Political And Social Upheavals Caused By War

In this world, there is no individual more tragic than the one who gazes into their future and is only able to see a perpetual cycle of despair and agony. War, in particular, has this incomprehensibly dark power—the ability to drive even the most cheerful among us into the oppressive void of depression. Indeed, the total and complete loss of hope is among the most destructive consequences of war on the human psyche. An expression of this phenomenon is visible in Paul Baumer’s statement regarding the true psychological state of soldiers. When reflecting upon the experience of being in the military, Baumer says “We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out...Our only comfort is the steady breathing of our comrades asleep, and thus we

People both today and back then have been traumatized by war’s brutal combat, fallen victim to cruel soldiers, and had war cause sorrow and grief to them. Through characters seeing death, characters that are soldiers, and characters that are not in combat, Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See demonstrates that war affects individuals negatively, even if they are extremely

To narrow down the scope of these psychological effects, I have chosen to focus on the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was, in my opinion, the first war that really allowed Americans to become aware of the psychological effects of war. While for many of us the Vietnam War has long been forgotten, our soldiers risked their lives in the jungles of South East Asia for a cause that made no sense politically, militarily and economically. They continue to relive the horrors of this war through flashbacks, nightmares and other symptoms.

The United States battle tactics did not fare well against an unseen enemy, who rarely presented himself in a full-scale battle, but rather picked at units one by one. A conversation between a colonel in the U.S. army and a colonel in the Vietnamese communist army summed up the guerilla warfare tactics used: "You know you never defeated us on the battlefield," said the American Colonel. The North Vietnamese Colonel pondered this remark for a moment. "That may be so," he replied, " but that is also irrelevant." The revolutionaries in Vietnam used hit and run attacks. They would assault small groups of soldiers, by sneaking up on them. This worked well, because it allowed the Viet Minh to avoid bigger battles, which they were not trained for. They knew that the U.S. soldiers were unfamiliar with the battlegrounds and jungles, so they used this weakness to their advantage, by being able to move more quickly and stealthily than the U.S. troops. They also knew how to

In the mental setting, “search[ing] the villages, . . . kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels, [and] sometimes setting fires” (O’Brien, 399) along with the constant reminder that it was kill or be killed wore down and weighed heavily upon the American soldiers. “They are asked to violate social norms, [to carry] out orders to fire upon the enemy [,] (MacLean, 564)” and commit other atrocities that corrupt their moral code. However, more daunting than the mental strife is the physical challenges the soldiers must overcome. O’Brien describes how on a daily basis the men could catch disease like “malaria and dysentery . . . [and] lice and ringworm (399)” and how the monsoons and the jungle threaten them. The physical setting is perhaps a secondary antagonist, respectively following the enemy soldiers and the war. The physical setting challenges the American soldiers and attacks in ways that differs from the enemy soldiers; the monotonous, never-ending jungle and terrain drains their energy, the monsoons threaten to drown them, and the threat of disease is almost as terrifying as a gunshot wound. The physical and mental challenges in Vietnam create insurmountable burdens for the soldiers to try to cope

Throughout human history, we have watched many men and women storm into combat to sweat, bleed, and die for a cause that they believe in. War is no secret to mankind, we have seen it hundreds of times, and we are aware of the mental and physical damage it has the capability of causing. We’ve learned of the gruesome damage caused by the first world war, and the numerous amount of lives it claimed. We’ve read the vivid stories authors wrote, using literature as a means to communicate the horrors experienced in war. Even in present day, we’ve seen, or known veterans who have returned from war with mental damage due to the terrible things they witnessed or partook in. Whether or not it is the smartest or most responsible idea, the human race uses

Even though soldiers are able to distract themselves from the horrors that they witness on the front, war psychologically damages them and creates the “lost generation”. The young men find it increasingly difficult to think and act with the mindset of a civilian. In war, the men only experience despair, death, and fear, so their mind is enveloped by negative thoughts that

War causes death, poverty, diseases, destruction, and many more devastating and unavoidable consequences. The government drafted men into military service, giving them no choice but to separate them from their daily lives, friends, and families. Soldiers fight in wars while putting their lives on the line and are only rewarded with physical or psychological injuries. Countries wage war against one another in order to resolve disputes and disagreements between them. Individuals, such as nurses, soldiers, and civilians undergo traumatic events when they are caught in the middle of a war. Although some may argue that war does not impact the self the most, based on the informational text, “War Escalates” by Paul Boye, the short story, “Where

​War takes a toll on those who fight, or are affected by it, this is undeniable. Over the course of the 20th Century, within the U.S. Military and Psychiatric Community the way that this effect is identified and treated has changed many times based on the conflict and the mindset of the American public. The purpose of this report is to discuss the history of the mental effect of the trauma created by US involvement in wars within the 20th Century and the steps that were taken in those eras to predict, prepare and treat for those effects.

The effects of war are very vast and it is a wide variety of occurrences to cover. War can break a man down physically or mentally whenever it pleases to do so. “In war there are no unwounded soldiers” Jose Narosky. In the book All Quiet on the Western Front war affects men on the frontlines in many ways, and leaves scars on their lives forever. Also, in the book Night, Jews are affected by war in concentration camps in World War two and they endure a different kind of war. These texts both deal with the effects of war and what it can do to a population. Both of them have Comradeship with the people in both books having to work together to stay alive.

Timothy Findley’s The Wars portrays the effects of war on soldiers in battle, as well as the members of family and friends that suffer from loss and insanity. As each character over the progression of the story is exposed to change, the character’s ability to adapt has a significant correlation with their survival, those that can quickly adapt to survive can manage to get by. Soldiers must be able to suppress the extreme stress on the battlefield. Those that cannot overcome these challenges do not survive in war. Murder is quickly pushed out of a soldiers mind, killing others in effort to protect their own life or the life of others around them. Findley demonstrates how war can negatively alter a person’s behaviour. This is seen through

The soldiers face loneliness, isolation, the heavy burden of fear, and the weight of their reputations. The soldiers carry such a heavy weight from the past, in the present, and for the future. Even after the war, the psychological burdens the men carried during the war continues to define them. Those who survive the war carry guilt, grief, and confusion.

The Vietnam War was the founder of mental care for war veterans. The Vietnam War inspired a alteration in prospects of the nature of critical war psychoneurosis and long-term psychiatric disabilities. Psychiatrists are studying the diseases and behaviors of the brain and how war participants have been affected. Many psychiatrists thought that the diseases caused by the war were short term and could recover quickly buy, as more research debuted about PTSD they changed their understanding. PTSD sufferers after the war had none or little help from the United States with 15 percent of war veterans having some form of the disease.

War makes all its soldiers its victims. It strips them of their innocence; all had dreams for their future. Their future will become a lost life or a life full of memories that will continue to haunt them. The memories of killing, friends being killed, almosts, etc. War contains many horrors like these.

Before starting the research about the effect and the consequences of PTSD from war to an individual, I want to discuss a brief historical overview about the war. From the definition of Dictionary, a war is a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation. So, why and what are the causes of war happen? If we view ourselves from the perspective of the leader, the main causes of the war is they will anticipated that they will gain more in terms of power, glory and territory. The war might happen if the leader think that the gain of the war can outweigh the costs of loss. On the other hand, the war also can happen if there is a conflict of religion or take revenge for someone died. To understand better, we go back into the causes of the war from World War 1 and 2. In late June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia. It escalation of threats and mobilization orders causes