Does It Matter? by Siegfried Sassoon Essay

Corporal Angelo Crapsey of Roulette, Pennsylvania, a young man who decided to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War was considered to be a "lively and cheerful” (Bateson 1) young man by his friends, but the war changed him and he home a much darker man. He wanted to fight for his country and keep the country together when the south decided to fire on Fort Sumter he decided to enlist. He fought and survived the Battles of Antietam and Gettysburg and even survived dysentery which is a dieses that is common when proper toilets are not available. Corporal Crapsey and his unit arrived too late to fight in the Battle of Cedar Mountain in Virginia, so he was assigned to clean up duty, to help burry the bodies of the fallen in battle that day.

In William Styron’s book Sophie’s Choice Styron explains the effects of World war 2 on an American, a Polish person and a Jewish person. Sophie, the polish women, who is forced to make a very difficult decision during the war, a choice that, affects her mental state of mind for the rest of her life. Stingo, the American and narrator of the story struggles to find inspiration for his writing career while also discovering his families past. Nathan, the Jewish man who is hopelessly in love with Sophie a holocaust survivor, lashes out in anger and questions her about her past. Sophie’s Choice uses three characters guilt to portray the hardships of World War 2 and the mental instability it has caused.

I strongly believe that individuality should be valued over conformity. Today I will tell you how precious and rare individuality is, and why we should value it over conformity.

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

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

In the war, it often thought that soldiers, go to a country to keep peace in that part of the world. Unfortunately that is not always the case;during these tours ,soldiers die everyday from cultural violence,and misguided information by their superiors and in this story that has occurred. Jimmy Cross is characterized as a man who is filled with emotion and the loss of one of his men. “Cross carried a compass, maps,...He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men.” (Tim O’Brien pg. 4) Cross felt directly responsible for his men. Death lead Cross to the realization of who Cross truly is, and who he will become. Jimmy Cross has to find himself one way or another, when he is ready to face the truth is completely up to

'One of the paradoxes of the War - one of the many - was that this most brutal of conflicts should set up a relationship between officers and men that was... domestic. Caring. As Layard would undoubtedly have said, maternal.' -Pat Barker: Birdsong

They realized they had a problem since no other units were up to the line with them; they had to wait this out. They were ordered to lie down in the tall grass. The fighting started to break out in front of them at a small skirmish line. Many of the men had never seen battle, so some of the men stood up to watch what was going on. Maj. John D. Musser of the 143rd wrote: "… a few shells came booming over our heads, making many of the uninitiated dodge muchly and now and then a wounded skirmisher was brought in from the skirmish line and taken to the rear, all of which had a tendency to make us nervous and uneasy…" (Tomasak,

entire company to die in his absence. He could not distinguish between his life as a soldier in the

Soldier is an expert in the Profession of Arms, bonded with comrades by culture of

In “The Man He Killed”, a soldier in WW1, presumably European, kills an enemy for his first time. This soldier’s war was a completely different beast than ‘Nam. In WW1 the front line was obvious, their army was on one side and the enemy was on the other, which made it clear

Tim O’Brien was told of Rat Kiley’s injury second-handedly by Mitchell Sanders. The soldiers heard about a rumor that their enemies were about to attack so they stayed off the main trails for two weeks calling this “the nightlife,” (208). Sanders told O’Brien that everyone had a hard time managing with the long walks in the dark nights but Rat Kiley took it worse than anyone else. This was because Rat Kiley saw too many deaths in his lifetime that he couldn’t go on living the war life anymore. One afternoon, before the platoon started to march again, Rat Kiley let his feelings out. Sanders didn’t know how to react except to be silent. The next day, Rat Kiley shot himself through his foot because of the things they were going through.

A big theme and point in Tim O'Brien’s novel is how many situations hurt the soldiers’ lives. From the beginning, O'Brien starts his work by numbering the many things soldiers have to carry; Knives, guns, pictures, and some feelings and trust issues they had with their family before leaving for war. O'Brien tells us and explains how each soldier was hurting, and how it was for them to get use to the war and the environment they were in, as he says; “Jimmy Cross did not want the responsibility of leading these men. He had never wanted it.” (167). In this quote, O'Brien reveals how tough it was for Lieutenant Cross to have this responsibility in the war. O'Brien contemplated over and over again, trying to decide if he wanted to go to war and if it was for him or not. He has seen it as something he couldn’t do. More the less, they saw the war as irrelevant nonsense at times.

Tim O'Brien's book, "The Things They Conveyed," gives profitable understanding into the brains of officers, and edifies us to the enthusiastic and mental expenses of war. In particular, the stories of Mary Anne, the infant water wild ox and the section, "In the Field," assist us with relating to the transformation that fighters experience. While the conspicuous connection for O'Brien's novel is to talk about the physical protests every fighter conveyed were a great deal more critical, including such things as individual questions, reasons for alarm, and dreams.

“An Episode of War” by Stephen Crane is a short story about a lieutenant in an unnamed war during the late 1890s being shot during an everyday routine. While it is not out of the ordinary to be shot during a war, a note sticks out: the gritty reality of war tends to glob soldiers of all ranks together to form a nameless mass which Crane emphasizes. The lieutenant has no name, the war has no name, the soldiers have no name, nothing. Everyone is a cog in the wheel and when one breaks, they are quickly replaced. The narrative is driven by the lieutenant’s actions to demonstrate Crane’s stylistic approach of American Realist.