The Dead of the Night - John Marsden

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

The moral message apparent in this coming-of-age novel questions each of the teenage boys, who in various ways show us what it's like to grow up in rural Australia if you are smart or poor or of a different race. This moral message makes me question the past of the Australia I have came to

“Tomorrow When The War Began” by John Marsden, is a novel of survival, friendship, love and war. He uses many language techniques (e.g. simile, metaphor, personification, oxymoron, irony, symbol, allusion etc.) to get across to the reader the importance of each of the themes discussed. He also uses these techniques to set the mood in each chapter and to help emphasise each major point in the novel. “We’ve learnt a lot and had to figure out what’s important- what matters, what really matters.”- Ellie

The characters in the novel Tomorrow When the War Began (TWTWB) (1993) begin as very human, very believable and, very ordinary. Then their lives are changed in an instant and they are forced to respond, to change, to grow and to adapt.. The characterisation is so well done that Ellie, Robyn, Fi, Homer, Chris, Corrie, Kevin and Lee become real to the reader, and you find yourself relating to them as you would actual people. Author John Marsden creates characters based on Australia’s unique multicultural society in TWTWB. The novel is based on an Australian town where John Marsden uses stereotypes as the main characters. They start out as fairly stereotypical examples of teenagers, but they undergo a character metamorphosis as the story progresses. Characters such as Homer, first introduced as a very stereotypical law-breaking teenager often seen in todays society, undergoes a transformation into a strong leader as the story develops.

The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.

It is a well known fact that experiencing war changes people; there is an innocence that is forever lost. In Tim O’Brian’s, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, Mary Anne Bell is an unusual example of the innocence that is lost in war because unlike the rest of the soldiers, she is a woman. Mary Anne’s transformation from innocent “sweetheart” to fierce warrior left readers with mixed emotions because although Mary Anne felt at peace with her transformation, she was also disconnected from reality.

In the novel “Tomorrow When the War Began” written by John Marsden, one important idea that was developed throughout the written text was how life events change people. People develop the most during their teenage years which is when they are affected the most during their life.Major life events change people and teenagers need to understand this. In this novel, seven teenagers go camping and when they emerge from the bush there are fires everywhere, the power is out and the animals are dead. The small town of Wirrawee has been invaded by the army. The idea of how life events can change people is shown through the technique of characters. With the events of war, Ellie showed how she grew up and lost her innocence because of the choices she

The reader has an intimate perspective on the events in the novel because of the point of view. Ellie has lots of different aspects of her personality. She is a great thinker and can react to a situation quite quickly. “At last I was starting to think. But my brain was operating like my lungs, in great gasping bursts.” Ellie provides us with a better understanding of events, relationships, feelings and thoughts. TWTWB has appealed to so many Australian teenagers because we can relate to Ellie through the point of view. We have a better understanding of situations and we feel like we are the character, we can see ourselves in the story.

In the novel, Tomorrow When the War Began, there is an invasion on a small rural town in Australia. A group of young teens are out camping and manage to avoid capture. The discovery that their friends and families have been captured ignites them on a crusade to do what they can to liberate their town.

was not the truth. This book showed the harsh reality of war that most people

World War II is an important key point in history that addresses to young adolescents. The novel, T4 is based on a true story, in which the author, Ann Clare LeZotte is portraying a novel that is based on the theme of survival. It appears to be that the author’s argument in writing this novel is to simply maintain awareness of the past. Generally speaking, a story about survival is a difficult genre for young readers, “The majority of war stories for children are about World War II and the Holocaust.” (Huck 482) The reason war stories are mainly about World War II and the Holocaust is because it was the most recent, largest, and horrifying war during the twentieth century in Europe. Our textbook also states that these historical novels help children experience the past. Meaning, that it is important for a child to learn about the past including all the wars, conflicts, sufferings, and great happiness that had occurred so they can apply that to the present and to the future.

The story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is an enormously detailed fictional account of a wartime scenario in which jimmy Cross (the story’s main character) grows as a person, and the emotional and physical baggage of wartime are brought to light. The most obvious and prominent feature of O’Brien’s writing is a repetition of detail. O’brien also passively analyzes the effects of wartime on the underdeveloped psyche by giving the reader close up insight into common tribulations of war, but not in a necessarily expositorial sense.. He takes us into the minds of mere kids as they cope with the unbelievable and under-talked-about effects or rationalizing

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.

Live your life to its fullest, if I had to mention one thing I learned from Mary Oliver 's beautiful poem, "When Death Comes", that would be it. Specifically not letting time pass you by, or letting things like anxiety or anger control your life. The comparisons to death also help with understanding the magnitude of our mortality, and the importance of not taking each and every day for granted. With many fitting and unique metaphors I found it easy to be engaged with the poem. This leads also to a lot of relevant and surprising imagery, employing a more detailed vantage point for the reader. In "When Death Comes", Mary Oliver uses persona, metaphor, and imagery to speak not only of death, but more specifically living life to its fullest before death.

As long as there has been war, those involved have managed to get their story out. This can be a method of coping with choices made or a way to deal with atrocities that have been witnessed. It can also be a means of telling the story of war for those that may have a keen interest in it. Regardless of the reason, a few themes have been a reoccurrence throughout. In ‘A Long Way Gone,’ ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ and ‘Novel without a Name,’ three narrators take the readers through their memories of war and destruction ending in survival and revelation. The common revelation of these stories is one of regret. Each of these books begins with the main character as an innocent, patriotic soldier or civilian and ends in either the loss of innocence and regret of choices only to be compensated with as a dire warning to those that may read it. These books are in fact antiwar stories meant not to detest patriotism or pride for one’s country or way of life, but to detest the conditions that lead to one being so simpleminded to kill another for it. The firebombing of Dresden, the mass execution of innocent civilians in Sierra Leone and a generation of people lost to the gruesome and outlandish way of life of communism and Marxism should be enough to convince anyone. These stories serve as another perspective for the not-so-easily convinced.