The Horrors of War Essay Example
The Horrors of War Essay Example

The Horrors of War Essay Example

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  • Pages: 4 (1054 words)
  • Published: November 2, 2017
  • Type: Essay
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The horror of war is a very important theme that people nowadays should understand. I chose this theme to portray different scenarios during war. The four texts that I chose were the book, Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magician; the short story, "The Sniper" by Lima Flattery; the non-fiction novel, Going Solo an autobiography by Royal Dahl; and the film, "Saving Private Ryan" directed by Steven Spielberg. There is a good variety of perspectives of horrors during war.

At the beginning of the book, Goodnight Mister Tom, a young evacuee is sent from his home in London to a small village, Weirdo. Throughout the text, Michelle describes to us the abuse that the young evacuee gets from his mother. Will, the evacuee, starts to settle int

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o the village and although he has been separated from his mother, it seems as though it is better for him, because Mr.. Tom cares for him and shows him a loving home, rather than his dark home where he is abused and is badly cared for.

Close to the end of the story, the horror of war is clearly shown, when Wills' best rend is killed from an air raid while visiting his injured father during World War II. Will was "finding it painful to sit down next to an empty chair, he would scatter papers untidily over the two desks to hide Coach's absence. " He was feeling like he was alone and there was a space missing in his life. This would be very upsetting for any person, let alone a young child. From this tragic incident we can see one of the horrors of losing

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a friend in the war.

In the short story, "The Sniper", Lima Flattery suggests the horror of war not only by resenting its physical dangers, but also by its psychological effects. O' Flattery tells us a story about a sniper during the Civil war in Dublin. The sniper "reaches the Langley on the street level, he felt a sudden curiosity as to the identity of the enemy sniper whom he had killed". Because of the nature of war the sniper thinks he may know his enemy, "... The sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother's face".

He suffers an injury to the soul and heart, not only from being physically injured, but because someone that he loves dearly is shot and not only hat, he himself was the one who shot him. The way that this short story is finished leaves us to think about how horrible this would be to have killed your own brother. We aren't actually told anything after he looks at his brother's face, but it is clear that this would have been a very dreadful thing to go through and emotionally distressing.

Lots of people would have gone through similar things during a civil war, having families split apart and going off to different allies of war, then having to face one another at gun point. There is a clear connection to the horrors of war in "Saving Private Ryan", when three rooters are killed while fighting in the Second World War. A group of American soldiers are sent out to save and bring home the last brother to his mother, not knowing of his whereabouts.

align="justify">The soldiers had no idea who the person that they were saving was, yet they had to risk their lives in order to bring him home. "This Ryan better be worth it. He better go home and cure some disease, or invent a longer- lasting light bulb, or something". On their Journey, there are many examples of the Norris Tanat were Teach, Eternal Deluge Keller Ana navels to tell Tamales Tanat t Ovid ones have been killed. One example is when a soldier in the group is killed and the other soldiers got upset and start having arguments with one another.

The soldiers watched their friend die in front of them. This showed that one horror of the war can be that it can and does break apart friends and families. In the non-fiction story, Going Solo, Royal Dahl tells about his life during World War II as a RAFF fighter pilot, sent to war with hardly any experience. In the book, Royal Dahl tells us about a time when he crashes his plane in the desert and is seriously injured. He has his SSE pulled out and it has to be reshaped; he also sustains a head injury.

It took a few months for him to get better, but from his injuries we are shown how horrible it would be having been injured in the war and having to recover from different things, like having to learn to walk again or adjusting to losing your sight. Also it would be very unpleasant to see others injured seriously or even being killed, or hearing that "... Out of 16 trainee pilots, 13 were killed within

two years". The injuries that Royal Dahl experiences during the war help to show us the horrors of being in the war. All these stories show us horrors of war; however, there are differences between them.

The soldiers in "Saving Private Ryan" experience the war and have to fight in the Second World War, watching people being shot at and being shot at themselves, whereas in Goodnight Mister Tom, Will is not fighting in the war but he is evacuated from his home in London and has to try fit into a new place where he knows no one, all due to the war. There is a similarity between these two stories, in both stories the main characters lose a friend at war, whether they had been shot while fighting, or embed while visiting injured family members.

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These texts all bring together the horrors of war from the different perspective through the experiences of the characters. They show us that the horrors that were faced would have been awful to go through. War was a horrible experience not only for the soldiers but also for the families left behind because they were left without family members, children evacuated from their homes, families being split because of civil war, and the horrors of being at war and seeing people being killed or seriously injured.

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