Loss Of Innocence Essay

In the novel The Wars, Findley demonstrates that innocence is lost during the war due to the harsh circumstances one is continually exposed too. Self-preservation, in this context, is where one protects themselves from the destruction of war in order to preserver. Often when one is growing up in war times, innocence is lost due to the destruction happening around them.

In Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Francie Nolan and her family struggle with many economical and emotional hardships in Brooklyn in the early 1900's. Her mother, Katie, and her father, Johnny, marry and have children at an extremely young age, causing their family's fate to be doomed right from the start. Francie, the older of the two children, has her mother's hard-work ethic, and her father's sentimentality and imagination. Through Francie's fear, humiliation, compassion, sorrow, pride, and disillusionment throughout the novel, she becomes the strong, intelligent woman she is. Francie is a sum of her family's suffering and experiences. With every incident, she loses some of her innocence.

The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.

It is a well known fact that experiencing war changes people; there is an innocence that is forever lost. In Tim O’Brian’s, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, Mary Anne Bell is an unusual example of the innocence that is lost in war because unlike the rest of the soldiers, she is a woman. Mary Anne’s transformation from innocent “sweetheart” to fierce warrior left readers with mixed emotions because although Mary Anne felt at peace with her transformation, she was also disconnected from reality.

In war, both violence and fear revokes a soldier’s humanity. These elements of war cause a person to shut down their emotional instincts, which causes the soldiers to mature rapidly by taking innocence along with joy and happiness in life. Through the experiences that the soldiers encounter, their humanity is compromised. Thus, as war strips soldiers of their innocence, they start to become disconnected from themselves and others. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque illustrates the negative effects war has on a soldier’s humanity, through his use of Paul’s books and the potato pancakes by revealing the soldiers loss of emotion that causes them to become detached from society. Through these symbols they deepen the theme by visually depicting war’s impact on Paul. Paul’s books helps the theme by depicting how the war locked his heart to old values by taking his innocence. Likewise the potato pancakes reveal Paul’s emotional state damaged by the war with his lack of happiness and gratitude.

Childhood is an important time in a person’s life, a time where one can be carefree and do as they please without having to worry about what others think of them. During this stage of life, children are groomed and prepared for the transition between childhood and adulthood to be as smooth as possible. However, in Heather O’Neil’s novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, Baby throws herself into the adult world without giving any second thought or even having the proper knowledge to survive or even to manage herself. This causes her to follow the wrong paths and trust the wrong people. Baby grows wise beyond her years, and soon becomes stuck in the middle of the two worlds, as she is too young for the adult world but too old for the child world. This traps her with her having nowhere else to go except continue on the path she is already heading. Baby’s loss of innocence at such a young age showcases that one cannot properly mature and be ready for the future without having a stable childhood. This loss is shown through Jules’ lack of parental ability, her exposure to the adult world at a young age, and her struggle with herself. Adding all three together causes damage to Baby that no one should experience.

Two northern boys in the novels, “Soldier’s Heart,” and “The Red Badge of Courage,” suffer through the journey and hardships, loss of loved ones, and war. The contrasts in these works are few, however the variances in stories minister support in helping each book to stand out, and separate from the other. The similarities between books are uncanny, so similar, in fact that throughout the duration of the novels differentiating the novels becomes increasingly problematic for the reader. Also, the similarities concerning the two books “Soldier’s Heart” and “The Red Badge of Courage” aid the reader in understanding the mind-set of a soldier during a war. The comparisons and differences of the

Even though the soldiers join the war as naive youths, the war rapidly changes them and they develop into young men. Surrounded by death, the boys are bound to foresee the fragility of their own lives and are stripped of the carelessness and brazenness of youth. The dreadful horrors around the boys bound them to consider a world that does not accommodate to their childish and simplistic view. They want to only see a separation between what is right and what is wrong, they instead find moral doubt. Where they had wanted to see order and meaning, they only found senselessness and disorder. Where they wanted to find heroism, they only found the selfish instinct of self-preservation. These realizations destroyed the innocence of the boys, maturing and thrusting them into their manhood.

Guided by his undying love for his sister, Robert’s call to action is intrinsically motivated by an ironic catalyst that leads to his own eventual death; the desire to preserve life. At the climax of the novel, Robert’s courage tempers out his Achilles’ heel of introverted moral justness. His ascendance to the position of officer is only natural considering that his resilience and persistence strengthen significantly as he begins to imitate the hero archetype upheld by most war novels, though his concealed struggles with morality and obedience as exposed by his actions confirm him to be a tragic hero. Even with his elevated position, Robert demonstrates many instances of nurturing as he develops into a strong man weathered by the war, as opposed to the typical hardening experienced by most men on the front lines. The telltale quality of morality demonstrated only by a tragic hero is a tragic flaw in itself, as it forces acts that would otherwise be self-indulgent to take on an air of humility. “The man with the broken legs was lying by the water’s edge. He was already the colour of death. … ‘Put that [gas mask] over his face.’” (124) Robert’s dangerous, selfless acts for those who are arguably hopeless are not only consistently futile, but they endanger him and jeopardize

All around the world, children are either raised in a way that preserves their innocence or a way that strips them of it. Some children are blessed with a so called “care-free” childhood, while other kids can only dream of the opportunity to live without burden. Ishmael Beah, both the author and main character of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boys Soldier, tells a moving story of how his enjoyable life and innocence were quickly taken away from him. As he goes through the journey of becoming a soldier and realizing the evil he was capable of, he loses any sense of a carefree childhood. The theme of innocence in ALWG was presented to show how war changed Beah and took away his innocence when he lost his family, was forced to kill, and was continuously told the importance of revenge.

The story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is an enormously detailed fictional account of a wartime scenario in which jimmy Cross (the story’s main character) grows as a person, and the emotional and physical baggage of wartime are brought to light. The most obvious and prominent feature of O’Brien’s writing is a repetition of detail. O’brien also passively analyzes the effects of wartime on the underdeveloped psyche by giving the reader close up insight into common tribulations of war, but not in a necessarily expositorial sense.. He takes us into the minds of mere kids as they cope with the unbelievable and under-talked-about effects or rationalizing

More often than not, war novels romanticize the soldier on the battle field as a heroic figure that would gladly die for his county’s honor. Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front”, paints a vividly different picture than one of a patriotic soldier willing to be at war. Remarque’s work masterfully shows that the soldier’s expectations of war could not be any further from society’s concept of warfare. “All Quiet on the Western Front” follows a young and innocent soldier, Paul Baumer, through the living Hell that is World War I. Through Paul’s character, Remarque’s antiwar novel demonstrates that war is nothing but, irrational, patriotic fueled violence that turns humans into insensible soldiers, while simultaneously indicating that their lives have no meaning.

How does Owen’s portrayal of the relationship between youth and war move us to a deeper understanding of suffering?

War forces young soldiers to grow up quickly. In Stephen Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He is faced with the hard reality of war and this forces him to readjust his romantic beliefs about war. Through the novel, the reader can trace the growth and development of Henry through these four stages: (1) romanticizing war and the heroic role each soldier plays, (2) facing the realities of war, (3) lying to himself to maintain his self-importance, and (4) realistic awareness of his abilities and place in life. Through Henry’s experiences in his path to self-discovery, he is strongly affected by events that help shape his ideology of war, death,

Little Red Riding Hood is a fairytale known worldwide about an innocent little girl and a big bad wolf, or so it seems. Deeper investigation into the hidden meanings of this age-old ever changing fairy tale reveals many different tales all together; where the character’s true intentions and character traits might surprise you. Little Red Riding Hood can be traced back to the 10th century. One of the oldest documented versions originated from Italy by Italio Calvino, called The False Grandma.