The Panorama Of A Lost Cause

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

Surviving the war was not a matter of intelligently planned decisions, but a series of reactions triggered by primal instincts. The animal instincts within strong soldiers inhibited

In 1994, McPherson wrote the book, What They Fought For: 1861-1865, about his exploration on the motivations of the soldiers that fought in the Civil War (“James M. McPherson” par. 6). He analyzed the letters and diaries of twenty-five thousand soldiers, ultimately determining the reasons for the soldier’s continuance to fight during the Civil War.

Company Aytch, a memoir written by Sam Watkins, tells the personal tale of a lowly private fighting four long years in the American Civil War. Watkins was from Columbia, Tennessee, and was a part of Company H, 1st Tennessee Infantry. He recounts his military career in chronological order, from before the Battle of Shiloh in 1862 to the day the Confederacy surrendered at Nashville in 1865. Watkins is a humble writer, often reminds the reader that he is not aiming to provide a comprehensive account of the entire war, but rather a collection of personal stories. Military history books often recount the lives of generals and of great strategies, but this book insists that history should not exclude the common men who filled the ranks of the military.

     Michael Shaara’s fictional novel, The Killer Angels, is based on the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War. The novel allows the reader to recognize the heart and courage of the more than two million men that fought in the war. Shaara focuses the reader to better understand the reason why these men fight and the meaning of the war. Ultimately, the reader observes that the war is fought on an individual level as much as a governmental level. These men are there to fight for what they believe is truly right. The Confederates fought for their rights to hold slaves, their freedom tyranny of the Federal Government, and their

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.

This Republic of Suffering: Death and The American Civil War exposes a different perspective of the Civil War that is sparsely discussed and challenges the reader to broaden their views and beliefs of the war. Author, Drew Gilpin Faust, conducted nine chapters, or the new and transformed ars moriendi, primarily focusing on the past and present of the Civil War and its soldiers.

     Anxiety about death follows the men everywhere they go and they have many different ways to disguise their fear and many ways to defend against it. The men were ready for everything in the war: they had their radio to call in help, their guns to defend against enemies, and their pride and dignity to disguise fear. Disguising fear is very hard because it is such a strong emotion. Great fear is impossible to hide as evident by the actions of the men when they were involved in the intense fights where they would say 'Dear Jesus and (flop)

In the historical fiction novel The Slopes of War by N.A. Perez, the author illustrates the gruesome battle that befell the little market town of Gettysburg during the Civil War through the various perspectives of all the people whom were immersed and affected. These people included young men fighting, generals arguing about their plans and tactics, and innocent citizens who aided causalities regardless of what color their uniform happened to be. Perspectives from both the Confederate and Union armies are offered in the text to grasp a better understanding of all the thoughts occurring throughout the entire battle, as well as before and after. Throughout the novel, Perez elucidates the emotional and physical aspects of war the people endured, such as traumatizing, graphic images that can serve as bad omens, and loss of loved ones. Also, the book further explains what war truly signified, which was death. The positive results and overall effects of the war as described in the novel, however, somewhat outweighs the negative causes and struggles. In the book Crispin written by Avi, there is a particular quote in the novel on the first page in which reads, “In the midst of life comes death, in the midst of death comes life.” This quote can be related to the novel in numerous ways, and can be applied to life in general, too.

Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and The American Civil War tackles a subject that is not widely written about: the ways of death of the American Civil War generation. She demonstrates how the unprecedented carnage, both military and civilian, caused by the Civil War forever changed American assumptions of death and dying, and how the nation and its people struggled to come to terms with death on an unimaginable scale. The war created a veritable “republic of suffering” and Faust vividly portrays the United States’ ordeal, transformation, and

What they fought for is an analysis of a collection of nearly a thousand personal letters and journals entries written by the soldiers who fought America’s famous Civil War. This book seeks to define the ideology of what the soldiers understood they were fighting for, and their comprehension of the outcome of their service .Although counter arguments agree that most soldiers could not give a solid explanation of why they fought for, nor the real Constitutional issues that were at stake; the thoughts the soldiers recorded show that they fought for more than just masculine identity; they highly valued being at home safe with their loved ones, at any cost. This book gives an inside perception of the Civil War, and a

In the Battle of the Wilderness, he describes, Rebel troops that could produce entrenchments and palisades that were impressive in both scale and build time. In that same skirmish, Grant was described as exasperated by his subordinates who, because of the reputation that followed Lee, were somewhat overly jumpy in their desire to know Lee’s next move. Further, aside from the descriptive analysis of in-war feats and failures, Grimsley also covers the political emotions felt by the American citizenry. Northern reactions fluctuated. When the match at Mule Shoe took place, for example, the tone within accounts bounced from elation to dejection. Southern war responses, according to the volume, “remained upbeat throughout the campaign.” Whether giving account of the war efforts, the political atmosphere of the war, or of civilian reactions, Grimsley paints a picture that generates a sense of coexistence with these national ancestors. His work is thoroughly researched and he provides personal glimpses into the minds and thoughts of those who influenced or were touched by the war through newspaper articles, letters and diary

The Civil War of America has been discussed as the first modern war of the new industrial age. Army’s of such a large size had yet to meet head on, face to face in the battle field with weapons of such mass destruction and deadly force. America had not yet seen casualties of this magnitude to

Often times war is depicted in a victorious, triumphant manner when in reality war is chaotic; full of destruction and death. In Stephen Crane’s “A Mystery of Heroism” and Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge,” we witness the harsh reality of the war and the common human reaction to the havoc. Fred Collins simply wants water, but the well is on the other side of the battlefield. Peyton Farquhar, a loyal civilian to the South, just wanted to help in the war but instead was hanged for his good-intentioned attempt to destroy the bridge to help the Confederates. Ambrose Bierce and Stephen Crane wrote “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge” and “A Mystery of Heroism” to show the natural human condition in adverse situations.

One of the most prominent armies of the civil war the Army of Northern Virginia is one of the most commonly analyzed aspects of the confederacy. In J. Tracy Power’s Lee’s Miserables, Power evaluates the mindset of the soldiers by following their correspondence to family members as well as their use of diaries. The book is designed to demonstrate the psychological changes of the soldiers from The Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania to the eventual surrender of the army at Appomattox. Power effectively describes the spectrum of physiological states exhibited by the soldier while maintaining a theme of respect for the generalship of Robert E. Lee. While the work exhibits countless examples that become repetitive, the sentiments of the