Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A study found that from 1965 to 1975 showed that The New York Times mentioned the
names of only 726 of the 58,220 American military personnel killed in Vietnam. This was
conducted by going through every New York Times article from those years with the word
“Vietnam” in it, surprisingly, it only found biographical information about 16 dead service
members, and photos of 14. This felt like the first moment in the U.S where journalists and
outlets were not the side of its military. This project explores whether or not the depiction of war
has changed from both a veteran and journalistic standpoint. Looking at questions such as: What
is the author's role in conflict response? What does it feel like a suitable amount of time before
an artistic response to war? Who should we rely upon to write about war? What do we accept
today as war literature and how its context and changing global situations influence it? How can
A small problem with writing about history is that there is a lot of it, and there is always
more of it every year. For the sake of time, this study will attempt to cover the portrayal of every
major military conflict from the last one hundred years as of 2019.
There is a new type of war developing, one unlike the first and second world wars.
Within these wars, governments would transport millions of resources and men to fight on the
front lines. Today, wars have gotten a lot smaller, yet are equally, at times, more violent and
Full Out invasions of other countries have also become less common in recent history.
The most recent one to date would be the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003. This of course
did not go so well. Details of that Conflict here. This large failure has made it hard for
because it is more attractive to voters back home. A prime example of this was the 2011
overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya. This NATO-backed campaign in which the Libyan rebel
militiamen, who dominated the TV screens, acted as a mopping-up force following devastating
air attacks.
Abusses of human rights have become a standard justification for foreign interventions,
and accounts of such abuses may be true. But media reporting tends to be unbalanced, often
misleading, and sometimes manufactured. In Libya, human rights organizations exposed the
From the perspective of anyone who has witnessed and survived war, the emotion evoked
from it is relatively consistent. Arthur Rimbaud’s Le Dormeur Du Val (The Sleeper of the
Valley) was written when he was 16 during the the war against france and Prussia in 1870. He
was frequently running away from home and traveling on foot, he recalled what he saw through
poetry. Sadly some the linguistic impact is taken away in translation, but most of its rawness and
C’est un trou de verdure, où chante une It’s a green hollow, where a river is singing
rivière
Crazily hanging on the grasses rags
Accrochant follement aux herbes des
haillons Of silver; where the sun, from the proud
mountain,
D’argent; où le soleil, de la montagne fière,
Is shinning: it’s a little valley bubbling with
sunlight.
Luit: c’est un petit val qui mousse de A young soldier, his mouth open, his head bare,
rayons.
And the nape of his neck bathing in cool blue
Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue, watercress,
Et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson Sleeping; he is stretched out on the grass, under
bleu, the skies,
Dort; il est étendu dans l’herbe, sous la Pale in his green bed where the light falls like
nue, rain.
Pâle dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut. Feet in the gladiolas, he is sleeping.Smiling like
Les pieds dans les glaïeuls, il dort. Souriant A sick child would smile, he takes a nap:
comme
Nature, rock him warmly: he is cold.
Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un
somme: Fragrances do not make his nostrils quiver;
Nature, berce-le chaudement: il a froid. He sleeps in the sun, hand on the breast,
Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa Peacefully. He has two red holes in his right side.
narine;
A large theme within this poem is nature, while describing this dead soldier, he
also goes on to describe the environment around him. It almost gives a sort of peace to the poem.
Had one never known what the context of this poem was, you might have never thought this was
Another way of how writers are influenced is also by the Military institution itself.
Specifically within American culture, the Vietnam war was a very notable moment in which
have always used medals to reward and identify behaviors that they want to emulate their troops.
The Medal of Honor, the highest award given by the U.S. before Vietnam, usually went to those
who lost their lives or risked their lives by going on the offensive to kill enemy fighters.
Nowadays that's not the case. Instead the award is now centralized around displaying acts of
Valor. There was a change to awarding those who saved lives rather than took them. There
doesn't seem to be a problem with this however, wanting to emulate acts of valor is a great thing
to want to institute amongst th ranks. Yet most importantly, this shift echoed changes in the
1960s and 1970s ' wider American culture – a shift toward celebrating individual autonomy and
self - expression. In news photos of service members in Vietnam, civilians saw this new attitude
by wearing buttons saying "Love" or "Ambushed at Credibility Gap”. This was how soldiers
cried out against both the mistreatment of the media, and both their own country.