The Presentation of Conflict in War Literature

Morally impingeed acknowledgments atomic number 18 present in all tercet texts, as individuals trial to make a Judgment betwixt what they grasp as right and wrong. In Regeneration Rivers make outs an Internal ethical involution which Intensifies as the novel progresses. Whilst observing fellow therapist Holland work, Rivers is forced to challenge the moral legitimacy of his struggle contri thoions. Holland employs an intense abidance of therapy on c erstwhilentrated patient Calla. A ambition he has shortly after the experience brings this dilemma to the front of his sound judgement, in the dream he had stood in Wellheads place.The dream confabmed to be supposeing Dont latter yourself. There Is no distinction. Electro Convulsive Therapy (ACT) was, and cool off Is, a controversial treatment. Frequently roled as a form of social control, and the un definitety surrounding its effects, had led it to be execute a ejaculate of great fear for those it was enforced upon. The language used in this race by Holland emphasis the assertion of his control over Calla. Barker uses some(prenominal) imperatives and modal verbs, much(prenominal) as you must behave as becomes the bomber I expect you to be and you must talk before you leave me.The impression here is very authoritative and could make readers purport intrusive whilst reading. Similarly, in Birdsong the main character, Stephen, experiences the horrors of struggle and although initially emotionally detached grows to look at just close to the men he is serving with. The fate of his comrades fuels disdain for the war leading him to denounce it as an exploration of how far men spate be degraded. As Paul Salad (1999) says the pure fury and intensity of the resource created is Rebounded shocking and, ultimately, desperately uncomfortable to read, and the poignancy of the description by Faults creates an vast Impact on the reader. Despite this when Stephen Is Injured and offered a desk Job w hilst abide by n hospital he Is appalled at the Idea of cosmos separated from the men he had fought with. He despised the war, just now he could non leave. This is similar to Swanson in Regeneration, who writes a poetry with the problems When are you pass back to them again? Are they non still your brothers through our air?.This moral conflict can be amplified beyond the individual. In the poem Easter 1 91 6 W. B Yeats explores the cost of freedom. The riposte of Home Rule had dominated Irish Politics for several eld until ultimately coming to a head In April 1916, when a base of rebels seized the UAPITA city of Dublin. Yeats demonstrates his mixed feelings with the oxymoron phrase a terrible beauty is born, by personifying this freedom with the verb born, Yeats seems to be implying that the cause has taken on a action of its own and those who created it no longer have control.Through the simile as a mother names her child when sleep at last has come on limbs that had run wild, Yeats suggests that the rebel leaders had child deal en therefromiasm for their cause, but Like children were naive The true brilliance of Yeats poem is, as sort out Kibbled (1995) said, is the honesty in which he debates the core, this honesty makes the poem more emotive and, moreover, gives modern readers an insight into those turbulent dates. The outbreak of war came at a time when rigid social structures where in place there was a sense that those who didnt fit the ideal where not to be accepted such as homosexuals.The war brought about change, some matters where by no message altered dramatically but it at least brought the old principles into conflict with the modernistic. Whereas other texts press out us individuals struggling to accept their personal identities n a society that condemns them, the poem The Soldier by Rupert Brooke presents a character whose position is defended by the masses (through propaganda) and is no query as to who they are and what they stand for.His certainty is unembellished in the opening termination of the poem, if I should die think only this of me, this imperative expresses his confidence and as the poem is written in sonnet form his love for his clownish cannot be denied. However, Brooke never actually saw active service and so his genuine understanding of the war is feeble. Stalwartly (2002) writes of Brooke had Brooke lived to experience The entrenches of the Western Front, it is hard to mean that the poet Would not have written as realistically as Owen . We must thus ask whether his opinion would differ if he had the experiences of his contemporaries and without the weight of public disagreement on his shoulders it is easy to see why Brooke was so self-assured in his poem he is a soldier poet non a war poet. Contrastingly, in Regeneration an element of Robert Gravers identity does not agree at all with social views of the time. Homosexuality was actually abominable in the United Kingdom from 1533 up until 1967, wherefore for Graves the issue goes beyond disapproval.In chapter 17 Graves supposes Swanson about Peter a homosexual they two knew of on the front line he was arrested for soliciting outside the local anaesthetic barracks. The shock of this leads Graves to denounce his identity, saying its only fair to tell you that Since that happened my affections have been running in more normal channels. The suspension mark here imply uncertainty and the abstract noun normal is used almost as a synonym as Graves doesnt seem able to distinctly associate himself with homosexuality.It is clear in this passage that Graves commissions greatly about how others perceive him this consciousness leads to him changing who he is. Although in Birdsong, Weir experiences similar interrogation due to him still being a virgin it is not seen as wrong but rather a source of amusement and sorrow for his comrades. Stephen takes it upon himself to solve Weirs problem and forces him i nto a situation which leaves him shaken and pale. Both Weir and Graves feel a certain amount of shame for the uncommon elements of their identity, but a key difference is that Graves allows himself to be changed.Undoubtedly, Weir is conflicted in his feelings towards his virginity, it leads him to be make full with anxiety but yet he also convinces himself that what he had missed could not be remarkable. The verb could suggest doubt and it is unclear whether Weir is ever certain in his conclusions, despite his reluctance to give onward something that is linked so intrinsically to his own identity he still feels it had come to zipper but humiliation. In a private letter to his mother Wilfred Owen writes how he just about broke stamp out and let himself drown.This sentence alone encapsulates the psychological struggle men underwent in the thin himself and allowed his self-will to slip. In his poem delineation we see what led to this breakdown. The ABA rhyme scheme highlights th e cyclical nature of trench warfare and the anaphoric use of but nothing happens further supports this idea, someways the men always end up back where they started and their brains ached from it. It can be argued that being Worried by silence is worse than the The alternative and psychological breakdowns are a result of the repeated tension of waiting.Owen manages to pull himself back up and carry on but for some men it wasnt as easy. fire in Regeneration struggles to escape his all consuming psychological trauma. however Rivers, the doctor who is supposed to be helping him overcome this, is defeated by it. In chapter 15 Rivers goes to visit fire but he is quick to see that he is struggling to re-establish himself and however hard Burns tried to driveway the memories of the war behind him, the nightmare followed. The use of the verb thrust here implies force and suggests that Burns is desperately trying to escape but this is a battle he is loosing.Burns illness takes over him mi nd and body, preventing him from eating and turning him yellow skinned. Philip Gibbs, a journalist on the Western Front, later recalled that the shell-shock cases were the rack up to see and the worst to cure Sturdy, men shaking with ague, mouthing uniform madman, figures of dreadful terror, speechless and uncontrollable. Brenna in Birdsong suffers a similar fate. Elizabeth goes to visit him in a care home in order to seek out more study on her grandfather and the war.Brenna kept his sanity through the wars horrors (such as force his brothers rotting body out of a shell hole) but once he returned home his mental state declined. What is clear is that Brenna was alone in his battle with his psyche, Elizabeth curses how she cannot restore poor Brakemans life or take away the pity of the past. As seen in Exposure Brakemans life is monotonous. He spent his entire post war existence in and out of domain of a function hospitals and care homes without a single visitor. Without anythin g or anyone to cling to Brenna is overpowered by his psychological conflict.We see a conflict in sexual activity roles during the war and thus it is manifested in war literature. Women were evolving in the absence of men and when the men did eventually come back they were expected to regress. There is a subversion of gender roles, women must become more hardened and masculine to be able to support themselves and their remaining family, while the devastation of the war brings out the more benevolent feminine qualities in men. The war broke down boundaries and the conflict lay in the perceptions of what now separates men and women.The women in Regeneration, Legalize in particular, represents a new radical form of women. Legalize relished her freedom so oftentimes that doesnt essential her husband back on leave or even When its over and alludes to divorcing him. At the time divorces were still infrequent and frowned upon so through her consideration of it we see how the mind set of women has progressed. Prior seems bewildered by this noting women have changed so much during the war and how he was so out of touch with women. Siegfried Swanson wrote an ironic sonnet about women entitled The Glory of Women.There is an accusatory tone running throughout the poem, such as the anaphoric use of the first person personal pronoun you. This use of direct address emphasis Caissons frustration with those at home. The opening line of the poem presents the idea that Eros. In this poem women are seen to love heroics but this is a one sided opinion. Women gave out white feathers at home to those who were not serving to denounce them as cowards, on the surface this seems quite inure and we can see why Swanson puts women on par with the enemy -German mother.However, the women openhanded out these feathers no doubt had husbands, brothers and sons trash on the front line, therefore seeing men safe at home no doubt enraged them. Why should their family fight and die while so me layover at home? These conflicting views question whether indeed the greatest conflicts are.. teenage one person and himself, it may be that (Sharon Mennonite 2002) gender stereotyping may interlace and repress the personal development of individuals of both genders. The parallels between Isabella and Elizabeth are evident both have affairs and illegitimate children as a result.However, the plenty in which these events happen are very different. In pre- war France Isabella is condemned by Renee for her affair, he shouts that she will go to hell for what she has through. The reference to her father and youre father What can he do? Gives insight into how women were viewed at the time, as objects or sessions of the men in their lives. However, Elizabethan affair with a married man in the rim is met with little scorn or resistance. This is again indicative of the time, after both wars women had begun to campaign for equality with movements such as the Suffragettes.When Elizabe th tells her friends they are dis blissful but for sounding reasons such as Jealousy, even her mother who is from an older generation is pleased for her. The similarities between these two women may have been done by Faults to show the changing attitudes towards gender and shows how after the conflicting years progress is eventually made. The conflicting opinions of what was happening on the battlefield created a huge disengagement between the soldiers and the public.In The Hero by Siegfried Swanson a mother is told of the death of her son. However, she is not told the complete truth, she is told that her son died honorably and as hed have paying attentioned. The truth is though that her son was a useless swine (or so the brother officer thinks) and he died panicking down a trench. The annalistic imagery used here creates a stark line of business with phrases such as her glorious boy, this further emphasis the difference in what those at home re being told compared with what is actually happening.Both stanza one and terce have a matching rhyme scheme (BACK), this could have been done by Swanson to show the two versions of the story, whereas the falter in the rhyme in the second stanza (ABACA) shows the discrepancy of the gallant lies. These lies and propaganda lead to soldiers such as billy Prior feeling disconnected when they are home on leave. When go along the beach with Sarah, Prior describes the public as black figures, interchangeable insects this metaphor extends as Prior describes their movements saying theyswarm across the beach like insects.The connotations of the negative imagery of insects, especially flies, are foulness and decay. This separation showed how the war took lives in every sense of the word as some soldiers couldnt find a place in society after the war, Prior feels like a ghost among them. Weir experiences a similar feeling of disconnection when home on leave, he goes to visit his parents and feels strangely formal. It appears to him that the England he thought he was fighting for ceases to mean anything to him on a Weir to wonder if he was going to say any word of greeting. Throughout his stay he isWaiting for the moment when the beaten(prenominal) wash of normality would come over him but normality seems muzzy to him in the way he knew it. This indifference quickly rises into anger for Weir, after his leave he calls those at home fat pigs who have got no idea what lives are led for them. He then goes on to wish a great bombardment would smash down And kill the full-length lot of them Particularly my family. . Like in The Hero the annalistic imagery emphasis the disdain Weir has for those at home and this anger fuels the conflict between the battlefield and the home front.