War literature has common themes such as loss, patriotism and Dissertation

War lit has common themes such as loss, nationalism and futility, how far is this true in relation to the literature of ww - Dissertation ExampleSuch sentiments continued as basic contend themes in various poems, dramas, and novels, right to the end of the nineteenth carbon. With the coming of the twentieth century, save there appeared a wave of modernism that removed all told ideologies of love story from the realms of war literature. Romanticism, heroism, and patriotism were replaced by the theme of death, cynicism, and dilemma on the futility of the wars fought and lives lost. The Vietnam War, which belongs to the postmodern era, conveyed a picture of realism that focussed on primarily on evils of war. This machinationicle will examine the transformations in the war literature that took place for almost all over a century, starting with the nineteenth century era of romanticism and hero worship, to the modern twenty- first century wars that speak of death and gory in the b attlefield, with special emphasis on WWI, WWII, and the Vietnam war. War themes in the literature of WWI, WWII, and the Vietnam War 1 Introduction Soldiers, prepare Our reasonableness is Heavens cause / Soldiers, prepare Be worthy of our cause / Prepare to meet our fathers in the sky / Prepare, O troops, that are to fall to-day Prepare, prepare William Blake (A War poem to Englishmen) Throughout history, war has always played the role of a major determining factor in shaping a countrys socio-economic, cultural, and religious aspects. War, right from start of human civilisation, received societal approval, until the end of the 19th century. Therefore, it is of little wonder that war has been a persistent theme in art and literature, throughout the various ages. War literature always mirrored the hopes and aspirations of men in the battlefield, and also that of the social club back home. There was a conscious feeling of patriotism, which intermingled with a pervading sense of futi lity about the lives lost in the various wars. The literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, also show a certain air of romanticism attached to the notions of war and the heroic actions of the brave soldiers at the front. However, all these started changing with the beginning of the twentieth century, when war slowly became a more grim matter, an issue of death, dying, and endless suffering, with a complete lack of the puritanical glorification of the war. We notice this slow transformation during the WWI when the era of modernism with its themes ofindividualism, a deep mistrust towards all state and religious institutions, and a general air of breaking away from social and conventional norms, entered the literary world. The basic principles of modernism can be summarised as related to concerns centred upon the deepest problems of modern life derive from the postulate of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhel ming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life (Simmel, 2004, 79). The Vietnam War was however like a huge jolt, which shook the absolute social world out of its repose, while also transforming the genre of war literature, making it more realistic, and reflecting the macro scale destruction that war actually spelled out. The Vietnam War further removed all traces of nationalism from