War, Life and Death in Badens Be Quiet, Soldier - Essay Example

War, Life and Death in Baden’s Be Quiet, Soldier The of horrors of war is a common theme in literature. However, different writers choose different approaches to this difficult task. Some of them focus on the scenes of fights or render the war through the notions of friendship, love or hope. Ali Bader uses the opposition of life and death to render war from the psychological point of view which makes his story interesting to read. His writing style, focus on details and inner monologues of the narrator together create a full picture of psychological state of a soldier who has to see death every day and participate in war operations. This story is very engaging due to the fact that Baden does not only show actions; he inserts necessary inner thoughts of the narrator into the story line. Life and death are two central in the story as they are applied to the appropriate context. The plot is designed in a way to make the appearance of death unexpected. The closeness to death makes the feeling of suspense very intense. Defeated expectancy effect which creates the culmination renders the feeling of horror and despair. The story has a complex narrator. Obviously, it is told as a memory of the grown up narrator about his years in military. Differences between memories and present day comments can be identified by the use of tense. Recollections are written in the past tense while comments are inserted in the present tense. For instance, one can see this difference in the lines “At the time I was often preoccupied with my physical appearance” and “Until today I wonder just how during this time of fighting they had the time to greet me with smiles that I’ll never forget” (Baden). They correspond to different layers of time mixed in the story. The essay is told from the perspective of young and inexperienced soldier who takes the same position as the reader in the story. Limited narrative perspective intensifies feelings it evokes. Moreover, it helps to identify with the narrator in the story and participate in it for the reader. Increased attention to the green socks which attracted the attention of the narrator makes this effect even more dramatic. People do not talk about the dead in this way. The focus on this little detail shows makes all readers feel confidents that the soldiers are alive. Moreover, the socks are perceived as rather annoying objects because they are too bright for the gloomy and dark environment. The descriptions of the setting are very masculine. They are minimalistic in details and very laconic in verbal representation if actions and feelings. This narrative style creates the feeling of reality of everything described in the story. Moreover, this laconic description of settings and events is contrasted to their inner perception. Every detail is linked with the inner world of the narrator who copes with his own fear of war. For instance, he feels “ashamed” because of his comic outlook with no regard to the fact that all people around him were wet and dirty (Baden). Such little details about inner state of the narrator are very helpful for understanding the story. It is interesting that themes of war and death, which are usually represented in opposition, cooperate in this story. The elements of opposition are presents as well; for instance in the sentence “You doubt death, but you never doubt life” (Baden). It is clear that soldiers who are close to their own death want to live even more. Life becomes the highest unconditional value people have as “Through an imminent death you become more deeply acquainted with life” (Baden). Ruins and burnt houses represent death as symbols of destruction. They warn young soldiers that the death is always near, and all of them are afraid of it. Silence is one more necessary linked to death. Unlike Hollywood movies where soldiers sing and win, this story does not guarantee any happy end. Silence comes as a sign of fear before the unknown and before the death. As it is written in the story, “that silence alone was enough to demonstrate the slow penetration of death into each one of us”(Baden). Young people are serious and silent because they are afraid to die and never come back home from the war. They do not speak, and their communication is minimized to order from their commanders. Silence, fear and death represent the mythic image of happy soldier who save the world from the different point of view. If usually soldiers are shown with the emphasis on heroism, this story makes them people again. They do not know more that the reader of this story when they are assigned to different locations. They can only hope to survive. The night slept with the dead soldiers is the culmination of the story. It is also the first time the narrator participates in real war battles. This first time he makes a mistake because he does not know much about his new position. The death is so distant for him that he even cannot imagine that the sleeping soldiers are actually dead. When the narrator finds out the truth, he starts panicking. He says “We won’t ever see our own death. However, seeing a dead person reminds us of our own mortality” to show that in the dead soldier he saw his future (Baden). This culmination serves as a departure point for the further inner monologue of the narrator. He believes that death as an act is not heroic. It is a moment when the body stops working and becomes totally cold. People can turn some deaths into heroic acts; at the same time, some of the dead are lost and forgotten in time and space. The closeness to the death is the greatest fear experienced by the narrator in his life because it served as a reminded that he could not rely on tomorrow. He could die any time, and he will never see the world after his death. One more interesting fact is that feeling become less intense on the front. The beginning of the story describes the narrator who vomits because of the smell of dead bodies. He lives in declining world; however, he can escape it by means of reading. When he arrives to the front, he does not see anything wrong. He is preoccupied with the most basic physiological needs. He is tired and he needs to sleep. He would never sleep close to the dead body in his live in the camp. Here, he is forced by own fear to do some actions to save his life. The story is short, but it has a very important meaning to make war more understandable for people. Any war initiates public debate; people who support war rarely have any career in military forces. War is represented as dark, fearful and destructing environment. It alters human lives and often becomes the last thing people see. It is full of death and loss; some people can get used to live in these terrible conditions but the consequences of war for an individual do not stop when the war is over. They see the horrors of wars in their dreams and cannot relax as other people. Their mental health becomes severely damaged by regular casualties, replacements and death observations. In summary, the story provides another point of view at the war. It removes the barriers of time, space and distance between people who read the story and the war actions. The presence of life, death, darkness and silence only intensify this feeling of reality where war does not seen to be far away or totally strange. Soldiers who come to fight never know whether they survive. They doubt their death and believe in their lives, but the situation often becomes the opposite. Ali Baden manages to compress war experience in 5 pages and persuade people that war is not a point to speculate about. His style of writing matches the difficult theme he addresses in the story. His emphasis on the inner world of the narrator adds more psychological details which make the text more understandable. The world which is created as a result is evil and dark because people are overexposed to death. All in all, death does not look heroic at the battle field; it is made heroic by people later. Work Cited Baden, Ali. “Be Quiet, Soldier”. Words Without Borders. 2013. Web. May 6, 2014. < http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/be-quiet-soldiers> Read More