After living in the camps for a while, the mother “... couldn’t bear it anymore. The wind. The dust. The endless waiting. The couple next door constantly fighting. She hung a white sheet from a rope and called it a curtain and behind the white curtain she lay down on her cot and she closed her eyes and she slept” (Otsuka 94). Every day the same thing happened over and over again, and as a result, the mother started to show symptoms of depression including losing her appetite, having no motivation and a having a lost in interest. All days she continued to sleep in order for her to escape her depression and to dream of a better place. The mother lost emotional strength as disconnects from her children and the world around her. The overall weather and the cramped living conditions caused the mother to show symptoms of
When Rosa returned to America and found out her husband’s plan, she declared her refusal going against Santino. This shows a major change in Rosa because he was someone she was most afraid of, and allowed him to control her till she took this stand. Though taking his threats seriously she takes the kids and moves to Chicago. This also reveals the changes in Rosa because she is willing to be on her own in a brand new place. While in Chicago she divorces Santino and eventually remarries Gionin. Though Gionin is a good man he leaves Rosa briefly fearing religious persecution. When recounting this she didn’t panic and managed on her own without him. Rosa also learns to be more wary of strangers. When she first arrived in America a man conned her out of her money because she was more naive then. A man approaches her asking for the ten dollars for her husband to buy the horse he had previously mentioned to Rosa but instead of handing over the money she pretends to not have it. Later when she brings it up with Giornin they found out it was a scam and that Rosa acted smart in suspecting something. From the time Rosa came to the United States till her life in Chicago, she has struggled, but instead of breaking down she continued working harder.
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
We have all seen or read about the political and social upheavals caused by war. Some may have even experienced it first-hand. Throughout history war has had negative psychological implications on those effected. However, there is no greater negative impact of war than the psychological and emotional turmoil that it causes individual soldiers.
The war does not only leaves physical lifetime scars on a soldier but also mental scars which could remain with him for lifetime. We can say that the person who suffers the most is the soldier because he is the one who goes through continuous pain. After seeing so much destruction the soldiers go insane, they go through mental illness and psychological trauma, they try to attempt suicide, they get flashbacks of those disastrous events that stops them to live a normal life after. “We’re all strange, Robert thought. Everyone is strange in a war I guess. Ordinary is a myth" (Findley 101). As the wars are so anxious soldiers fight for days, weeks and months without sleeping, eating, bathing; they lack basic nessecties of life. As Robert states, "All he [Robert] wanted was a dream. Escape. But nobody dreams on a battlefield. There isn't any sleep that long. Dreams and distances are the same" ( Findley 102) a soldier cannot fall asleep because of the terror and stressful conditions but if he does he could get killed. they do not live a regular routine life which
When a parent dies, any child will cling to the other parent for emotional support and comfort for dealing with such a loss. In Lily’s case, she wanted her fathers support more than anything but he was cold, abusive, and stuck in the past, that he wasn’t able to give her anything except for take his anger out on her, when she disobeyed him. Although if someone does not get that support from the other parent, and if someone else is there that is understanding and kind, its amazing to see how much you can start to really rely on them and grow a close relationship. When Lily deals with the loss of her mother and the poor treatment of her father, she doesn’t know what to do with herself, she has a load of all different kind of emotions, and it really harms her well-being. Lily deals with guilt because she has visuals that she was the one that killed her mother, and on top of that she has her father telling her that her mother left her and she just abandoned her, making Lily feel unimportant and then at the same time guilt. Rosaleen is the closest role model that Lily has for a mother, Rosaleen cares and sticks up for Lily but Lily doesn’t really have the mother-daughter connection with her. Although Rosaleen provides comfort for Lily, she helps her with her father and in return Lily defends Rosaleen as well as save her life from the hospital after she got beaten.
Trauma is not uncommon for victims of war, especially those who have been wounded by opposing forces. Mariatu has shared many traumatic events through her memoir, which help the reader further realize how grueling war can be. The following log shows 12 of these events, as well as the internal and
Since the beginning of mankind, war and the horrors that come with it have had devastating effects on both the minds and the bodies of human beings. Mentally, war drains soldiers of their ability to think properly. During a battle, soldiers witness bloody battles which frequently result in demise. Day after day of witnessing deceased fall to the ground, a soldier can do nothing but think about blood, gore, and his or her fallen comrades. Additionally, a war can be physically taxing on whomever takes part in it. Dodging or being hit by fists, swords, or bullets will inevitably cause pain and may disable somebody for the rest of their life. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque demonstrates through characterization, imagery,
“Poor food – hard lodging – cold weather – fatigue – nasty cloaths- nasty cookery – vomit half my time – smoked out my senses – the Devil isn’t – I can’t Endure it – why are we sent here to starve and freeze” In Document C, they show the life of a Soldier. Now, do you see yet why I would leave? We travel too much and not with the right supplies besides guns, but still, I walk around half of the time with no shoes and freeze my toes off, do you know how much frostbite I got, you wouldn’t imagine. We get sick with many things like small pocks putrid fever, pneumonia, and dysentery. Although you may think that, this wasn’t that big a deal most people do and so do I. I love my family too much to go through this
War, the principle cause of pain and loss, not only affects an individual, but also the land on which it is fought. Soldiers, both men and women who take part in this type of action undergo changes that completely transform them into a distinct person to the one they were before the war. This sort of combat also affects the normal civilians and their ways of living in such a zone since they must find ways to survive, which was the case of the people who lived in the Vinh Moc Tunnels along the demilitarized zone of Vietnam.
The novel dramatizes these aspects of World War I and portrays the mind-numbing terror and savagery of war with a relentless focus on the physical and psychological damage that it occasions. At the end of the novel, almost every major character is dead, epitomizing the war’s devastating effect on the generation of young men who were forced to fight it. These men in the novel are subject to physical danger, as they could literally be blown to pieces at any moment. This intense, physical threat also serves as an unceasing attack on the nerves, forcing soldiers to cope with instinctive
The ending of the story is packed with imagery and the reoccurring shawl symbolism as Rosa goes to get the shawl in hopes of saving Magda. While getting the shawl Rosa thinks of life on the other side of the fence where there laid “green meadows speckled with dandelions and deep-colored violets,” showing simple beauties of life they were deprived of in the camp. However while getting the shawl Magda gets taken by a guard, as Rosa sees from a distance she waves the shawl for Magda to see in giving her hope to live but as the shawl and her become more distant she gets killed by hitting
Magda hadn’t had the luxury of seeing other camp detainees laugh during her short life, but the shawl, with its ability to sooth, allows Magda to experience ‘happiness’ even if it is just for a short moment. Considering her environmental circumstances, the shawl permits Magda to avoid knowing the pain and suffering that surrounds her. It is only when the comfort of the shawl is stolen by Stella that Magda dies, Magda is seen by a soldier as she is “grieving for the loss of her shawl” (paragraph 14).
Referring to the Battle of Stalingrad, one soldier wrote, “But what is death in reality here? Here they croak, starve to death, freeze to death-it's nothing but a biological fact like eating and drinking. They drop like flies; nobody cares and nobody buries them,” (Schneider 344) making sense of the severe conditions and its effect on German soldiers in Stalingrad.
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.