Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien and the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen are two wonderful pieces of literature that depict the horrors of war in a way that is both visceral and astute. The images, the relationships, the deaths, the birth of the unknown void, and the perils of being in a life or death situation are brilliantly told within the context of a battlefield. But what are the true horrors of war? Are they simply the awful experiences and the loss of life? Is the horror of it all the act of tolerating it and then becoming another person after? Regardless of what people experience during a war, it changes everyone involved. The loss of innocence, the loss of hope, the loss of sanity, the loss of the known, of stability, those are the true horrors of war. Although both works deal with the effects...
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