Guests Of The Nation

Traumatized Literary devices are what make the story come alive and give the reader a feeling of actually being there. The literary devices increase a reader’s interest in the story and also helps keep the audience engaged. They help create a more fascinating plot. In the short story “Ambush” by TIm O’brien uses them to develop a character so much more. Mr. O’brien used internal conflict, external conflict, and flashback to put the reader in the character’s “shoes” throughout the story.

Generals Die in Bed certainly demonstrates that war is futile and the soldiers suffer both emotionally and physically. Charles Yale Harrison presents a distressing account of the soldiers fighting in the Western front, constantly suffering and eventually abandoning hope for an end to the horrors that they experience daily. The ‘boys’ who went to war became ‘sunk in misery’. We view the war from the perspective of a young soldier who remains nameless. The narrator’s experience displays the futility and horror of war and the despair the soldiers suffered. There is no glory in

The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.

War requires a lot out of soldiers. They give themselves wholly to their country, including their mind, body, and soul. However, one thing that seems to vary among these men is their sense of duty. In Frank O’Connor’s “Guests of the Nation,” three Irish soldiers form an unlikely friendship with their British prisoners of war. However, things take a turn when they are given orders to execute their new-found friends. When the order reaches the men, the three of them interpret their new duty in various ways. Through the orders of execution, “Guests of the Nation” emphasizes how people react to a sense of duty in varied ways from embracing it with pride, carrying out their duty with confusion and regret, and disobeying by limited participation.

Penned during two distinctly disparate eras in American military history, both Erich Maria Remarque's bleak account of trench warfare during World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Tim O'Brien's haunting elegy for a generation lost in the jungles of Vietnam, The Man I Killed, present readers with a stark reminder that beneath the veneer of glorious battle lies only suffering and death. Both authors imbue their work with a grim severity, presenting the reality of war as it truly exists. Men inflict grievous injuries on one another, breaking bodies and shattering lives, without ever truly knowing for what or whom they are fighting for. With their contributions to the genre of war literature, both Remarque and O'Brien have sought to lift the veil of vanity which, for so many wartime writers, perverts reality with patriotic fervor. In doing so, the authors manage to convey the true sacrifice of the conscripted soldier, the broken innocence which clouds a man's first kill, and the abandonment of one's identity which becomes necessary in order to kill again.

War covets the aspect of man that is man itself, for it craves to morph them into mere objects and targets. For many soldiers, they succumb to such a fate; being depleted their ability to feel immediate emotion, they develop primitive, animalistic urges of bloodlust during a time of bloodshed. The aspects of war gravely impacts a person, and as such can be seen in O’Flaherty’s character “the sniper,” as well as seen in O’Brien’s character “Private Paul Berlin.” The sniper is a victim to the war’s cold, emotionless embrace. A Republican soldier, he is, divided from his brothers in arms on the other side, the ones called the “Free Staters.” Nonetheless, under the circumstances, they all are pawns to Dublin’s chess table of a civil war, being played at the mercy of the war’s

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

Generals die in Bed by Charles Yale Harrison is a novel where a young Canadian soldier tells of his first hand account of the harsh and inhumane conditions in the trenches on the Western Front during World War 1. Through his observations and experiences the Narrator shows the effects of war on ordinary people and how they manage in extraordinarily horrific situations. Even though the brutal nature of the war is often reflected in the violent way that combatants act towards one another there are also moments when compassion and mercy is shown. The novel demonstrates that in extreme situations both the dark and the good side of human

In this passage O’brien demonstrates his own character traits. As a writer, he has a strong ability to understand what others are feeling and sympathize. When he kills the young soldier, he creates a story around him, imaging the soldier as having similar struggles to his own. He deeply regrets the soldier's death because he feels that neither of them really wanted to be fighting in this war and relates his own life story to the fictional one he creates for the soldier.

Next, the bad blood between the families of the bailiff and the peasant adds to the heinous feeling of the situation. During the beating, the Bailiff states, “‘That reminds me of how much I hate you. Of how much my father hated your father’” (Walker). The

Bonaparte is the narrator and the protagonist in the story. It is told from his perspective as a first person. Therefore we hear his thoughts and sees what he experiences from his angle of view. It somewhat makes the reader sympathize with the protagonist, but normally in a situation like this, you would probably sympathize with the two English men.

The relationship between the Irish and the British can be compared to the cartoon “Tom and Jerry. “ For instance, the British are these powerful domineering people Vs. Ireland, which consists of small farmers but prideful. This takes place during the Irish war of independence, a blood bath between Irish freedom fighters against the almighty British military.

"Guests of the Nation" is a short story written by Frank O'Connor, first published in 1931, portraying the execution of two Englishmen held captive by the Irish Republican Army during the War for Independence. The story is split into four sections, each section taking a different tone. The first reveals a real sense of camaraderie between the English prisoners, with the two Englishmen being killed, and the final lines of the story describe the nauseating effect this betrayal has on the Irishmen. The very last sentence, often praised by critics, is reminiscent of Gogol's "and from that day forward, everything appeared to me as if in a different light."

Frank O’Connor’s “Guests of the Nation” is an ironic and tragic short story of two Englishmen who are held captive as collateral during the Irish War of Independence. Belcher and Hawkins are friendly hostages - they frequently argue, play cards, and discuss politics and religion with their Irish captors, Bonaparte and Noble. They behave as if they are unaware of the armed conflict that surrounds them. The shooting of Belcher is climactic in that O'Connor forces the reader to consider the main theme: in war, everybody has to do his or her duty, so Bonaparte and Noble are unable to prioritize their friendship. Frank O'Connor condemns the concept of nationalism expressing a camaraderie among the characters preceding the Englishmen’s deaths to help them to cope with an adverse situation that is foreign to all of them. CHANGE THESIS! But how...

The trials and adventures of heroes are seldom beautiful. Often, these escapades include deceit, blood, death, madness, and destruction. All of which, are ugly. One may argue, that the triumph and glory at the end of these adventures represent a beauty that negates the prior ugliness. But, at what cost? Perhaps, the “victory” is pyrrhic, and the “beauty” is ephemeral. Now, apply this structure to war. Victory is sweet, but those burials are sorrowful. Between 3,250,000 and 6,500,000 million people died during the Napoleonic Wars. Anna Barbauld, probably wishes that number was curbed. Even more, she tried. Barbauld’s poem, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, imagines a future England and London in ruins, visited by travelers from across the Atlantic eager to see the remains of a once-thriving and dominant culture. Through her poem, Barbauld warns that the pursuit of beauty inflicts violence upon the very beauty that is sought after.