Rites of Spring and Soldier's Home

The two passages given were “Rites of Spring” by Modris Eksteins and “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway, both of the two given works are about a soldiers view on war. In Eksteins’ work he talks about the gruesome view of the battlefront. Soldiers describe the various smells of decomposition and death that they faced while trying to survive the fight. The conditions in which they were fighting were also described, with the trenches full of mud and large vermin. The soldiers talk how the different ways the vermin made the fight more difficult and about various ways to rid the trenches of them, which included rats, flies, mites, nits, fleas, mosquitoes, and beetles. The conditions with the rats were so bad that it is stated, “The battle against the rats was as serious at times as that against the human enemy”.  Another aspect that affected the soldiers and their spirits while in the fight was the weather, it was cold and raining. They describe how even no amount of artillery fire could break a man’s resistance like the wet and cold. In such weather it also made it hard for the soldiers to have any appetite. The food was frozen together and made it hard to enjoy. The rain was described as non -stop flooding trenches and creating pools of which men sank in, “sewer like craters filled with slime that comes of rain, earth, and decomposition”. In Hemingway’s piece it talks more about the effect of fighting that war had on soldiers. The soldier talked about returned home after much of the others did, after all the hype of everyone being heroes had passed. It describes his transition from war to his return back into normal society. He rejoins his previously enjoyed activities and began to notice the changes in the societal culture. The way people dressed and the way women wore their hair it all changed but he still had the same opinions on such things as when he left for war. He even states that he liked Germany better and wished he could have stayed, but here he was at home on the porch of his parent’s house. His mother discusses her worries about his efforts to return to the real world, she fears he has lost his ambition. After a mean exchange for words and hurting his mother’s feelings, he began to really try to return to normal. The two passages just relate because it can be shown that the conditions of war can have many effects on a person. Seeing everything that those men saw in the gruesome and unforgiving war can change them, it can cause them to harden and have trouble adjusting to regular society in which they are not fighting for their lives every day.

Blog Post Number One, Ready Set Write....

So it has come to the time for me to write my first blog entry. Though I fully understand the concept that of which if we write more it will help us in turn be better writer’s but it can just be a very daunting task to do, for example what does one write about? Where do I even begin, it’s a difficult question because of the fact when I am not given a prompt I don’t know what to write about and of course it is of open understanding that we mustn’t write about things that are to personal but when I do decide to journal that’s how I get words onto the page.  So where does that leave me, I may be able to write about previous trips, fond memories, what I learned in class today, the people I run into on a daily basis or even what I did today. But I highly doubt that any of those topics will be interesting to whomever may read this blog entry, but I did remember that Mr. Parkhurst said that we could even write about not knowing what to write about and that the very process of writing will just help us so that is what I’m doing. Here I go writing about not knowing what to write about, it seems almost like the concept of inception. Maybe my first post can be about me and the moment I first knew what I wanted to do when I “grew up”, cliché yes I know but still it obviously played an important role in where I am now. When I was younger I whole-heartedly believed that my dad had the coolest job on the planet, although he was just an animal control officer that man was my hero. Beginning at age six my dad would bring the most amazing animals home for us to see ranging from reptiles to birds to even small mammals, I even once have woken up to a snapping turtle in my bathtub. One night we had gone to the shelter to visit my day, late at night, and he told me he had a very special surprise for me. It turns out that that surprise was a fawn, only standing about two feet tall it was there looking at me and it was the most amazing moment in my mere seven years of life. From the moment I touched and helped feed that fawn I knew I wanted to work with animals just like that. As of now I am a forest wildlife management major and I couldn’t be happier with my choice, getting the hands on experience and with the chance of one day becoming a wildlife biologist has been worth it all. Although my dad may not be here to see me achieve this dream, I know that he is the inspiration behind all my hard work and it was him that inspired me to do what I love.