The Stranger In The Photo Is Me Analysis

I’ve always felt a strange connection to the stars, one that I have never fully understood. I used to believe that it was simply the night itself that appealed to me. There is something so incredibly compelling about it. It’s not the silence, necessarily, but the way that every breath is amplified; it’s not so much the darkness, but the way that the stars light it up. There is an unparalleled magic to them, to the way that they swirl and writhe and explode of their own accord. Although the moon will orbit for eternity and the stars will eventually fade into submission, it is the latter that I admire the most. I would rather die at the hands of my own power and light than live infinitely off of the nectar of somebody else’s.

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

The thought of going to war excites many young men that have not experienced or have been a part of one. Individuals want to find a way out of the routine, mundane lifestyle that plagues many suburban households. People that just want some excitement enlist in a military branch that will not benefit them or anyone for that matter. In Philip Caputo’s book titled A Rumor of War, the true side of how war demolishes the human spirit is shown. His nonfiction novel captures the nasty side to war. Philip informs us how the mentality of a young man can change with the constant thought of death and fear as a daily ritual. Men do not think about death occurring to them at a young age. This changes when death is surrounding them on a daily basis during wartime. Caputo intended to inform the young public about the horrible nature of war. Mistakes are doomed to repeat themselves if people are not well informed and Caputo is trying to avoid future mistakes. Death surrounded him and many of his comrades during the Vietnam War. When the life of anyone is on the line, one tends to do drastic and sometimes unthinkable things to cope with the fear of death.

War can destroy a man both in body and mind for the rest of his life. In “The Sniper,” Liam O’Flaherty suggests the horror of war not only by presenting its physical dangers, but also by showing its psychological effects. We are left to wonder which has the longer lasting effect—the visible physical scars or the ones on the inside?

Even with the strongest of convictions for the cause behind the engagement of war, soldiers and casualties still suffered greatly on various emotional levels. These psychological effects had a lasting outcome on each person. Both Soviets and Nazis experienced numbness, fits of rage, fear, aggression and even depression far after the war was over. The way we feel often dictates our course of action; even lacking in these emotions can lead us down a path. “Lacking personnel adequately to guard the thousands of prisoners they captured, the Germans simply herded them into barbed-wire pens and left them to starve to death.” (Gilbert & Large pp 319) These men were left for dead to fight against starvation and weather, being kept in small pens like animals. The humanity and emotions shown during these situations was severely lacking, but could have been a side effect of traumatic conditions and the focus of survival. A tradition of cremating or burying the dead, was completely forgone and these men became so numb of what was actually going on. “They don’t bury corpses! They leave the killed men behind and go away. There are no burial detachments. No one cares. (Bevor & Vinogradova pp 103)” There are some moments though for both sides of the war that gave humanity hope, even when knee deep in blood and war. Sometimes all it took was love and friendship. A great example of

In the article, “Why It’s So Hard to Come Home From War” an interview with filmmaker Sebastian Junger by Helen Walters, writes about what war is like for America’s veterans in Afghanistan from Sebastian’s perspective revisiting the location. My response to the article is that every individual who gets the chance to visit Afghanistan to capture every moment of what he or she may think that happens in war was like. I think that someone who visit the place may have a strange feeling of being worried or scared to stand in the exact same place where war was taken before. Or Sebastian enhancing a chance of experiencing this environment where he feels that he is the luckiest man on earth but also too lucky that he still cannot believe it.

The author Wilfred Owen, made a clear point that war wasn’t a pretty site. He gave gruesome details about people gurgling blood and sores on ones tongue. He gave us a picture of what they had to go through. He explained that they were crawling on their knees, coughing, bleeding and being bled on. I’ve never been in war before and I already knew it wasn’t a pretty site. So, his argument I already agreed with from future knowledge. It isn’t fun to go through, but I respect everyone who has been to war.

The most vivid and shocking image used is when the speaker internally addresses the child and tells him that his "father tumbled in the yellow trenches, / Raged at his breast, gulped and died" (13-14). This is not something one would tell a child, especially when consoling him. The use of the word "trenches," which could be metaphors for graves, contributes to the implicit theme of a funeral setting. This contradiction between verbally comforting family members and internally giving them detailed descriptions of their loved one's death, shows the speaker's struggle with the idea that families and others typically hear the glossed-over story of the nobility of soldiers and the glory of war. This speaker is battling with his military duty of consoling the family members and with his conscience wanting to open their eyes to the fact that these men die gruesome and painful deaths.

These pictures are slightly something that is tricky to portray and to characterize because it never closes. It is like the war, in light of the fact that it is so terrible it couldn't be possible portray definitely. Amid the war, there is no sureness, and the ordinary human qualities don't number any longer. There is likewise analyze between the officers who kicked the bucket on the front line with all the blood, the bodies, and the emotional workmanship. On the other side the warriors who kicked the bucket noticeable all around ("The War noticeable all around") and battled without anyone else's input and there is just blankness and no one has seen or heard something.

And this amazingly helped me understand that there is no getting away from destruction. It really does represent the reality of war. When a family only has the company of each other, that is the only good take away they have while in the middle of their country’s crisis. Just like what the photographer stated, there is no right and positive representation of being stuck in battle. I really found this photo fantastic, especially because this was the first one that caught my eye. As I began to analyze it, I found more and more ways to connect it to the reality of war. Many families who’ve experienced losing their loved one to war can relate to this photograph and agree there is no way out of the hardship.

Being a ‘War Hero’ isn’t always a title that is filled with honor. A loss is painful regardless of how it occurs, however, a loss where the chance to say goodbye is never given, is far worse. In an attempt to retaliate against Baghdad Iranian F.14 fighter planes were sent out, many lives were lost. Marjane attempts to give her grieving friend Pardisse her condolences for the loss of her father stating that, her father was a hero. Nevertheless, Marjane’s efforts failed as Paradisse reacted by saying, “I wish he were alive in jail than dead and a hero.” (86) The family of the deceased feels no honor, only sorrow.

In an interview done by CNN, an ex-child soldier described how shooting and seeing death on a daily basis became as easy as "drinking a glass of water,". They were turned into killing machines who felt nothing and were treated like nothing, often told not to cry for dead friends or family members as they would get killed for showing weakness. Science Daily wrote an article on how kids cope with what they saw in the war based on where they return to. Children who return to a community where they feel loved and accepted tend to feel safer, while those who return to more violent communities feel paranoid and live in fear of being abducted again. This shows how the children lose their humanity through unspeakable acts of war, and how not only themselves but those around them play a role in their healing

As author David Livingstone Smith once said, “dehumanization is a scourge, and has been so for millennia. It acts as a psychological lubricant, dissolving our inhibitions and inflaming our destructive passions” (Goodreads, 2015). In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, the concept of dehumanization and representation are blatantly prevalent. The main characters known as students, clones, or “Others” are not viewed as equals to humans living in society. Although they have human qualities and characteristics, they are treated differently.

Introduction: My perspective has changed, saw broader understanding as a way to look into other lives, grasp of people who have a different point of view. The night and The Stranger change my perspective on people based on their personal experiences. The Stranger, who feels like he doesn’t fit morals set by society, as The Night talks about the torture and hardship he faced in a concentration camp. While reading the book, The Night, my perspective progress because of overwhelmingly evident is that of not giving up and the struggle of enduring the physical and mental attack. The character in the book never gave up on his faith of god, after torture and his family passing away. I couldn’t believe how humans can have a daunting mindset and make people suffer indescribable hardship.

Craig Walker, a journalist for the Denver Post followed 18 year old Ian Fisher through his first two years at the peak of the Iraq war. (Walker). The series over the American Soldier enlistment after the September eleventh terrorist attack won him the Pulitzer Prize. He singled out on soldier and was allowed to photograph the soldiers entire time from enlistment till he came home from war. The photograph is of a terrified american soldier with an injured elbow who is seated by a I Want You for the U.S Army poster that is hung above an empty, black rolling chair with ARMY in bright yellow letters. Craig Walker’s eye opening photograph “Ian Fisher: American Soldier” captures feelings of shocks, and immobility for a young American male to enlist into the United States Army after the fall of the World Trade Center.