Why Do Generals Die In Bed

Throughout the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and several other war texts, there are a number of themes that can be related to them all. In the book, the character named Paul Baumer writes, in first person, about his experience through war. He sees and feels so many things, but the most important one of all is the feeling he gets when he is with his comrades, his friends. In sight of this, Paul, and other characters, give all their loyalty to the people they are close to. In other specific war pieces, including the film War Horse and “Gregory,” a short story, the characters also experience this life giving idea of comradeship and loyalty. In war, a man’s loyalty to his comrades never alters.

Generals Die in Bed certainly demonstrates that war is futile and the soldiers suffer both emotionally and physically. Charles Yale Harrison presents a distressing account of the soldiers fighting in the Western front, constantly suffering and eventually abandoning hope for an end to the horrors that they experience daily. The ‘boys’ who went to war became ‘sunk in misery’. We view the war from the perspective of a young soldier who remains nameless. The narrator’s experience displays the futility and horror of war and the despair the soldiers suffered. There is no glory in

Nobody likes the war and it is really a difficult topic to write on it. Louisa May Alcott expressed her personal experience with a dying war soldier in such a beautiful way that it extract the sympathy and emotions of the audience and readers. In her excerpt “Hospital Sketches”, she writes about a young, brave and bachelor soldier named John, who participated in the civil war in 1863. She encountered him in an army hospital, while working there as a nurse. He was brought there with the fatal injuries. Using her writer’s experience, she presents an emotional retelling of an story, which advances an argument. She gets her readers emotionally involved in this narrative. By using diction, imagery, selection of details and her rhetorical

Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried” epitomizes the degradation of morals that war produces. This interpretation is personified in the characters who gradually blur the line dividing right and wrong as the motives for war itself become unclear. The morality of soldiers and the purpose of war are tied also to the truth the soldiers must tell themselves in order to participate in the gruesome and random killing which is falsely justified by the U.S government. The lack of purpose in the Vietnam War permanently altered the soldier’s perspective of how to react to situations and in most cases they turned to violence to express their frustration.

Government justifies war as a thing of glory for young soldiers to be in, almost as if it was a trend

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

Memoirs of war often reflect the positive or negative experiences endured throughout battle. Considered by many to be one of the best memoirs of World War I, Hervey Allen’s “Toward the Flame”, recalls his own experiences of battle. His recollection of events shows that he had a negative image of war and that there was nothing glorious about it. What started out looking like a man’s greatest adventure turned into a shell-shocking reality that war is actually horrible and trying. Allen’s experiences with consistent hunger, mustard gas, and artillery shellings led to his disillusionment with war, and left him with a permanent hatred of battle.

Generals die in Bed by Charles Yale Harrison is a novel where a young Canadian soldier tells of his first hand account of the harsh and inhumane conditions in the trenches on the Western Front during World War 1. Through his observations and experiences the Narrator shows the effects of war on ordinary people and how they manage in extraordinarily horrific situations. Even though the brutal nature of the war is often reflected in the violent way that combatants act towards one another there are also moments when compassion and mercy is shown. The novel demonstrates that in extreme situations both the dark and the good side of human

In the incredible book, All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, the reader follows Paul Baumer, a young man who enlisted in the war. The reader goes on a journey and watches Paul and his comrades face the sheer brutality of war. In this novel, the author tries to convey the fact that war should not be glorified. Through bombardment, gunfire, and the gruesome images painted by the author, one can really understand what it would have been like to serve on the front lines in the Great War. The sheer brutality of the war can be portrayed through literary devices such as personification, similes, and metaphors.

In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien the author tells about his experiences in the Vietnam war by telling various war stories. The quote, "It has been said of war that it is a world where the past has a strong grip on the present, where machines seemed sometimes to have more will power than me, where nice boys (girls) were attracted to them, where bodies ruptured and burned and stand, where the evil thing trying to kill you could look disconnecting human and where except in your imagination it was impossible to be heroic." relates to each of his stories.

The Wars, written by Timothy Findley, is a story about World War I, and consists of many shocking images passed over to the reader. Findley accomplishes to pull the reader into the narrative itself, so that the reader manages to feel an impact upon him/her-self about what is read. If it was not for this specific skill, or can also be seen as a specific genre, the novel would not have been as successful as it is now. Also, something that helps the book be so triumphant, there is the fact that Findley never overwhelms the reader with too many gruesome details about the World War I. Instead, he breaks the book down to help the reader calm down from everything that is happening. Throughout the essay, there is going to be some commenting on a

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

The author, Sophocles, opinions on warfare is that war is just not about heroes, who are played up to have no faults, and their moments of glory, but rather that

Manipulative language is also prominent in Generals Die In Bed as Harrison works to romanticize war glorifying the experience to all the young men. He illustrates a world of unity, happiness, and nobility treating leaving for war as a rite of passage for the young men. He sets the tone of the novel through manipulation of war, as he states “Outside in the streets we hear the sounds of celebration. Fireworks are being exploded in honor. When we come to the corner of St. Catherine and Windsor streets, a salvo of fireworks bursts over the marching column” (Harrison 4).

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.