Thin Red Line Analysis

War is something that changes someone and their live so much to even year after they are still affected by what they experienced and saw. A common theme in “Soldier's Home” and The Things They Carried is going to war, which is an experience that affects people emotionally, mentally and changed their ability to connect with people.

To someone just picking up this book, this scene would simply look like some poor soldiers developing a temporary and innocent coping mechanism to deal with Death as they face him head on. But

The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the

The rambunctious behavior of the soldier’s triumphant victory is a strong message visually for the viewer. These soldiers struggle to find their identity and once the war ends, the identity they’ve build at war vanishes, (McCutcheon, 2007). As a result, they essentially lose a part of them selves, (McCutcheon, 2007). When they return home, many soldiers struggle with psychological issues that prevent them from resuming their once regular lives, (McCutcheon, 2007). The images of soldiers celebrating at the end of war give the viewer a taste of this problem. This also allows the viewer insight to the deeper issues surrounding an American soldier’s mental stability and mentality. Through this image, along with many others throughout the film, the viewer is able to dig deeper and truly analyze what they are seeing.

War is devastating and tragic. It affects the daily lives of the people that are involved in the war. In the excerpt from, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, it displays a man who is dreaming about war. When the man wakes up, he lays sweating on the ground, remembering the painful memories that the dream has brought. In the end, the man realizes that from now on he will have to live in three worlds; his dreams, the experience of his new life, and memories from the past. Meanwhile, in the image, “In Times of War” by The New York Times, there is an angel on a cloud looking over the dreadful war. Then the angel walks away because the view of people dying makes it sick. The theme of the excerpt A Long Way Gone, and the image, “In Times of War,” is that the war brings death, seriously injured, and psychologically broken people.

Through “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” the soldiers standing, watching as everything goes on around them, are not able to stop what is happening. The soldiers represent the unforgiving nature of war.

. . . Like I was losing myself, everything spilling out” (O’Brien 202). Provided with only laconic, expository definitions, an audience cannot truly feel the pains of war. O’Brien utilizes descriptions which evoke all the senses and submerge the audience in the unique and powerful sensations of war. Witnessing war’s pains through the familiar tactile crunch of an ornament or the splash of liquid spilling, the audience can immediately understand the inconceivable pressure placed on the soldier’s injured body. O’Brien continues, “All I could do was scream. . . . I tightened up and squeezed. . . . then I slipped under for a while” (203). His abrupt syntax and terse diction conveys a quickness to these events. Not bothering with extraneous adornment, his raw images transport the audience to the urgency of the moment and the severity of the pain. Now supplied with an eyewitness’s perspective of war’s injuries, the audience can begin to recognize the significance of the suffering. O’Brien tells his audience, “Tinny sounds get heightened and distorted. . . . There was rifle fire somewhere off to my right, and people yelling, except none of it seemed real anymore. I smelled myself dying” (203). In the same frame, O’Brien paints the rumbling chaos of the big war juxtaposed with the slow death of the small individual. His description emphasizes the purposeless discord and confusion of war and seeks to condemn its disorder. He argues that war’s lack of

It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought

What (or who) determines if a home invader lives or dies? In his essay “The Lines Are Blurry,” Kevin Michalowski discusses some of the basic challenges that one comes up against when involved in a personal defense situation. Because the laws concerning guns are so fuzzy, “nothing is set in stone.” Michalowski discusses the difference between “legal” and “right” in an effort to show his audience the issues in this area. He notes that the laws that are currently in place to punish violent criminals are the same laws that are being used against home defense cases. Although Michalowski has some good points, he wrongly asserts that all home defense shootings are necessary while at the same time downplaying

“Where were you, soldier?” demands Sergeant Emerson as he raises his rifle. The man’s brown eyes widen with fear, while he searches the soldiers’ faces for someone he knows. Everyone remains rigid, but out of the corner of my eye I notice a

The reader will get an increasingly detailed image of how the soldiers emotionally respond to the happenings throughout the war due to this composition.

You don’t know where the next shot is coming from and you can never relax because the pacing of the movie comes like a tidal wave of dread. An interesting creative decision here is that even though this is clearly WWII and we know who the enemy is, you never see a single German soldier, not even a Nazi Germany flag is present. The closest you get to an enemy is the aerial assault from many jets fighter. The absence of a physical enemy, it doesn’t affect this survival film one bit, if anything it strikes up more paranoia keeping the audience uneasy the way through.

Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan has been credited as being the most accurate war recreation film in history. It is the winner of five Academy Awards including Best Director for Steven Spielberg. Like Jaws, the opening scene has perfect equilibrium, calm at both the beginning and the end. Another thing this opening scene has in common with Jaws is the under water camera, and there are also shots from the killer’s point of view – in this case, the shooters’. In addition to this, they both end with calm water; a common theme in Spielberg’s openings. At the beginning of the scene, there is a long shot of a war cemetery; this drives home the seriousness of the war and just how many people died as it is very easy to forget the sheer number of people who were murdered during the war. The extreme close up on the eye of an old Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) gives the audience a feeling of connection with the character and lets them know he is going to have an important role within the film. During the fight scene the camera angles are wild movements and a handheld camera is used to give the effect of a person running as though it is from one of the soldiers’ point of view as this is likely to be something like what they would have seen and experienced. There are many visual effects such as one boat being set on fire with the soldiers still

The scene was a cut of discontinuity. The scene used discontinuity editing to show the woman’s facial expression to demonstrate the pain of being shot. This made the crowd trying to escape from the gunfires. The escape was first shot in a medium shot, which creates a clear image of people running down the stairs. Along with some long shots of the entire crowd deserting, shows how terrifying the firearms have impacted the innocent people on the stairs. Different angles of the images were cut alternatively to increase the tension of how communist authorities had been constraining the people from their rights to gather around. Additionally, Eisenstein included some close up shots to give the image of people dying and kids sitting in the middle of the dead people. The scene then jump cuts to the soldiers in white uniforms walking down the stairs roll by roll, pushing the