Nadine Gordimer's A Soldier’s Embrace Essay

Being a soldier is one of the most effective and honorable carriers a country could have. Citizens have always appreciated soldiers due to their importance in saving and protecting them. However, soldiers’ path consists of many struggles that might threaten their life. Wrong move can cause solders to lose their life and that shows how serious being a soldier is. Brian Turner in his poem “What Every Soldier Should Know” talked about soldiers’ life and gave some instructions regarding soldiers’ security. The poem also described the environment surrounding soldiers in wars and how the battlefield was. The poet concerned about American soldiers since the writer is American. The poem also concerned about the American soldiers’ experience in an Arab country. The poem was written in 2005 while the war of Iraq was in 2003, which explains the Arabic phrases within the poem. The poem main point was to show that soldiers’ life in Iraq was dangerous and full of non-expectable surprises that could threaten soldiers’ life. The poem was powerful in conveying how American soldiers felt during the war of Iraq because of the many strategies that the poet used such as his choice of words, his usage of Arabic phrases and the way of describing citizens of Iraq.

Life during the Civil War was not a pleasant time. There was basically utter chaos

Bang! Bang! “At that instant several gunshots, which sounded like thunder striking the tin-roofed houses, took over town. The sound of guns was so terrifying it confused everyone” (Beah 23). In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah conveys his amazing journey through war and hardship as a child soldier. Sierra Leone--a country on the western coast of Africa--was embroiled in a bloody civil war in the 1990’s. Battles multiplied as bloodshed abounded and as a child, Ishmael Beah was forced to survive, find food, and face unimaginable dangers. Running from the battle front was also a routine ordeal. At age 13 Beah was captured by the military and brainwashed into using guns and drugs. As a child soldier, he perpetrated and witnessed a great deal of violence. At 15 he was rescued and taken to a rehabilitation center. With time and continual treatment, Beah was able to recover, to some extent, and reconnect with his Uncle Tommy, who adopted him. He was later chosen to speak to the United Nations in New York City about his experiences as a child soldier. When he returned to Sierra Leone, war broke out throughout the city where he lived, causing many deaths including his Uncle Tommy. Eventually Beah escaped Sierra Leone and managed to reach New York City, where he began a new life. Through the book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah conveys a central theme of having to survive, at a young age, through the hardships of war with the use of imagery.

Soldier’s Heart by Gary Paulson is a magnificent book that shows the true horrors of war. The heart felt story about a young boy named Charley at the beginning he was excited about the war, he went as far as to lie about his age to get in.

The two books “Soldier’s Heart,” and “The Red Badge of Courage,” have their differences and similarities that take the reader on a wild, emotional journey. The major differences amongst the stories highlights the characters personalities, or traits, and assists in making each book stand apart from

A prominent theme in A Long Way Gone is about the loss of innocence from the involvement in the war. A Long Way Gone is the memoir of a young boy, Ishmael Beah, wanders in Sierra Leone who struggles for survival. Hoping to survive, he ended up raiding villages from the rebels and killing everyone. One theme in A long Way Gone is that war give innocent people the lust for revenge, destroys childhood and war became part of their daily life.

Black Hearts tells the story of a few bad soldiers from 1st platoon, Bravo company of the 1-502nd Infantry Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division, that was plagued with toxic leadership and lack of control over soldiers. The book documents the events that led to the ultimate demise of the soldiers involved in the horrific incident that occurred on March 12, 2006. Four soldiers were arrested in the brutal murder of an Iraqi family, which was a result of the lack of leadership and structure these soldiers received. Black Hearts takes a deep look into what happened to this troubled platoon and what unfortunate events occurred during their deployment.

Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is a novel that is a personal view of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Vietnamese soldier. Like the American novel “The things they carried”, this novel brings about the effects of war on people, and especially how it defeats the human capacity for things such as love and hope. Bao Ninh offers this realistic picture of the Vietnam War’s impact on the individual Vietnamese soldier through use of a series of reminiscences or flashbacks, jumping backwards and forwards in time between the events most salient in memory, events which take on a different theme each time they are examined. His main protagonist Kien, who is basically Bao himself, looks back not just at his ten years at

     According to the author Tim O’Brien, people tend to readily accept the ‘facts’ presented of what happened during a war. People do not consider the existence of fallacies regarding the actual stories of what happens in wars, few consider that the ‘facts’ of an incident often change through people’s words. The film ‘Saving the Private Ryan’ by Steven Spielberg features both facts and seemingness part of the war story. Since it is so difficult to fully describe a war using human language, Spielberg ended up revising his stories to make sense out of it. Spielberg included parts that did not occur or exclude parts that did occur in order to make their stories seem more credible. According

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.

Institutionalized racism remains as one of the dominate ways in which one race stays in control over other races, in “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison its illustrated socially, also economically in African Americans but it’s displayed through the men. In other words, the history of battling to survive and overcome institutionalized racism is the same as the battle of slavery the protagonist and is family are giving the tools to survive before the patriarch of the family dies. These two issues of social and economic are just two ways in which the elite whites kept African Americans in servitude and bondage of the mind, having them to think they couldn’t achieve greatness in life except for what was allowed by the dominate race. The narration within “Battle Royal” depicts a struggle that is passed down from one generation to the next until an elder in the family leaves a plan of survival.

One black soldier vocalised the senselessness of their situation: “just carve on my tombstone,

After the Vietnam War, soldiers suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder in countless numbers. The trauma they saw, endured, and witnessed forever changed and scared their lives. Men, like Tim O'Brien the author of the novel The Things They Carried, suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder and it took them years to regain their lives after their return home. In the excerpt from his novel, O'Brien shows the reader how the men endured this mind-altering experience in the jungles of Vietnam through the details of all the items the men carry.

We Were Soldiers Once and Young is a history book written by LT. GEN. Harold G. Moore (RET.) and Joseph L. Galloway. The history book is based on the Vietnam War, which took place in 1965. The Battle of Ia Drang was said that it was the battle that changed the war in Vietnam. The book is a tribute to all the soldiers in the war and for their great braveness, love, and care for one another. It was a bloody war, but very inspiring to read about the courageous soldiers who put their lives on the line for the United States of America.

Ever since adolescence, I’ve always said “ I would never date or marry someone in the military.” Having stayed consistent, I was convinced that nothing could change my stance, but lone and behold I was wrong. Upon watching military movies or seeing military couples online I avoided the impact of becoming separated from my lover for months at a time, but it wasn’t enough to stop me from falling in love with the man of my dreams. Although us military wives are heavily criticized, i think it is important for people to know the sacrifices us women make so that our husbands can continue to keep our country safe.