In her essay, “The Longest War,” Rebecca Solnit addresses the unrelenting and seemingly endless physical and sexual violence that affects thousands of women in the United States, and millions internationally, as nothing less than a “pandemic of violence by men against women” that is continuously disregarded for what it truly is- an assault on human and civil rights (2). Solnit presents many statistics throughout the essay, including the fact that women worldwide are “more likely to die or be maimed because of male violence”, because of the gendered violence that many refuse to acknowledge despite the plethora of data that backs the claims (5). Solnit asserts that for the ceaseless assaults to end, the violence needs to be clearly defined
A Better War¬-Part Two In the second half of the book written by Lewis Sorley, “A Better War, The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam” the American soldiers and the American public were in an uproar. The look into the last days of Vietnam for the United States is eye opening. In this review we will look at the affects of war on the American soldiers and a certain offensive.
What This Cruel War Was Over is a book written by historian Chandra Manning. The book takes the reader from the start of the Civil War, the Union surrendering Fort Sumter in chapter one, to the end of the Civil War, with General Lee’s surrender and the aftermath of the war, in chapter six and the conclusion chapter. Throughout the introduction, six chapters, and conclusion, Manning brings to life what is happening on the battlefields and in the political arena. She also brings to life what is going on in the minds of both the Union and Confederate men and slaves. Manning adds a depth to her book by including photos and drawings at the start of each chapter to foreshadow the upcoming chapter and give life to the events that are about to unfold.
Women are viewed as fragile and delicate, but strong enough to keep a house clean, kids in line and a happy husband. Women are expected to be stay at home moms and depend on their husbands for everything while having no opinions of their own. However, there are women who have overlooked those expectations and proved that women are capable of doing anything. Deborah Sampson and Elizabeth Van Lew are just two women who have helped break the norms of women’s roles in society. Sampson’s impressive braveness and loyalty to fight for her country against all odds have proved that women are capable to endure harsh horrors.
It is sometimes difficult for individuals to settle the discrepancy between truth and illusion, and consequently they drive others away, by shutting down. Mrs. Ross, in The Wars by Timothy Findley, is seen as brittle while she is attending church, and cannot deal with the cruel reality of the war and therefore segregates herself from the truth by blacking it out. As a result, she loses her eyesight, and never gets to solve the clash between her awareness of reality and the actuality of the world. She hides behind a veil, and her glasses to distance herself from reality. Mrs. Davenport has to wheel her around in Rowena’s chair to keep her awake, so she doesn’t harbour up subconscious feeling within her dreams, which she is unable to deal with.
The Slopes of War Essay The novel, The Slopes of War by N. A Perez, exhibits numerous emotional and physical effects of the battle in Gettysburg between the Confederacy and Union armies. The writer utilizes different quotes providing information illustrating the various obstacles that both armies faced. Apart from demonstrating the troubles/difficulties that the armies faced, the author also provides excerpts from one of the Union soldier’s sister, Bekah. To begin with, the writer displays an internal conflict in the Union army by using imagery.
A War of Self In his novel, A Separate Peace, Knowles uses the story of Gene Forrester to examine a dark aspect of human nature. Gene Forrester, the novel’s protagonist, fights an inner battle of jealousy and hatred towards his best friend, Phineas. Phineas, an athlete, charismatic charmer, and fearless boy is someone that Gene wishes he could be. Gene creates an enemy out of Phineas in his mind because of the “competition” that is their friendship.
The book The Best War Ever, by Michael C. C. Adams, is about World War II, the events that led up to the war, and the years following the war. Adams starts the book off explaining some myths that people have about the war. The biggest myth associated with the war is that it was the best war ever. Adams then spends the rest of the book talking about why this may or may not be true. In the following chapters, Adams explains the events that led to the war and the events that accorded during World War II.
Thesis: In 1995 following the outbreak of the Yugoslav wars, about 60,000 women were reposted to have experienced some form of sexual abuse and assault in the Bosnian genocide. Many of the rape happened with an intent to demoralize, inflict deep psychological terror, and fracture communities Rape Warfare by Beverly Allen addresses and expands on the use of rape as a genocidal strategy in the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks and Croatians. Allen’s purpose in writing Rape Warfare while expanding on the limited scholarship for strategies of rape in cases of genocide is first and foremost about circulating the stories and experiences of victims and survivors of genocidal rape. Many U.S. media outlets did not cover the outbreak of the Yugoslav wars and had not circulated the stories of trauma survivors who attempted to share in order to call attention to the plight of women in Bosnia.
In nearly all historical societies, sexism was prevalent. Power struggles between genders mostly ended in men being the dominant force in society, leaving women on a lower rung of the social ladder. However, this does not always mean that women have a harder existence in society. Scott Russell Sanders faces a moral dilemma in “The Men We Carry in Our Minds.” In the beginning, Sanders feels that women have a harder time in society today than men do.
Jill Lepore used quotes and images from English colonists and portraits to show how colonists wrote about their experiences during King Philip’s War and how the narrative of the war has changed throughout the centuries. It also sets how colonists will narrate wars for future centuries. She spoked about how their writings of the war had a consequence of temporally silencing the Native Americans version on the war and how people have forgotten or even have any knowledge of the war. She uses a Boston merchant, Nathaniel Saltonstall account tilted “A true but brief account of our losses since this cruel and mischievous war begun” written in July 1676 year after the war had begun. He lists towns such as Narragansett, Warwick, Seekonk and Springfield
The War You Don’t See is a documentary formally based around the subject of War and how the media controls and manipulates us to believe creative mistruths, partial lies and cover-ups. The Film Was Directed and Produced by John Pilger, an Australian War Correspondent that was active during the wars in Vietnam. The film follows Pilger and his friend Alan Lowery as they take you through wars in Afghanistan, Iran and Israel/Palestine and show you what really goes on behind the scenes, the war you don’t see. Only seconds into the film, our attention is drawn to a very disturbing video clip previously released by Wikileaks, "Light 'em all up," comes the voice on the radio as we see footage from an Apache gunship celebrating the indiscriminate
Yuri Kochiyama is a Japanese-American civil rights activist, and author of “Then Came the War” in which she describes her experience in the detention camps while the war goes on. December 7th, is when Kochiyama life began to change from having the bombing in Pearl Harbor to having her father taken away by the FBI. All fishing men who were close to the coast were arrested and sent into detention camps that were located in Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota. Kochiyama’s father had just gotten out of surgery before he was arrested and from all the movement he’d been doing, he begun to get sick. Close to seeing death actually, until the authorities finally let him be hospitalized.
Entry 9: Defiance According to the UN Secretary-General, “In 2012, almost half of all women who were victims of international homicide worldwide were killed by an intimate partner or family member,” (“Violence Against Women”) while men only accounted for six percent. November 25th marks the International Day Against Violence Towards Women as well as the deaths of the three Mirabal sisters. The novel In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez describes their journey to serve as “models for women fighting against injustice of all kinds” (Alvarez 324). In the Time of the Butterflies can be looked upon through a Feminist lens by analyzing how women defy and overcome their stereotypical gender roles.
War, something that sounds so cliché yet endeavours a greater meaning; a meaning of finding your true self within yourself, and seeing your natural, brave or mediocre side. The concept of bravery and heroic men is often the label associated with war; however, in Timothy Findley’s The Wars, it is in fact the exact opposite. The Wars is an anachronistic example of what one goes through both physically and mentally. Findley accurately portrays the protagonist, Robert Ross, as a naïve nineteen year old who wishes to escape his excruciating feelings of reality for being held accountable for Rowena’s death by enlisting into war, as well as to adhere to societal norms. Robert is an incompetent young boy that achieves most of his knowledge of war from
Most people can understand that when a soldier comes back from war, he is not going to be the same. He has seen too much and done too much to still be the innocent boy he had been. In the novel, The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh, he not only puts the effect of war for soldiers, but for regular civilians as well. The novel is saying that war affects females even though they could not fight in war. The message is conveyed through female characters that have felt sorrow and emptiness during and after the war.