Advanced English: Literature and World War I Frances Dewey
Synthesis Paper #2 March 6, 2016
Time
In Regeneration and "Disabled," Pat Barker and Wilfred Owen explore how war affects the individual. Barker and Owen chronicle the lives of soldiers who suffer from physical, emotional and mental trauma from the war. These two writers ' honest, realistic depictions of soldiers ' suffering reveal the incredible costs of war. Barker and Owen show how memories of the war hinder soldiers ' ability to live in the present and drastically transform the way they experience the world. Barker reveals how the past disrupts soldiers ' existence in the present. During a conversation with Rivers, Sassoon details the disturbing content of his
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Sassoon 's nightmares and hallucinations not only represent the violent, traumatic nature of the war experience, but also reveal how soldiers are unable to escape the horrors of war. Barker exposes how the past shapes the way soldiers experience and understand the world. During a walk on the beach, Rivers and Burns encounter the remains of gutted fish. Burns has a troubling reaction: "But Burns had stopped dead in his tracks and was staring at the heads, with his mouth working. As Rivers watched, he jerked his head back, the same movement that had been so common when he first arrived at Craiglockhart" (176). At the sight of gutted fish, Burns is reminded of the horrors of war. Burns’ visceral physical reaction to the gutted fish reveals not only how much the war traumatized him, but also how much the past still rules him. Burns stops dead in his tracks "with his mouth working." Burns experiences "the same movement that had been so common when he first arrived at Craiglockhart." In this brief moment, Burns is suddenly pulled back to his experiences on the battlefield. Burns’ view of the world is completely changed because of his war experience; he sees the world through a different lens, one that has witnessed violence and brutality unimaginable to many. Whilst on a date with Sarah, Prior has a sad realization: "She belonged with the pleasure-seeking crowds. He both envied and despised her, and was quite coldly determined to get her. They owed
Almost every person knows someone who has served in a war, whether it may be a sibling, a parent, or a friend. After an individual comes back from their service in a war, he or she usually has changed as a person, either positively, or most of the time negatively. In All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr shows through characters seeing death, characters that are not in combat, and characters that are soldiers in war, that war impacts individuals negatively, despite their backgrounds and differences.
“The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed” (O’Brien 68). In Tim O'Brien's’ novel, The Things They Carried, the author creates an overall reflection of war and the memories that come from the experiences. O’Brien describes his experiences in the Vietnam War and how the outcomes can lead to PTSD. Soldiers can not possibly capture these experiences in literal truth, but by storytelling. Tim kills an enemy and feels the guilt from it, so he makes up a backstory for
War can destroy a man both in body and mind for the rest of his life. In “The Sniper,” Liam O’Flaherty suggests the horror of war not only by presenting its physical dangers, but also by showing its psychological effects. We are left to wonder which has the longer lasting effect—the visible physical scars or the ones on the inside?
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 returning of a dramatic event disables a soldier to adapt accordingly to everyday life. Ones conscious of reality is infringed upon Posttraumatic experiences of warfare, which unleashes an outbreak of inhumane actions directed towards existence and significant others. As the short story progresses after the event of the Vietnam War, the narrator says referring to Henry that:
They try to build a new life, but memories from the war are still strongly obvious to them. Through the feeling of embarrassment inside the soldier, O’Brien has depicted the post-war effects of the
“‘I remember almost every day that I was in the war, and I think almost everything that I’ve done is influenced at least to some degree(...) by the fact that I was in the war’”(Dickey). James Dickey wrote his novel Deliverance based off much of his own experiences in war. In his novel, narrator Ed is in a predicament. He feels like life is floating by without actually experiencing it. When his friend Lewis comes along and offers him the canoe trip of a lifetime, Ed is all in. These two are joined by two other city slickers to set off on an adventure that will change their lives. James Dickey wrote this adventure with a different kind of experience in mind. A participant in World War II, the conflict was still fresh in his mind and this shows in the journey on the river. The trip that these men take is eerily similar to the journey Dickey participates in throughout the war. Leaving for the war and leaving for the canoe trip both elicit the same feelings of excitement, doubt, and loss. The trials on the river include many of the same trials people in war go through such as death and guilt. Finally, the return home both from war and from the canoe trip both have negative impacts on the psyche. The men's’ obstacles in their departure, encounters with adversity, and return home are a metaphor for the struggles of war.
Revenge muffles thoughtfulness and can be taken to certain extreme measures. Bobby Jorgenson, a medic for the soldiers, failed to properly treat O’Brien for shock after he had been shot along the Song Tra Bong. O’Brien immediately developed a strong resentment for Jorgenson. Just as seen with Rat Kiley and the water buffalo, O’Brien “wanted to hurt him” (184) and make “Bobby Jorgenson feel exactly what [he] felt” (184). Forgiveness, a moral indoctrinated in most people, is abandoned and replaced by malicious thoughts of vengeance. O’Brien admitted to not hating Jorgenson after a brief conversation, but “the need for revenge kept eating at [him]” (191). O’Brien detested the fact that he no longer hated Jorgenson and was therefore still incapable of ridding his mind of vindictive thoughts. A war is no place to invoke conflict among allies, but O’Brien’s lack of rationale propels him to do so. He feels the need to seek justice rather than accept that Jorgenson is truly apologetic and has improved immensely. After a failed attempt at seeking revenge, O’Brien is able to move on from the past and consider Jorgenson a friend. Although a war zone can cloud minds and result in the abandonment of morals, morality does not disappear. O’Brien’s ability to recognize his faults is mere proof that immoral actions can be learned from. However, the author O’Brien is adamant about
A large majority of ‘Regeneration’ is told from the actual participation in war from patients who took part in World War One (But not from their voices) that consists of horrific insights into the implications of war. Sassoon also had seen to be having some hallucinations that were brought up at the start of the play. With the time being written being very important and when Sassoon said that he had seen, “corpses, men with half their faces shot off, crawling across the floor”. This is a very graphic depiction of how war was, unlike ‘Journeys End’. Furthermore, Sassoon also references one time where he “nodded off on a bench” and, “when I woke up, the pavement was covered in corpses”, “old…black” which helps to create an atmosphere and images into the
Comparing the Ways Michael Herr in Dispatches and Pat Barker in Regeneration Show the Effects of War
There is no doubt that America’s World War II is a rich source of literature and a theme for many writers. As result, they wrote many works about war literature, such as novels, poetry, plays, diaries, and personal narrative.
The story in Barker’s novel, Regeneration, centers on many soldiers with various problems in the hospital. One of these soldiers, named Prior, enters the hospital suffering from Mutism. He meets with Dr. Rivers, a psychiatrist, who encourages him to express his war memories so that he can heal; however, Prior proves to be a difficult patient for Dr. Rivers. When Prior regains his voice, he wanders to a pub in Edinburgh where he meets Sarah Lumb, a young munitions worker, and agree to see each other again. When Prior returns to the hospital, Rivers tries hypnosis on Prior to see if it can help him remember the events that led to his mental breakdown. From the hypnosis, Prior is able to remember perfectly how he had to shovel a fellow
Pat Barker's Regeneration focuses on the troubled soldiers' mental status during World War One. Barker introduces the feelings soldiers had about the war and military's involvement with the war effort. While Regeneration mainly looks at the male perspective, Barker includes a small but important female presence. While Second Lieutenant Billy Prior breaks away from Craiglockhart War Hospital for an evening, he finds women at a cafe in the Edinburgh district (Barker 86). He comes to the understanding that the women are munitions workers. Women's involvement in war work in Regeneration shows the potential growth in women's independence, but at the expense of restrictions placed on men while they were on the
‘Disabled’ by Wilfred Owen and ‘The Manhunt’ by Simon Armitage both present two men who were injured at war and were treated in very different ways. ‘Disabled’ features an abandoned young man in the early 20th century who had no idea of the realities of war when he enlisted, and sustained a physical and emotional disability while fighting in WW1. ‘The Manhunt’ is told from the perspective of Laura Beddoes, whose husband, Eddie, was served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia in the 1990’s but was discharged after developing physical injuries and depression. Both these men had very different experiences both of war and of readjusting after it was over.
Regeneration by Pat Barker is an anti-war novel that focuses on the effect of war on the psychological mind. Barker uses many techniques to portray her position about the war. In 1917, during World War I, Siegfried Sassoon declares his objection of the war and refuses to continue serving as a British officer. Determined as suffering under the ailment of “shell-shock”, Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital to undergo treatment and recover his “sanity”. Dr. William Rivers, the psychiatrist in charge, is determined to find out what is going on in Sassoon’s mind while treating the many other traumatized patients at Craiglockhart. The theme of Regeneration is the horrors and effects of war and how soldiers are psychologically