Essay on The Effects of War on the Characters of The English Patient

Gen.   John J. Pershing   , a veteran of the Spanish-American War, commanded the AEF. The U.S. was far from prepared to send an army to the European front

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 results of one’s involvement in society’s conflicts can be devastating. The short story “Gregory” by Panos Ioannides creates a setting where the characters are involved in the 1925 revolutionary conflict between Britain and Cyprus. Consequently, the plot focuses around an executioner who has the order to kill a British captive named Gregory, who became his friend. To make matters worse, fellow soldiers inform the executioner that he must to kill Gregory or else the Headquarters will execute him for failure to obey orders. Therefore, he struggles with the decision to either please his society or stay true to his friendship with Gregory. The author emphasizes this difficulty with use of mood, stream of consciousness, foreshadowing and visual imagery. Thus, Panos Ioannides short story “Gregory” develops the idea that society’s expectations and relationships can influence one’s moral decisions and create consequences.

The psychological effects, the mentality of fighting and killing another human, and the sheer decimation of human values is what makes war atrocious. War is not only fought on the battlefield though. This book also describes the feelings of a soldier fighting his own demons that war has brought on. The battle that the soldier has with himself, is almost if not more damaging than the physical battle of war. He will never forget his experience with battle, no matter how hard he tries the memories of artillery, blood, and death cannot be erased. “I prayed like you to survive, but look at me now. It is over for us who are dead, but you must struggle, and will carry the memories all your life. People back home will wonder why you can't forget.” (Sledge). This struggle still happens to soldiers today. Sledge’s words of the struggles still captures the effects of warfare that lingers today. The other effects that war has on the men is the instability that surrounds them at every hour of the day. They are either engaged in battle having bullets and artillery fired at them, or waiting for battle just so they can be deposited back in the pressure cooker of survival. “Lying in a foxhole sweating out an enemy artillery or mortar barrage or waiting to dash across open ground under machine-gun or artillery fire defied any concept of time.”

The tactics used in World War I were radically different than that of previous wars. The majority of the war was fought in the trenches, and the war itself seemed to have no end. Due to this, the psychological impact of the war was unlike anything that had been seen before. During the early days of the war, the soldiers, on both sides, seemed to lack the dedication that would have been necessary to exterminate their enemy. However, as the war progressed, the desire to avenge their fallen comrades overcame their ethics and they began to kill their enemy indiscriminately. Surviving soldiers experienced a phenomenon that was, at that time, referred to as shell shock. Today we refer to this phenomenon as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. At this time, this psychological condition was misunderstood and the doctors lacked the training necessary to effectively treat this condition.

John Dower's War without Mercy describes the ugly racial issues, on both the Western Allies and Japanese sides of the conflict in the Pacific Theater as well as all of Asia before during and after World War II and the consequences of these issues on both military and reconstruction policy in the Pacific. In the United States as well as Great Britain, Dower dose a good job of proving that, "the Japanese were more hated than the Germans before as well as after Pearl Harbor." (8) On this issue, there was no dispute among contemporary observers including the respected scholars and writers as well as the media. During World War II the Japanese are perceived as a race apart, a species apart referred to as apes, but at

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?

Along with not seeing the bigger picture soldiers lost their ordinary lives due to the war and the contrast was so different between pre and post war that it was hard to cope with life for the men fighting in the war. “For Kien, the most attractive, persistent echo of the past is the whisper of ordinary life, even though the sounds of ordinary life have been washed away by the long storms of war. It is the whispers of friends and ordinary people that are the most horrifying.”(63) The strongest emotions occur as the story unfolds and life takes over from childhood fantasies, destroying individuals and their families as a whole society is remade for instance Kien’s sweetheart before the war. Kien abandons his lover and instead spends the next years plodding through the jungle where everything dies. "no jungle grew again in this clearing. No grass, no plants" (26). He had no true friends and he learned not to fear death but rather wish it. When war ends he has a struggle to rebuild that was once loss, he can no longer see the good of things while he slowly goes insane with out love and hope and of course no sweetheart to aid him. A very sad and classical effect of a war that was worthless to its soldiers and people.

The outcome of war can distort a person completely, not just physically due to injuries, but also mentally and emotionally as the character Rat Kiley from The Things They Carried experienced. Kiley had been injured and

The front porch of the house where he grew up now became his solitude. Krebs withdrew into his own world, always reading or reminiscing about the enactments’ he was involved with in Germany. Krebs world revolved around his memories, “he had been a good soldier” (187). He struggled mentally to overcome his past life in the military and the haunting of society not welcoming him back, or so he thought. Krebs fought in his own mind the releasing of his enlistment world and that of the present world. The internal fight becomes the foil in this story: two worlds fighting each other in his

As a young man coming back from the war, Krebs expected things to be the same when he got home and they were, except one. Sure the town looked older and all the girls had matured into beautiful women, Krebs had never expected that he would be the one to change. The horrific experiences of the first World War had alienated and removed those he had cared about, including his family, who stood naïve to the realities and consequences only those who live it first hand would comprehend.

Historical events can play an important role in a person's life.  In A Separate Peace, the whole atmosphere at the Devon School changed as World War II progressed.  The boys either eagerly awaited the draft, enlisted in the area of war they wanted, or did not want to go at all.  The students at the school created new activities for enjoyment since the customary past times could not be played due to a lack of materials.  When a friend "returns" from the war, the boys at Devon got a real sense of what the war was like.  The boys learned that going to war was not all fun and games like they had anticipated.  The influence World War II had on the characters in A

omissions and partiality of the historical master narrative, the alternative Ondaatje proposes is to privilege and celebrate a plurality of private and local narratives that give voice to the forgotten of History. Caravaggio, for example, is sadly aware of his

John Dower's War Without Mercy talks about the racial conflict in War World II towards the Japanese and how it affected the war and the reconstruction of the Pacific. “The Japanese were more hated than the Germans before as well as after Pearl Harbor. On this, there was no dispute among contemporary observers. They were perceived as a race apart, even a species apart -- and an overpoweringly monolithic one at that. There was no Japanese counterpart to the 'good German' in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies." (8) Mostly he focused on the American atrocities than the Japanese atrocities during the Pacific war.

Kien mentions multiple times throughout the novel the desensitizing effect the war has had on not just his personality and emotions, but his entire life. Kien reminiscences about his youth when he was still capable of love, saying it “was now hard to imagine, hard to remember a time when his whole personality and character had been intact, a time before the cruelty and destruction had warped his soul” (Ninh, 30).