Ryan Smithson's Ghost of War

War is often times the subject of literature because it has such an effect on human beings. It makes people give up things for a greater cause; it changes people. War completely changes the lives of those that fought in it and because the experiences of those people define how they live the rest of their lives, it is truly easy to see why war is not only the greatest topic of literature but how the subject of its effects has

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.

“War stories” are shared by people all over the world, describing exhilarating experiences one encompasses during a war. However, these stories have been known for hyperbolizing details of the story, deeming it a “lie.” Tim O’Brien, the author of “How to Tell a True War Story,” examines the complex relationship between war experience and storytelling. The tale is told partly from O’Brien’s role as a soldier, as a reprise of several Vietnam stories, and half of his role as a storyteller, as a discussion on the art of storytelling. O’Brien provides detailed commentary on storytelling and blurs the division between truth and fiction through a series of paradoxical commentaries.

The psychological effects, the mentality of fighting and killing another human, and the sheer decimation of human values is what makes war atrocious. War is not only fought on the battlefield though. This book also describes the feelings of a soldier fighting his own demons that war has brought on. The battle that the soldier has with himself, is almost if not more damaging than the physical battle of war. He will never forget his experience with battle, no matter how hard he tries the memories of artillery, blood, and death cannot be erased. “I prayed like you to survive, but look at me now. It is over for us who are dead, but you must struggle, and will carry the memories all your life. People back home will wonder why you can't forget.” (Sledge). This struggle still happens to soldiers today. Sledge’s words of the struggles still captures the effects of warfare that lingers today. The other effects that war has on the men is the instability that surrounds them at every hour of the day. They are either engaged in battle having bullets and artillery fired at them, or waiting for battle just so they can be deposited back in the pressure cooker of survival. “Lying in a foxhole sweating out an enemy artillery or mortar barrage or waiting to dash across open ground under machine-gun or artillery fire defied any concept of time.”

Penned during two distinctly disparate eras in American military history, both Erich Maria Remarque's bleak account of trench warfare during World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Tim O'Brien's haunting elegy for a generation lost in the jungles of Vietnam, The Man I Killed, present readers with a stark reminder that beneath the veneer of glorious battle lies only suffering and death. Both authors imbue their work with a grim severity, presenting the reality of war as it truly exists. Men inflict grievous injuries on one another, breaking bodies and shattering lives, without ever truly knowing for what or whom they are fighting for. With their contributions to the genre of war literature, both Remarque and O'Brien have sought to lift the veil of vanity which, for so many wartime writers, perverts reality with patriotic fervor. In doing so, the authors manage to convey the true sacrifice of the conscripted soldier, the broken innocence which clouds a man's first kill, and the abandonment of one's identity which becomes necessary in order to kill again.

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

Memories and stories swarming the mind and twisted by imagination are the only glimpse of humanity a man can hold on to while at war. Through stories, men at war can share their thinning humanity with one another. The deafening silence of war defeats the human spirit and moral compass, thus it is not only man against man but man against sanity. Tim O 'Brien 's “The Things They Carried” provides a narrative of soldiers in the Vietnam War holding on to the only parts of themselves through their imagination. O’Brien employs symbolic tokens, heavy characterization, and the grueling conflict of man to illustrate how soldiers create metaphorical stories to ease the burden of war.

First, the reader must understand just what makes a good "war story". The protagonist of the novel, Tim O'Brien, gives us his

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

“War is hell,” he says, “but that’s no the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love...war is nasty; war is fun.” (76). Repeatedlyhe describes the manner in which those around him perish, seemingly unable to move on yet insisting that in the repeated telling he walks the road to recovery. O’Brien does not shy away from the graphic and disturbing, but he does not dwell on the macabre for so long that he forgets about the light in life. His ability to seek solace beyond the trauma, his determination to cure himself through storytelling, manifests a hopeful tone that, although never truly sheds itself of depression’s shroud, grows

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

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.

Ghosts of War is a book written by Ryan Smithson. This book is his Non-Fiction memoir about his life as a high school junior through the age of 23. During his junior year of high school the tragedy known as 9/11 occurred while he was at school. This drastically changed his life; all he could think about his senior year was enlisting. The driving force in his mind for the decision was, “If I don’t do something, who will?” Ryan also thought that this war on terrorism would be a longer war, (and he was right) and thought that it was his generations responsibility to wage this war. Mr. Smithson tells this story in a unique way; he splits up the books timeline into three segments. 1 Red phase, 2 White phase, and 3 Blue phase, he does this to allow

As long as there has been war, those involved have managed to get their story out. This can be a method of coping with choices made or a way to deal with atrocities that have been witnessed. It can also be a means of telling the story of war for those that may have a keen interest in it. Regardless of the reason, a few themes have been a reoccurrence throughout. In ‘A Long Way Gone,’ ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ and ‘Novel without a Name,’ three narrators take the readers through their memories of war and destruction ending in survival and revelation. The common revelation of these stories is one of regret. Each of these books begins with the main character as an innocent, patriotic soldier or civilian and ends in either the loss of innocence and regret of choices only to be compensated with as a dire warning to those that may read it. These books are in fact antiwar stories meant not to detest patriotism or pride for one’s country or way of life, but to detest the conditions that lead to one being so simpleminded to kill another for it. The firebombing of Dresden, the mass execution of innocent civilians in Sierra Leone and a generation of people lost to the gruesome and outlandish way of life of communism and Marxism should be enough to convince anyone. These stories serve as another perspective for the not-so-easily convinced.

Throughout history, authors have responded to historical events like the war through different genres of literature from novels to poems. In this paper; I will look at how Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, September 1st, 1939 by Wystan Hugh Auden and The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson respond to various historical events. A comparison between these texts will show the many similarities and differences in how they respond to the theme of war. In addition to this, I will examine the literary techniques used to reveal the different aspect of war. Although these texts deal with different historical events of warfare, an analysis of them shows that they focus on various aspects of war, the aftermath, the apathy of society and the tragic heroism of soldiers.