ESSAY CEMETERY

This is a partial summary because I found this text very difficult. Critique of Violence Is violence a legitimate means to just ends? Natural law considers that men have a right to violence because such behavior is natural, as long as the means is just. The legal system follows natural law closely regarding violence and allows violence for moral means. In contrast with natural law, positive law sees violence as the product of history. Positive law focuses on the means rather than the ends. Theses on the Philosophy of History I ??? II People are envious only of other people who live in their own time, and not in the future. People define happiness by achievement of "redemption". The past is linked to the present and the present to the future in that every generation feels they foresaw the coming of the next. III Historians who don't distinguish between major and minor events think everything is important and nothing should be lost. IV Historians reinterpret the past accord...

Themes Disillusionment with religion: A ludicrous oleograph of our Savior preaching from a boat, which we always referred to as jocular Jesus. … Finally, when with flushed faces we sauntered out into the sunshine, he remarked that he'd half a mind to go and look for a young lady to make his wife jealous. I said that there was always the cathedral to look at, and discovered that I'd unintentionally made a very good joke. Violence and danger lurking around. Audio and visual representations: But on the horizon the bombardment bumped and thudded in a continuous bubbling grumble. … While I lay on the floor in my flea-bag the blackness of the night framed in the window was lit with incessant glare and flash of guns. Innocence corrupted - conceptions of purity shattered by violence: The Seventh Division Battle Plan didn't look aggressively unpleasant on paper as I transcribed it into my note-book. Rose Trench, Orchard Alley, Apple Alley, and Willow Avenue, were among the first obj...

The following is a summary of chapters 1-5. Chapter 1 The narrator George Sherston is sorry to be leaving the Marais (France, probably) with his battalion. The narrator is an English officer of rather high rank. They move to Morlancourt. The morning after they arrive they receive the plan for their battle that week. George and Durley go investigate the front line in preparation for some fighting the next day. They note how the countryside has changed because of the war. The day of fighting arrives but the attack is postponed 48 hours. No one is sure why. George feels empty about the upcoming battle. They settle into New Trench. He is thinking about England and supposes that it is for home that he is at war. George is informed that gaps in the wire have to be widened to let their battalion pass through from the trenches quickly to attack. He and eight men set off after midnight to cut wire after artillery fire had slackened a little. It is not entirely over however and two men are wound...

Soldiers often boasted of torturing prisoners. The narrator recounts two such instances of which he heard first hand, of a Canadian and an Australian who captured German prisoners but then killed them with Mills bombs instead of bothering with them. He recounts other instances. The Allies had on their side Turcos, North African native infantry. A Turco soldier used to ask a British cook for a jam every day. When the cook tired of this, he told him to bring him a beheaded German and he'd get his jam – and the Turco soldier did. A captain of a battalion of a Surrey regiment shares how his troops are so bad that during the last two battles he had to shoot one of his own men to get the rest out of the trench. They discuss how arm drills are good for morale, and that divisions that do well at drills and have guts perform best in battle, even if drills aren't directly related to actual fighting. When men are able to continue the drill well despite confused or impossible orders from t...

Compton Mackenzie Futility of war The way fear makes us behave – shut off the brain and concentrate on happy or banal but certainly not fearful things … War:  This is indicative of everyone's attitude towards WWI. Funny or compelling at first but serious really. Coping mechanisms:

Preface At the very beginning of WWI, Germany lost and so built a 500-mile long trench line from Belgium to Switzerland. Failed efforts on the part of the Allies to break the trench line led them to look for a way around to Germany through Gallipoli, Turkey. The Allies thought that the arrival of the battle fleet would scare the Turkish government into making peace. Some ships were sunk and so Allied troops attacked Gallipoli by land. The Turkish retaliated and it was bloody, and as a result, the Turkish front was stalemated, just like that in Europe. The Allies persisted with the attempt to defeat the Turks for months. The story On a day when renewing fighting was a possibility, the narrator leaves his tent gladly to work out some administrative business. The atmosphere was gloomy because there were many casualties in the last bout of fighting. The Brits, the French, and the Senegalese had blundered on the battlefield. He is on his way to headquarters to ask for the raise in pay and t...

Analysis It is easy to pop dreams, because they are inflated with pretty thoughts like a balloon. So instead of refuting/rebutting communism… A selfish gene always overtakes a population of altruists (converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community. ") Against communal property: entropy; living like pigs in a hotel I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance. There is a way around this. Work harder and get your own property. Or was this when there was no class mobility? The note of the ...

In the current state of capitalism, people are forced to live for others, to be altruistic. This happens because poverty is ubiquitous and people are moved to help. These good intentions culminate in negative results: the aid extended maintains the status quo of poverty (the poor make do with what they are given). This does not allow for a systemic change that would solve the root of the problem and not merely its symptoms.  Socialism would amend this by providing a systemic social change. Private property will be made public (communism which he calls socialism), but there should be no government. Along with socialism, individualism is also necessary (also, socialism will promote individualism). Individualism is achieved by not working and pursuing pleasurable pastimes. Very few people achieve this currently. The rest work like beasts and have no time to self-actualize. Maintaining private property is a fuss, and so should be abolished. The poor should rebel against their sorry sta...

White, Hayden. "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact."  Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Ed. Brian Richardson. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2002. 191-210. Print. White explores the inherent problem of objectivity in historical accounts. Fiction and history have been treated as distinct genres; White argues that historical accounts are narratives and ought to be analyzed as one does fiction rather than science. The writing down of historical events is not regulated by a universally agreed upon set of criteria like science and thus must be subject to interpretation. Historical accounts are essentially stories pieced together from facts and chronologies, and some are highlighted as more important than others. Furthermore, they are emotionally colored by the preferences and culture of the historian. For example, a historical situation is not inherently tragic or comic. Its painting as such may even be necessary for a culture, especially if des...