War. World governments justify it as a necessary evil. Our government makes our society believe that maintaining power through acts of war is necessary to sustain our freedom. While I have seen movies and read books about war, I have never experienced firsthand the trauma that war creates; therefore, war itself hasn't made a dramatic impression on my own life. My friends and I will talk about the sports game played the previous night but not the house that exploded three doors down from us. Why? Because the house three doors down from us is still standing. But this may not be the case for the families living in the war-torn areas. Those who have experienced life in the areas devastated by war will never forget the horror that is war.
The picture shown above of a soldier with a tear streaming down his face gives a silent insight into the hidden costs of war. We can relate to the soldier in a sense that we all have experienced fear, loss, and regret. Although we can relate to the emotions of a soldier, those who haven't put on a uniform cannot relate to the source of the emotions soldiers experienced as a result of war. We think of soldiers as tough, “be all you can be” heroes. We see them going off to war as a young, unbreakable, idealistic individuals. In reality, they are all just like we are — human. When soldiers return from war, perhaps they are broken in more ways than we will ever know.
Bibliography:
Glass, Brandon. "CRYING SOLDIER." Flickr. Yahoo! Web. 23 Mar. 2016.
Bibliography:
Glass, Brandon. "CRYING SOLDIER." Flickr. Yahoo! Web. 23 Mar. 2016.
This was a really strong connection to our work in class. I also felt a little strange writing these War is... statements seeing that I have never experienced war myself and I think you did an amazing job of summing up my feelings of respect and lack of understanding of war. I think that what you wrote is really reflective of the book, seeing that it was fiction and from the beginning we have been told that we will never truly understand war. Your piece does a good job of respectfully touching upon many of the sensitive topics of this unit that we as students, reluctantly admit we will never fully understand. Unless we are in the position of the men and women in uniform as you used in your picture. Great job!
ReplyDeleteI think this writing really portrayed the idea of perspective. In class, we shifted a lot of our focus on empathy. There is no real way to feel exactly what soldiers feel being that we havent been through the same experiences that they have. I really liked how you connected what a normal teenage conversation consists of and why we aren't speaking of the constant horror going on around the world. Our depiction of war is very different from one who has been there. This writing really stood out to me because im in the same shoes as you are where i havent been in the position to explain what war is really like. Great work Remy!
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