Mental And Physical Left By War example essay topic

2". War leaves mental as well as physical scars". Discuss the truth of this statement using evidence from No Pretty Pictures, short stories, extracts (from Night and other text) and poetry. When something drastic happens in your life it always leaves an impact on your memories. This has happened to those who have lived through wars, not only memories but also mental and physical scars. Some of those who have endured wars first hand and have suffered with scars both mental and physical left by war have recorded their experiences in autobiographies and poems.

In 'Losses' Randall Jarrell, shares with the reader the losses and pain he suffered while he was at war and the pain he suffered after the war also. Although he survived he writes", It was not dying: everybody died. It was not dying: we had died before". He describes the death of others whom he cared for or knew and the destruction of his surroundings. Something inside him died, he was never the same after seeing massive damage inflicted on everything and he expresses this. In the last verse of 'Losses', he says,' It was not dying- no, not ever dying; But in the night I died I dreamed that I was dead, And the cities said to me: 'Why are you dying?

We are satisfied if you are'; but why did I die?' Jarrell shares with the audience a taste of what was going on inside his head and sharing with the reader that dying doesn't mean death of the body, but he is dying in such a way that his soul and personality was becoming different from before the war. He was killing people and his friends are being killed. He thought eventually everything around him will turn to dust, and was afraid he would lose his sanity and the person he used to be, thus leaving him mental scars from trauma caused by war and physical scars inflicted by war. This was also the case with Elie Wiesel the author of Night. He describes many incidents, which were so intense that it scarred him mentally. In the third chapter of his autobiography he records how he is separated from his mother He had no idea what could happen to her and feared that she might die.

A few minutes later he was confronted with death itself. He was standing in front of a gigantic fire thinking he would be thrown in, but instead he witnessed dead people being thrown into the fire, babies and young children. "Is it surprising that I could not sleep after that? Sleep fled from my eyes", he recalls. He was so afraid that this would be his fate and the fact that people like him were being tortured in front of his very eyes.

He describes this when he says", Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live", Seeing this kills a part of him; he is no longer the person he was, but now someone who is in fear of his life and has seen the height of torture. He describes the barracks where he sees grown men treated like animals, they too were scarred and the reality of this left a mental scar. The Nazis inflicted physical pain on him, and bruises were caused by being battered around in boxcars and stuffed together in small rooms. Anita Lobel's account of war is quite different to those of the other authors. At this time she was a young girl. Her memories were mostly in smells and tastes and the description of what she thought the adults around her were thinking.

Anita suffered many mental scars, she describes it as", Terror hunger and humiliation". Anita expresses the heartache and agony she went through when she lost her brother and was left with the Nazis, witnessing and also being put into cattle carts to be taken to Auschwitz, knowing people were being left to die of starvation and sicknesses or be tortured, gassed and then burnt to destroy their bodies. Such things were hard for an adult to go through let alone a child; she suffered severe mental scars and went through stages of confusion, blaming herself because she was a Jew. Later she converted to Catholicism. Something inside her had changed. She was exposed to the world and all its demons at an early age, which left her with mental scars.

War is a terrible thing for a human to go through at any age. When people are exposed to and involved in war they watch people they know and loved ones die. They see all the things they knew, destroyed. All these things build up inside of them and a part of them is challenged, confused or simply it dies.

Although the physical effect of war on people and the surroundings, which were destroyed, is obvious, war also affects a person entirely and something inside their soul is changed and they are mentally and physically scarred for life. War does, indeed, leave mental and as well as physical scars..