Barometer Rising & Generals Die in Bed .
The Enemies, Psychological Impact and Benefits from War.
The purpose of this essay isn't to show how many facts are known, but rather to demonstrate the understanding of the issues and material in the books. It will be a comparative essay between 2 books: Barometer Rising [BR] & Generals Die in Bed [GDB]. This essay will show how the 2 books can relate to a similar subject. The topics/questions that will be focused on and answered will be: Who is the "real" enemy? How are the soldiers and civilians transformed and how can war be a good thing?.
The first topic is one that can't easily be understood by a regular civilian. To be able to understand this, you have to place yourself in the soldiers" boots. In BR, for example, the enemy is simply who the leaders say are the enemy or basically who they are at war with. Not being in the trenches and seeing what the soldiers see will leave them with no other view on who the enemy is.
In GDB however, we see through the eyes of the soldiers. We see how they are the puppets fighting in a war to solve a political problem. We see how the "enemies" are human beings, and no different than the people that live down the street. The only reason they are killing each other is because their leaders are tell them to. .
The soldiers know themselves that they are forced to transform into robots. Even when out on rest, they are constantly doing drills, shining buttons, standing guard, and practice using their weapons. As the narrator says, "This is called out on rest." .
"The salute, the shining of our brass buttons, the correct way to twist a puttee a thousand thundering orders! A thousand trivial rules, each with a penalty for an infraction has made will-less robots of us all.".
This shows that they are forced into submission and must obey. They can't make any decisions, must eat what they are given, and basically follow another thousand rules.
