Slur Monologue

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

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

"You just don 't know," she said. "You hide in this little fortress, behind wire and sandbags, and you don 't know what it 's all about. Sometimes I want to eat this place. Vietnam. I want to swallow the whole country—the dirt, the death—I just want to eat it and have it there inside me. That 's how I feel. It 's like . . . this appetite. I get scared sometimes—lots of times—but it 's not bad. You know? I feel close to myself. When I 'm out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it 's like I 'm full of electricity and I 'm glowing in the dark—I 'm on fire almost—I 'm burning away into nothing—but it doesn 't matter because I know exactly who I am. You can 't feel like that anywhere else."” (O’ Brien 80-81). Tim O’ Brien shows how being in contact with the war can change a person so pure and innocent to a person who isn’t in connection with themselves and is forever trapped inside their own mind. Also it shows how the people who can’t handle the rough environment of war can have a terrible reaction and loose themselves. He also shows how the war changes you mentally making it hard for you to tell if the is the real you or just a persona you took when you couldn’t handle it anymore and needed to mask your broken soul.

Imagine you’re lying on the muddy, damp Earth and all around you can hear the screams of people you know dying. Shells explode, bullets race through the air, and poisonous gas seeps around you, all with the intent to harm you in some way. Yet, you willingly put yourself in that position day after day, year after year. The question surrounding this situation is, why? Who would be masochistic enough to choose to put their lives in danger and live in the most perilous environment possible? Two very different books give us insight into the thoughts of the soldiers who continuously put themselves in these environments. Your Death Would Be Mine by Martha Hanna and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque lets us into the minds of Paul Pireaud and Paul Baumer as they try to survive life as a soldier in the Great War. I argue that Pireaud and Baumer had very different reasons for continuing to fight despite having suffered beyond belief. In this paper I will analyze how the varying degrees of patriotism, brotherhood, family life at home, and age affected how these two men endured the treacherous life on the front of World War I.

War can destroy a man both in body and mind for the rest of his life. In “The Sniper,” Liam O’Flaherty suggests the horror of war not only by presenting its physical dangers, but also by showing its psychological effects. We are left to wonder which has the longer lasting effect—the visible physical scars or the ones on the inside?

In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of

Bodies were falling with every step, cries for help grew unbearably loud, now everyone knew what war is like. War is a place for men, and everyone has different reactions to its brutality. Between Charlie from Soldier's Heart and Henry from Red Badge of Courage there are many differences. People can be very contrasting between each other while going through times of desperateness, fear, and stress, and that’s the exact case with Henry and Charlie. In opposition to that, the soldiers from these stories do in fact have comparability. Enticing, that is what it is to see the differences in what is thought to be very similar stories, but surprisingly they do have their differences.

Drinking impairs a person’s judgement beyond repair. However, being heavily intoxicated daily allows a person to become very neglectful to the people around them. Alcoholics don’t just destroy themselves; they destroy everyone and everything around them. “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke shows just how bad alcohol damages a family. In “My Papa’s Waltz” negligence can be seen coming from the drunk father and the mother. The father in the poem neglects his son in the sense that his son has no idea what is really happening.

War is dreary. when a soldier goes off to war it changes him to never be the same person ever again. Paul Baumer captures this aspect of war in multiple excerpts in his novel all quiet on the western front. In one of the passages describing the storm thundering on the german front Baumer captures the depression and hopelessness of the soldier's condition through his use of diction describing the depression and loss of identity of the soldiers experience on the front.

Against the bitter front lines, men hold onto their rifles like it is the only thing left in their life. Their boots slosh and stick against the broken down earth: mud. Eyes are drained of life, their sockets deepening and sinking into their face as if they were the living dead. Some men get the blessed time of sleep, a holy pull into the deep and sugar coated dreams. Life amongst the trenches is no easy task.

It is a known fact that soldiers endure experiences that can only be felt by seeing through one’s own eyes. The Vietnam War was especially one of the wars that had a major impact on soldiers, as their lives became significantly more difficult and dangerous. The soldiers were young and thrown into war, not knowing who they were fighting. Tim O’Brien was one of the soldiers that was placed into Vietnam’s danger. O’Brien stated that he still carries “the memories or the ghosts of a place called Vietnam, the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers. More importantly [he carries] the weight of responsibility and a sense of abiding guilt. [He carries] joyful memories, too, friends [he] made and the conversations at foxholes

We picked up guns and bullets from the men that we killed. They were spread out and unprepared. We bolted down the street; most didn’t even see us coming. At one point our group of thirty soldiers encountered a few that had taken cover in a nearby neighborhood—not far from where I lived. We exchanged shots for a while before suddenly hearing the sound of rifles as their shots died out. We looked up to see from the windows above, people with hunting rifles, helping our cause. I looked up the street to see my mother and father, with a few windows unbarred, each had a rifle in their hands as well.

To conclude, it is important for readers to keep in mind that Brian Turner’s poetry, Phil Klay’s short story “Redeployment,” and the film Restrepo provide the most emotional portrayal of war, predominantly the traumatic experience, and the aftershock of war that an American soldier is forced to endure. Turner’s use of anaphora, descriptive language, and military jargon in his poetry enables the readers to expand his or her knowledge regarding war and its true meaning—war is evil. Klay’s use of descriptive language in “Redeployment,” allows the readers to realize that returning home from war is not an easy task for a soldier. Not to mention, that in the film Restrepo viewers get the opportunity to visualize see the true meaning of war; it is

My entrance into this world was eclipsed by the conclusion of America’s seemingly most gruesome war. The image of gore, limply lying upon field after field overshadowed the arrival of my newfangled existence. Brothers, fathers, sons—all drained of vitality, gray with decomposition, saturated mind after mind all for the sake of Confederate preservation. Perhaps, it was the mere thought of another demise to endless carnage that reduced my lively impact—the devastating sting of loss still coursing throughout the veins surrounding me.

left in the field to die, this soldier asks why, the politicians orchestrate this bloody-line, sitting back sipping on their wine, this soldier sees the craters all around, life is lost with no bounds, the being so near, the guns fire from the rear, body parts all scattered about, they shout, shaded by the fallen tree, bloody, it's rain.