Experience of War

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how one of the most important ideas that both authors, Barker of "Regeneration"and Mason of "In Country", seem to be portraying is that experience of war is not restricted to the soldiers, the combatants, those on the front line. It looks at how they are trying to get the message out that war effects everyone, as a collective and as an individual and how it it affects women and children and the men that were not fighting. It examines how "Regeneration" follows the stories of several men in a World War 1 hospital in Scotland for those suffering from shell shock whereas "In Country" is set eighteen years after the Vietnam War and uses opinionated narration from the view point of an eighteen year old girl who just missed the war.

From the Paper:

"One of the most powerful ways that Pat Barker and B.A .Mason show that experience is not restricted to the front line is in the fact that neither author use front line action in their novels. The novels are very similar in this respect. The lack of action from the war is startling, but the portrayal of it in both novels is very real. The authors it seems, from the very beginning, set out their ideal that it is not contact and combat that are the experience, but the effect of the war upon the person. Women cannot engage in combat in either of the novels, but in both the authors show women to have experience of the war. The authors set out this idea by the consistent opinion of the male characters that "women weren't over there, so they can't really understand", while continually challenging this with the female characters."

More papers on Experience of War:

• Book Review # 29964 : "A Rumor of War"
• Comparison Essay # 47143 : "American Experience with War"
• Analytical Essay # 23453 : "A Rumor of War"

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