Divergent Perspectives in Strange Meeting Essay

Most significantly, the isolation of the characters forms the grim mood. The noseless soldier is a misfit among the three other soldiers. He wears a “black silk handkerchief” on his face, because he does not have a nose (455). His separation from the other soldiers suggests a sorrowful mood. The narrator feels isolated from the other soldiers, because he thinks that he is not the heroic type. He believes that his being wounded is an accident (455). He also does not see himself as a “hawk”

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.”

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

The poem starts with similar word choices as ‘The Soldier’ but written in the perspective of the mother. The mother tells his son that when he dies he will be in a place of ‘quietness’ and free from the ‘loss and bloodshed’. This reinforces the fact that the battlefield was full of horrors and death. The poem then moves onto how ‘men may rest themselves and dream of nought’ explaining that the soldiers do not have to fear for their lives after their death. This illustrates how they feared for their lives and had negative connotations.

Along with not seeing the bigger picture soldiers lost their ordinary lives due to the war and the contrast was so different between pre and post war that it was hard to cope with life for the men fighting in the war. “For Kien, the most attractive, persistent echo of the past is the whisper of ordinary life, even though the sounds of ordinary life have been washed away by the long storms of war. It is the whispers of friends and ordinary people that are the most horrifying.”(63) The strongest emotions occur as the story unfolds and life takes over from childhood fantasies, destroying individuals and their families as a whole society is remade for instance Kien’s sweetheart before the war. Kien abandons his lover and instead spends the next years plodding through the jungle where everything dies. "no jungle grew again in this clearing. No grass, no plants" (26). He had no true friends and he learned not to fear death but rather wish it. When war ends he has a struggle to rebuild that was once loss, he can no longer see the good of things while he slowly goes insane with out love and hope and of course no sweetheart to aid him. A very sad and classical effect of a war that was worthless to its soldiers and people.

The war does not only leaves physical lifetime scars on a soldier but also mental scars which could remain with him for lifetime. We can say that the person who suffers the most is the soldier because he is the one who goes through continuous pain. After seeing so much destruction the soldiers go insane, they go through mental illness and psychological trauma, they try to attempt suicide, they get flashbacks of those disastrous events that stops them to live a normal life after. “We’re all strange, Robert thought. Everyone is strange in a war I guess. Ordinary is a myth" (Findley 101). As the wars are so anxious soldiers fight for days, weeks and months without sleeping, eating, bathing; they lack basic nessecties of life. As Robert states, "All he [Robert] wanted was a dream. Escape. But nobody dreams on a battlefield. There isn't any sleep that long. Dreams and distances are the same" ( Findley 102) a soldier cannot fall asleep because of the terror and stressful conditions but if he does he could get killed. they do not live a regular routine life which

Like a pebble or a blade of grass, you just stare and think, Dear Christ, there's the last thing on earth I'll ever see” (O'Brien 189). Vietnam made O'Brien's life difficult and now he is stuck with the memories. “War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” (O'Brien 76). War is a mystery one does not know what it will physically and mentally do. War is also an adventure and a way to find oneself. It molds the soldiers into the men they are today. O'Brien repeats the fact that he is forty-three years old five times. He does this throughout the book to show how the war continues to haunt him, 20 years later. One example is, “I’m forty-three years old and a writer now, and the war has been over for a long while. Much of it is hard to remember ¨ (O'Brien 31, 171, 213, 223, 232). O’Brien also repeats throughout the book the event of Lavender's death. Lavender’s death affected Cross, and he blames himself for Lavender being dead. “At one point, I remember, we paused over a snapshot of Ted Lavender,

But there was nothing else than my Uncles breathing became thinner and thinner until it eventually stopped”. Mum started to pray for this (death) death John said to Murray that it was cancer, Mum blamed the war, It had stolen his youth and then his health because of how cruel war is and how much death occurred during war. What did Uncle Jack mean when he said ‘I can't leave’ Uncle Jack had been in the war and had ruined his aspect on life he had a lot of secrets in the war about getting wounded, when Murray found out he was very upset, and Murray’s and Uncle Jack’s Life had been very alike, the author is talking about how death is very evil and how the war can ruin your life and change everything if you come back into the real

As said earlier in the essay this theme is showcased by the thought of loss, however loss is not the only way that the consequences of war is shown. In both these sources, the theme is shown through physical, emotional and psychological war that takes places both during the war and after the war. In Johnny Got His Gun, Trumbo shows readers countless times throughout the book the physical, emotional and psychological impact that war left on joe. One specific example of Joe experiencing these things is when during the book Joe describes how he is feeling due to the physical, emotional and psychological impact that war left on him. In the book Trumbo says “ It was like a full grown man suddenly being stuffed back into his mother's body. He is lying in stillness. He is completely helpless. Somewhere sticking in his stomach is a tube they fed him through. That is exactly like the womb except a baby in its mother's body could look forward to the time when it would live.” (Trumbo 80). This quote explains where Joe is both physically and emotionally due to the war. Throughout the book Joe explains how he emotionally felt like he is a baby trapped in the womb, and how he could not perform the most basic human functions. Through Joe’s thoughts and feeling the theme of the consequences of war emotionally are clearly presented taken from the book. Just like in the book, the movie Shenandoah shows the physical, emotional and psychological impact that war leaves just like in the book. This specific theme is shown right after the two characters Jenny and James got married. During their wedding James is unexpectedly taken and thrown into war and forced to leave his lovely wife and enter war and all that war bring. This specific part in the movie relates directly to the theme of consequences of war by detailing how specifically Jenny had to deal with the emotional

What was interesting about John was that he was very good at hiding his pain. When he was being treated the only way to tell that he was hurting was the tears in his eyes. He immediately felt better when Louisa started comforting him. This shows the significance physical contact had on him. According to Louisa, she had to be a substitute for mother, wife, or sister to make these soldiers feel at home while in the hospital. John was in a similar position when he had to take on a fatherly role at home for his younger siblings. With his mother’s permission, he joined the war because he wanted to help people. “I went because I couldn’t help it, I didn’t want the glory or the pay; I wanted to get the right thing done, and people kept saying men who were in earnest ought to fight. I was in earnest, the Lord knows!” When he was told he was going to die he was surprised at first but accepted it as fate. He knew his first battle was his going to be his last. When his time came he was very grateful to Louisa for staying by his side until the

In the novel, there is an emphasis on how each character deals with his or her emotional baggage. Each character, who is at war, has certain ways of coping with their situation. The soldiers display through their personality the struggles of war. As human beings, we tend to reflect what we carry. For example, if someone experiences loss, sorrow is revealed. O’Brien puts into perspective the baggage that comes with being an adult. In the real world loss, rejection, failure, trials and tribulation occur. Norman Bowker for example, returns home and finds it difficult to adjust to the normality. His baggage from the war torments him and eventually causes him to take his own life. Obrien emphasizes that one must find ways to cope with certain situations.

Joe has vivid memories of the war: the Lazarus story, the story of the doctors who sewed a flap over a man's open stomach wound so that others could lift it up and watch the man digest, and the man whose face was burned off by a flare. . These memories do not directly relate to warfare, but the demons of the decay, injury, and pain that is a result of warfare. The war only exists as a precondition for senseless and grotesque injury and pain. The horror of the state of Joe’s body is the center of the novel, but this is reinforced by his own memories and stories of the men made grotesque by the unmatched horror of Joe's body is at the center of the novel, but this presence is reinforced by Joe's own remembered images and stories of men made grotesque by their war-torn bodies. Modern medicine is deemed an actual contributor to the monstrosities that war brings upon the body.

The horrors of war were depicted by the constant threats to the characters lives, the brutal conditions of the bad weather, hunger and combat. Soldiers had to battle the enemy along with nature. Soldiers would become stressed, paranoid and start losing their personalities. As Captain Miller says, “I just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel.” This quote shows the mental toll on these soldiers.

The wartime lives of the soldiers who fought in the war were in a state of mind of mixed feelings. Happiness and devastating are two adjectives that can describe the soldier’s feelings in the war because at one second they can be happy that they succeeded on a mission, but on the other hand, it can be very devastating because one of their own soldiers could have been killed during the war. Aside from physical danger losing one of your own soldiers or having your family worry about you every day and night are some negatives and unpleasant parts about fighting in a war. For example, soldiers loved ones worried each day, and hoped that they would not get a knock on their door by someone who was going to tell them that their fathers, husbands, sons, or brothers have died in the war.

Such like the aftermath of the war or maybe other survivors. But during the story he runs into a pack of dogs that intend to eat him. Also there are the hazards like the environment that was molded by the war. And might just be a thought of mind but John going through the most dangerous being insanity.