The 5th Wave Character Analysis

Where innumerous catastrophic events are simultaneously occurring and altering the mental capability of its viewers eternally, war is senseless killing. The participants of war that are ‘fortunate’ enough to survive become emotionally distraught civilians. Regardless of the age of the people entering war, unless one obtains the mental capacity to witness numerous deaths and stay unaffected, he or she is not equipped to enter war. Kurt Vonnegut portrays the horrors of war in Slaughterhouse Five, through the utilization of satire, symbolism, and imagery.

Authors in many instances use the main elements in the story such as setting and narrative to prove a point in the story. For example, writers often use characters, their actions, and their interaction with other characters to support or prove a theme. In the short story “Our Thirteenth Summer”, Barry Callaghan effectively uses characters to develop the theme that childhood is fragile and easily influenced. One of the ways that Callaghan makes effective use of characters to develop the theme is by describing the tension between Bobbie and his parents. This usage of characters supports the theme because Bobbie’s childhood is no longer free to do what he wishes, but has to bow down to his parents’

Almost every person knows someone who has served in a war, whether it may be a sibling, a parent, or a friend. After an individual comes back from their service in a war, he or she usually has changed as a person, either positively, or most of the time negatively. In All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr shows through characters seeing death, characters that are not in combat, and characters that are soldiers in war, that war impacts individuals negatively, despite their backgrounds and differences.

One of the majors put it like this, “After the first tour, I’d have the godamnedest nightmares. You, the works, Bloody stuff, bad fights, guys dying, me dying…I thought they were the worst,” he said. “But I sort of miss them now.” (341). The soldier grieves his old dreams because they made him feel normal. This situation is ironic. Kids or adults that have nightmares want them to stop happening, while this soldier wished he could have them. The major also had a dream where he was being tested in Quantico with an aptitude test: “They’re handing out questionnaires for an aptitude test. I take one and look at it, and the first question says, “How many kinds of animals can you kill with your hands?” (341). Being asked about killing animals with your hands isn’t a normal thing, but to the soldiers it was. Sometimes soldiers found familiar activities to attempt to feel normal in a broken circumstance. A grounds crew of soldiers was dropped off in a rice paddy by the jungle. Upon their arrival, shots were fired at them from the tree line. They crouched behind a wall to wait for gunships to rescue them. All of a sudden Herr heard a Jimi Hendrix song : “when I suddenly heard a an electric guitar shooting right in my ear and a mean, rapturous black voice singing, coaxing, ‘Now c’mon baby, stop actin’ so crazy’ and when I got it all together I turned to see a grinning black corporal

The first theme, “war cannot change who a person really is at their core,” recurs during several incidences which reinstates the significance. For example, Ben tries to make Ringer smile despite being in the midst of the end of the world. When Cassie and Sammy reunite, he goes back to his five-year-old self despite his being in boot camp for months prior, and lastly, Cassie and Evan flirt

Jimmy knows too well the agonies of abandonment. First, when his mother, Cecilia, ran away with Richard to pursue a better lifestyle. Then, due to his father’s, Damacio Baca, alcoholisms and violent behavior; he also had to leave Jimmy behind. In spite of the drawbacks from abandonment to being a maximum security prisoner in Arizona State Prison, Jimmy preserver’s the darkness of prison by overcoming his illiteracy. However Cecilia and Damacio is not as fortunate as their child; Cecilia is shot by Richard after confronting him for a divorce and Damacio chokes to death after he is released from the detox center(Baca 263). Therefore the most significant event in this section of the memoir, A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca is the death of Jimmy’s parents.

This quote in the first chapter of the book sets the overall tone. The author Tim O’Brien uses his language through out the book in an extremely straightforward manner. He does not sugar coat the way going to war and being in a war is. He does not use stories of heroes,

The impact of childhood events determines one’s character in the course of one’s life. This is particularly true in the life of the principal characters of Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business, where one incident, the throwing of a snowball, decides the future of Boy, Dunstan, and Paul. Whether or not a person can move beyond his past has a profound effect on individuals as they age. In the novel, psychological well-being during childhood development is one of the central themes that shapes the characters. Boy Staunton, who is born into the richest family in the town of Deptford, grows from an irresponsible and spoiled boy to an ambitious and arrogant tycoon. His character epitomizes the way many rich people behave when they are unwilling to accept

If Tim O’Brien does not change something in his characters he will not make a good point on war’s effect on peoples’ life. For example, also if Mary Anne Bell and if Timmy does not change the reader will not learn something from that chapter because that in the novel Tim O’Brien was trying to send the reader message about how war and a loved person death can change and effect people in a horrible way. If a person fights in war he or she usually change in a negative way and in the novel Tim O’Brien mostly focuses on the negative change caused from war but he also talks about positive changes like when he makes friends. The theme of change always takes a huge role in many novels, T.V shows and

The novel, Tomorrow When the War Began, by John Marsden, tells the story of a brave group of unlikely heroes who journey out to camp in ‘Hell’. Throughout this novel, the characters are able to change the way they act, feel and treat others. This opens up new, stronger relationships in the group, and creates an unbreakable bond between certain characters.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War does a fantastic job of covering many different topics and themes in a favorably concise book. This is easily achieved through the style in which the book is written. By telling the story from multiple perspectives, Brooks is able to explain what’s happening all over the world simultaneously and truly convey the fact that it is a ‘world’ war, as well as cover various topics such as gender, in which men are the dominant sex for battle, religion, which mimics the state of the war, and a theme of perseverance that can be applied to numerous aspects of daily life including my time at West Virginia University.

In the book “The Juvie Three” by Gordan Korman there are two characters named Gecko and Mr. Healy. They both overcame major obstacles throughout the book. A character named Gecko in the book goes to a halfway home ran by Mr. Healy. Mr. Healy got put into the hospital after getting knocked off the balcony, and he got hurt badly and lost his memory for a while. Both Gecko and Mr.Healy came over big obstacles in the book by working hard, not giving up and not going the easy way.

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change” (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein). War can be a drastic change for the life of a person as war can ultimately morph them into a slave of the battlefield. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’ Brien describes the experiences of people in the Vietnam War and how they have become changed individuals from their past lives before combat. War pummels you with things that transcend your typical escapades and the more you try to understand them, the more you get sucked into the void of combat. The increased time the characters are in the battlefield, the more they have to think about it, thus shaping who they are. Only time can determine how much war can affect you.

Fifth Business is the first book of Robertson Davies’ Deptford Trilogy. The novel is a memoir of Dunstable Ramsay, the protagonist, in the form of a letter to the school’s headmaster. Many characters play a huge significant role in Dunstable’s life as he develops, however, many of those people are women. Leading examples of this are Fiona Ramsay, his mother; Mary Dempster, the woman who changed his life; Diana Marfleet, his nurse and meaningful love; and Liselotte Vitzliputzli, his source of therapy and inspiration.

In this essay, I will discuss how Tim O’Brien’s works “The Things They Carried” and “If I Die in a Combat Zone” reveal the individual human stories that are lost in war. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien reveals the war stories of Alpha Company and shows how human each soldier is. In “If I Die in a Combat Zone” O’Brien tells his story with clarity, little of the dreamlike quality of “Things They Carried” is in this earlier work, which uses more blunt language that doesn’t hold back. In “If I Die” O’Brien reveals his own personal journey through war and what he experienced. O’Brien’s works prove a point that men, humans fight wars, not ideas. Phil Klay’s novel “Redeployment” is another novel that attempts to humanize soldiers in war. “Redeployment” is an anthology series, each chapter attempts to let us in the head of a new character – set in Afghanistan or in the United States – that is struggling with the current troubles of war. With the help of Phil Klay’s novel I will show how O’Brien’s works illustrate and highlight each story that make a war.