Dr. Orville Rodgers: A Hero Or Hero?

Sometimes the consequences of war are overlooked because of the circumstances. In this story, William Dean Howells uses his characters to convey his own views on war. One can easily tell that he was in no way a supporter. He does an outstanding job demonstrating the many reasons war is harmful. Through the main character of his story “Editha”, William Dean Howells reveals that war is not glorious, but is instead destructive.

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.

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.

Krebs soon comes to isolate himself and oppose discussing his war experience and the influence it had on him. For Krebs, living in a town that has moved past the war, was his reason to reminisce on his war experiences and the women who would walk the streets in Germany and France. After spending two years in World War I, adapting to the real world was asking Krebs to let go of everything that has shaped him since he has been gone. “He sat there on the porch reading a book on the war. It was a history and he was reading about all the engagements he had been in. It was the most interesting reading he had ever done.” Even after arriving home, attempting to adapt to the fact that the war was over, he studied war events he was part of; routes and war sites he had taken and fought at.

'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

Not every man who 's fought in a war planned on doing so. In fact, not all of them even want to. It 's rare to find enough people voluntarily willing to lay down their lives for their country, so more often than not militaries used what we would call “citizen soldiers.” Citizen soldiers are exactly what they sound like, regular citizens taken from society and turned into people capable of serving in the military. Although it may seem obvious when plainly written out, citizen soldiers had vastly different experiences compared to career soldiers, and Stephen Ambrose attempted to pin down that specific experience in his book Citizen Soldier. Ambrose uses oral interviews from World War II veterans and other materials to explain the experiences of the common American soldier who served in WWII between D-Day and the eventual surrender of the German forces. However, when examining his book, it 's important to ask how successful Ambrose was in painting an accurate picture of this kind of soldier 's life during his service. Is the information he uses specific to the men who served in Europe, or can it also be linked back to the soldiers in the Pacific? This paper will evaluate his work by comparing it to oral interviews from WWII veterans both from the same areas that Ambrose 's veterans serve in and in locations not included in his work.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the main protagonist, Paul Bäumer, enlists in the German army of World War I with his classmates. At the age of twenty, he knows nothing of life but death, despair, and fear. As the war unfolds and the fighting continues, Pauls true character comes out. The war shaped him into a perceptive, selfless, and trustworthy soldier who will fight for his country at all times. At the beginning of the war, Paul is very familiar with living a normal lifestyle. As time progresses, he becomes perceptive with life as a soldier and learns to forget prior knowledge he once relied on, and relying on basic instinct and everything he has been taught in training. Bäumer’s insights have reminded him that what matters is “not the mind but the boot brush” and prior knowledge can be forgotten because it “is not the intelligence, but the system [that matters]” (Remarque 22).

Dick Rhodes was born in Ulster to a homemaker and a WWII veteran. Before war broke out in his homeland, he immigrated to Canada. To be an ordinary guy was his plan, to marry, have children and live a long productive life. Instead, returning home, he became a soldier. By his side, his buddies fought the war. Years later, after the guns fell silent many were still fighting the war. A sinister, unseen, evil war called P.T.S.D.

As with many other countries at the time, America’s ranks during WWII were filled with what many would describe as “the common man”: men from farmlands, small towns and big cities. As detailed in James Tobin’s Ernie Pyle’s War detailed, there was no man more respected and trusted to accurately portray what these men went through than the war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Pyle’s upbringing in the Midwest, his unassuming “aw shucks” demeanor, and pre-war experiences touring the country uniquely suited him to the establishment of tremendous rapport; both with the soldiers he traveled with and folks back home.

The story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is an enormously detailed fictional account of a wartime scenario in which jimmy Cross (the story’s main character) grows as a person, and the emotional and physical baggage of wartime are brought to light. The most obvious and prominent feature of O’Brien’s writing is a repetition of detail. O’brien also passively analyzes the effects of wartime on the underdeveloped psyche by giving the reader close up insight into common tribulations of war, but not in a necessarily expositorial sense.. He takes us into the minds of mere kids as they cope with the unbelievable and under-talked-about effects or rationalizing

Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldiers Home” is about a young man named Krebs who is learning to adjust to society after his experience in Europe during World War I. Hemingway’s purpose for writing this story can be confusing and also very telling. I believe Krebs was not a soldier at all and in fact, deceives his family, his friends, and his community into believing he was an experienced soldier in World War I. At first glance, Krebs may be seen as a war hero. However, by observing the characteristics such as Kreb’s background, actions, motivation, and the author’s Implied Evaluation, we see that he is not a war hero at all.

War forces young soldiers to grow up quickly. In Stephen Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He is faced with the hard reality of war and this forces him to readjust his romantic beliefs about war. Through the novel, the reader can trace the growth and development of Henry through these four stages: (1) romanticizing war and the heroic role each soldier plays, (2) facing the realities of war, (3) lying to himself to maintain his self-importance, and (4) realistic awareness of his abilities and place in life. Through Henry’s experiences in his path to self-discovery, he is strongly affected by events that help shape his ideology of war, death,

“Thank you for saving me” is the words that citizens reiterate to a hero, after the hero saves their lives. One day, when I grow older, I hope to hear those words a lot too. A hero doesn’t necessarily have to be a person with powers, but can be a person with traits to them that make them powerful. Everybody has a different definition of a hero. For instance, my definition of a hero is someone that sets a good example for other people. So, if offered a role as a hero or a villain in a movie, I would have to accept a hero because I aspire to be a hero when I grow older. My personality matches that of a hero and heroes always have a great reputation.

“Regeneration” by Pat Barker illustrates the interactions between a psychiatrist, Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, and his patients during World War 1 in Craiglockhart Hospital. Not only does the book depict the psychologic effects of war, it also gives us glimpses of the changes in the society during that time. The relation between traumatic experiences and memory could be inferred from the themes of the novel as well. These aspects are significant for us living in the 21st century, because they still are the fundamental ideology of the modern world, and those ideas could also be applied to us. I define significance as something important that is part of what you are, and could change how you think.

John Green’s experience at the Children’s hospital changed his life around. “Watching children die had a profound effect on John Green’s life” in a positive way because it “convinced him to abandon his vocation to be a Christian minister and turned him into an author” (Interview, Green). Throughout his experience