Generals Die In Bed By Charles Yale Harrison

To be engaged in war is to be engaged in an armed conflict. Death is an all too ordinary product of war. It is an unsolicited reward for many soldiers that are fighting for their country’s own fictitious freedom. For some of these men, the battlefield is a glimpse into hell, and for others, it is a means to heaven. Many people worry about what happens during war and what will become of their loved ones while they’re fighting, but few realize what happens to those soldiers once they come home. The short stories "Soldier's Home” by Ernest Hemingway and "Speaking of Courage” by Tim O'Brien explore the thematic after effects of war and how it impacts a young person's life. Young people who

Generals Die in Bed is a narrative which never spares the readers from the truth of the horrors and futility of war. The reality of the shocking and inhumane trenches hits both the readers and the soldiers with apprehension of the front line. The actions of the soldiers are under constant tension of the war, and the conditions imposed upon them clearly become the catalyst for many of their actions. The narrator has indubitably portrayed war as nothing glorious or heroic, but giving the soldiers a sense of dread and demonstrating a

Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried” epitomizes the degradation of morals that war produces. This interpretation is personified in the characters who gradually blur the line dividing right and wrong as the motives for war itself become unclear. The morality of soldiers and the purpose of war are tied also to the truth the soldiers must tell themselves in order to participate in the gruesome and random killing which is falsely justified by the U.S government. The lack of purpose in the Vietnam War permanently altered the soldier’s perspective of how to react to situations and in most cases they turned to violence to express their frustration.

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.”

In the first place, a person with a kind and sympathetic nature is a person that will do good deeds like Ponyboy, even if he’s in a gang that is supposed to be barbarous, vicious, or even acquire ways to convert into a criminal he is kind hearted. For example, on page 78 it says,“You ain’t like any of the gang. I mean I couldn’t

Generals Die in Bed by Charles Yale Harrison is told by a twenty-year-old anonymous narrator, who reminds us that the war is neither a glamorous nor glorious affair. It’s a graphic and poignant story of a young man sent to fight on the Western Front to fight against the German army. The experience of warfare in trenches takes on distinct animation as readers identify with the predicament of the youthful soldiers. It’s written in a blunt documentary style. With its raw and powerful prose, the insanity and destructive brutality of war is shown so realistically that reader start to question the meaning of truth, heroism, God and Devil.

He touches on their tragic deaths compared to their hopeful letters of going home and seeing their loved ones. He describes his astonishment as he realizes that none of these men actually showed hatred or abuse towards the German, they simply believed and had conviction in the justice behind their cause. This letter illustrates the feelings of a once happy man, now stuck at war. He says, "War hardens ones hearts and blunts ones feelings…"(p.68). This young soldier has lost all signs of the happy life he led back home. The harshness of war got to him just like the rest of the soldiers out there and if they so much as dreamed about accepting the reality around them, they would have gone either insane or surrendered and he could not give himself that luxury so onward he went.

The short story “The Death of Dolgushov” by Isaak Babel is a gut wrenching story, at times literally, about the dilemmas of killing. Babel, a master of the short story, challenges readers’ morality by contrasting two soldiers plights. On the one hand, a soldier, Dolgushov, pleads that he has “had it (241),” meaning that he wants his comrade to kill him after being mortally wounded by machine gun fire; while on the other hand, another soldier, unnamed, cannot bring himself to kill Dolgushov. Throughout the story, war is depicted as a game until a soldier gets seriously hurt. This device, combined with the vivid imagery associated with both soldier’s plights, complicates how readers’ judge the act of killing and war in general.

Selfishness is present in every character in the book, which is what sets this book apart from most war novels. It gives insight into what men were probably thinking while fighting, instead of focusing in the fighting and sacrifices themselves,

Deceased philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “War does not determine who is right- only who is left”. Those left are the soldiers of the 1-502nd, specifically Bravo Company 1st plt, and the Janabi family and to a greater extent, the ever-changing global world we all live in today. The tragic events that conspired in a small Iraqi village became a microcosm of how leadership failures at every level shaped the actions of a few soldiers who committed atrocious acts. One can also see how a high operational tempo, along with prolonged violence and death, has on a person’s psyche. It is the ugly side of war that the average American citizen may not want to hear or talk about. For a soldier, it is inevitably what they train their

Both Generals Die in Bed and All Quite on the Western Front, display the Horrors of war, through the lies and propaganda that is told for soldiers to enroll. The dehumanization of war is a major key in both Generals die in bed and all quite of the western front displaying the horrors of war,

Soldiers lost their innocence the moment they stepped onto the battlefield. They become so numb to the horrors of the war, which no longer feel a sense of

In the words of Otto Von Bismarck, “Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.” Many of the preceding war novels to All Quiet on the Western Front, misrepresented or overlooked the anguish of war, in favor of more resplendent ideals such as glory, honor, or nationalism. The predominant issue of All Quiet on the Western Front is the terrible atrocities of war. The reality that is portrayed in the novel is that there was no glory or honor in this war, only a fierce barbarity that actually transformed the nature of human existence into irreparable, endless affliction, destroying the soldiers long before their deaths.

Warfare brought out the worst in mankind within the memoir A Woman in Berlin. The Russian soldiers started to enjoy the spoils of war by raping and humiliating the German women. “I start yelling, you pigs. Here they rape me twice in a row and you shut the door and leave me lying like a piece of dirt (Anonymous, 54). Many of the Russian soldiers felt no remorse for their actions. They committed this atrocity because they felt as through since Germany lost the war their people weren’t their equals, “Another mumbles they’re just Germans and turns back over” (anonymous, 54). A person on the losing side of war doesn’t make them inferior or any less human than anyone else, but after years of warfare people began to overlook this. The German soldiers

There is something fundamental about our humanity that is irrevocably lost when these individuals perish unheard and these stories fade away unheeded. This tragic alternative disrespects all that is sacrificed when individuals bear witness to war, and it overlooks all that can be gained when we bear witness to their stories.