it. Although, people will always remember what happened at Gettysburg. In the speech it states:

he says. But only a minor way” (p.1327). In the short story “Everything Stuck to Him” by

“I’ve seen so many young men over the years who think they’re running at other young men. They are not. They’re running at me,” Death says. This quotation means that a lot of young men (I’m assuming soldiers) fight and go into battle thinking that they’re going to fight with other soldiers and survive, but they’re basically running to their deaths. This is significant because it helps to tell more of Hans Hubermann’s backstory and what happened to him pre-Liesel. It also reveals a little bit what fighting in World War II was like. This quote connects to the emerging themes of death and war because it is about mortality and fighting other people in a war. This passage impacts me by making me think about death and how many soldiers die while fighting (which is something that I don’t think about often).

It wasn’t until he went to war and was faced with the enemy that he would realize that the enemy wasn’t so different after all.

Towards the middle of the excerpt, the main focus changes to the death and march

At the same time, O’Brien struggles with destructiveness of the conflicting images of violence and peace in death through the juxtaposition of the imagery of the dead man. While “his one eye was shut, the other eye was a star-shaped hole.” The dead man has one shut eye that resembles a peaceful sleep, while the other side is obliterated by the grenade into a star-shaped hole. The image of the star-shaped hole in the dead soldier’s eye represents the hopes that he once had when he was alive: “He hoped the Americans would go away. Soon, he hoped. He kept hoping and hoping, always” (119). Furthermore, “his right cheek was smooth and hairless,” an image of untouched innocence that contrasts with his left cheek, which was “peeled back in three ragged strips,” destroyed by the violence O’Brien inflicts upon it. The juxtaposition of the butterfly that settles on his chin and the fatal wound on his neck, “open to the spinal cord…blood…thick and shiny” illustrate the complexity and ambiguity of the unnaturalness of war, depicted by the image of the dead man’s wrung neck, contrasted with the ironic peace and naturalism of death in the image of the fragile butterfly. These select images are also those that O’Brien chooses to fixate upon and develop throughout the chapter as he struggles to comprehend the moral implications of his actions. The innocence of the “slim, dead, almost dainty young man” is further reinforced when O’Brien describes his wrists as “wrists of a

By using primary sources from soldiers, he is giving a voice to those people. He is not trying to undermine the importance of abolishing slavery, but wants to educate people on history that might have been taught differently to them. He also wants to clear up the impression that Civil War soldiers did not know what they fought for (McPherson, 2). He wrote this book to set an outline for a larger book that he made called, “Why They Fought” (McPherson, 1). The author’s main argument is to show that the Civil War was not initially about slavery and that the soldier’s did have reasons on why they were fighting. In the many letters both the Union and Confederacy soldiers had a hate for one another. They both want to destroy the other and would not stop until the end. A soldier from Virginia said, “I intend to fight them to the last… I will kill them as long as I live” (McPherson, 20). This quote and many others explains the author’s argument on that the soldiers had their

The third section of the excerpt focuses on the mother and her reaction to her children’s “furious tenacity.” Her head begins to ache as the children argue over what happened on the cliff. She blames their behavior on “the perilous world” and the “intransigence” of the children. The rivalry between the children has overwhelmed her; furthermore, she is embarrassed by their behavior. She loves her children, but their constant bickering has exhausted

The Civil War caused a shift in the ways that many Americans thought about slavery and race. Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over helps readers understand how soldiers viewed slavery during the Civil War. The book is a narrative, which follows the life of Union soldier who is from Massachusetts. Chandra Manning used letters, diaries and regimental newspapers to gain an understanding of soldiers’ views of slavery. The main character, Charles Brewster has never encountered slaves. However, he believes that Negroes are inferior. He does not meet slaves until he enters the war in the southern states of Maryland and Virginia. Charles Brewster views the slaves first as contraband. He believes the slaves are a burden and should be sent back to their owners because of the fugitive slave laws. Union soldiers focus shifted before the end of the war. They believed slavery was cruel and inhumane, expressing strong desire to liberate the slaves. As the war progresses, soldiers view slaves and slavery in a different light. This paper, by referring to the themes and characters presented in Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over, analyzes how the issue of slavery and race shifted in the eyes of white Union soldiers’ during Civil War times.

the reader to understand his point of view. In chapter 2 he recounts one of his masters who whipped his

Abraham Lincoln shifts his tone from condescending to optimistic so that he can reconstruct a nation that goes from conflict to, hopefully, a resolution. Lincoln 's condescending tone is apparent when talking about the background of the war, and its

The first line starts of with "Folly, Folly" which is a repetition of the word twice. The word folly basically means the trait of acting stupidly or rashly. This depicts the protagonist 's emotions towards his opponent which

The first stanza is addressed to ‘old men’ and how they should not simply slip away and die quietly, they should fight death until the end. Poetic techniques