The Man He Killed By Thomas Hardy Tone

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

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.”

Penned during two distinctly disparate eras in American military history, both Erich Maria Remarque's bleak account of trench warfare during World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Tim O'Brien's haunting elegy for a generation lost in the jungles of Vietnam, The Man I Killed, present readers with a stark reminder that beneath the veneer of glorious battle lies only suffering and death. Both authors imbue their work with a grim severity, presenting the reality of war as it truly exists. Men inflict grievous injuries on one another, breaking bodies and shattering lives, without ever truly knowing for what or whom they are fighting for. With their contributions to the genre of war literature, both Remarque and O'Brien have sought to lift the veil of vanity which, for so many wartime writers, perverts reality with patriotic fervor. In doing so, the authors manage to convey the true sacrifice of the conscripted soldier, the broken innocence which clouds a man's first kill, and the abandonment of one's identity which becomes necessary in order to kill again.

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?

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,

War is often misinterpreted as an exciting occurrence filled with glory and acts of terrific heroism. In reality, it is brutal and serves as an effective simulation of hell. Timothy Findley's The Wars depicts an inhumane world where individuals are taken out of their elements and are forced to struggle to hold onto their humanity amidst the horrors. The lack of rules in war targets and destroys every aspect of what it means to be human. It heavily interferes with one's motivations, desires and purpose of living. The war also targets one's innocence and brings about suffering both physically and mentally.

In regards to war, Gandhi once commented, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.” In other words, violence masks its potential impairment by seeming innocuous at first; however, the true damage, often permanent, can be seen chronically. The idea reflected by Gandhi’s quote can be proven through an examination of World War I and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Although soldiers and governments in both worlds initially saw honor and security of their countries as valid reasons for going to war, what ultimately came of that conflict were both immediate consequences, such as loss of innocence and development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (often referred to as PTSD) among young soldiers, as well as permanent, long-term consequences, like the hatred the war had spurred in Germans which ultimately ensued to Hitler’s rise to power.

Even though soldiers are able to distract themselves from the horrors that they witness on the front, war psychologically damages them and creates the “lost generation”. The young men find it increasingly difficult to think and act with the mindset of a civilian. In war, the men only experience despair, death, and fear, so their mind is enveloped by negative thoughts that

As war progressed, so did the views of those who originally believed war was righteous. People could not ignore the pain and suffering, they began to feel great pity. Wilfred Owen, possibly the greatest war poet, often wrote of the tragedy. He wrote many poems but one which very effectively captures the sad and horrific truth is " Dulce et Decorum est " The poem almost lets us experience what the unfortunate soldiers had to endure. We feel the mental anguish encountered by men suffering in the helpless situation of a gas attack.

Elie Wiesel, an Auschwitz survivor, ends his autobiography, Night, with the lasting statement, "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me" (115). The importance of this declaration signifies that Elie came to a realization that emotional death that the death camps have created will far outweigh the physical pains experienced through torture. He understands that the physical evidence from the torture will fade, but the psychological trauma will torment and alter the rest of his life. Through Elie 's eyes, the reader is forced to beg the questions: What is the breaking point for a person to experience a disregard for emotion? How does a person heal from what is thought to be obsolete terror? And can a person ever recover to the extent of fitting back into society? However, holocaust survivors are not the only people who suffered from the detrimental effects of death. Veterans of war also become victims to the immunity of death. The mother country will rejoice at the sight of its sons returning from battle; however, the families do not comprehend that the war will always rage inside their battle-scarred relative. Although wars hurt America physically by decreasing the population, wars also impact soldiers emotionally. Emotional death is prevalent in all wars, and it destroys America socially because of the isolationism it creates.

During a violent war scene, Paul Baumer, describes what war has done to the men fighting in it. He explains that they “have become wild beasts”, only focused on doing whatever they had to, to hang onto life a little longer (Remarque, 113). Remarque utilizes a metaphor to make apparent that war has turned these men into animals, who worry only

Imagine being suddenly drafted to war, not prepared for the death and horror. Young, confused, scared, naïve. During the Vietnam War, many young men were forced to face a war that changed them, and not necessarily for the better. Many of the men who went to war experienced terrors that changed them in a way that affected their lives after, as shown by countless war stories and poems. Norman Bowker, from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (1990), is a perfect example of the hard-bitten war veteran archetype. Fighting in the Vietnam War and feeling as if he had a part in his friend’s death (Kiowa) caused him so much guilt and pain that he ended up hanging himself after endlessly driving around a lake when returning home. Similarly, Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem, “The Dead at Quang Tri”, emphasizes the ghosts that haunt soldiers during and after war. Overall, the haunting memories that characters deal with in war stories, like O’Brien and Komunyakaa’s, display the long lasting effects of death and war on the minds of soldiers.

In the book, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, a short story ‘The Man I Killed’ clearly develops the idea of guilt. The author O’Brien describes what the man he killed would have been like before the war. The man he killed in the present and how his guilt prevents himself for carrying on the man’s life story into the future. I will be analysing the idea of guilt through these time periods. O’Brien rails through and uses specific techniques to convey his experiences into the short story, such as repetition. O’Brien also raises some key questions. ‘Was it worth dying for the war?’ ‘What were the soldiers like before the war?’ ‘Who is to blame for how the war started?’ The Man I Killed is a short story about the actual author Tim O’Brien,

In Thomas Hardy’s “The Man He Killed,” the persona writes the piece in first person, giving the story an unknown narrator, and also adding strength and a deeper connection with the reader. This allows for the story to be seen as one person to another, rather than words you are reading off of a page. He uses undetailed imagery in the second stanza, "And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me. And killed him in his place."(Hardy 7,8) by not showing a clear statement describing the setting or even the weapon used to commit the killing.

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.