Thursday, August 27, 2009

War literatures and heroism

Literatures are the mirrors of Ages. A literature which was written in a specific decade would reflex the norms of that decade. War literatures become more important seeing that to they say us what happened during wars. But when a war becomes to the form of literature, there is a possibility of overvaluing the truths and hiding the realities. The researchers who are against to war literatures argue that most of the war literatures only talk about the political side of the wars and are forgetting to look at the normal mass side. It is true to some extend because most of the war literatures talking about the political changes that took place during wars and murders occurred to big political heads. The reason here would be; it is very easy to analyze and focus on a well known topic and therefore is stimulating arguments supportive and against to the topic. So it gives a healthy view on researchers’ and literatures’ view. The main weakness with ‘war literatures’ is that they forget to focus on the normal mass society. Everyone forgets that mass society is only get more affected by wars. Thamima Anam’s ‘Golden Age’ is one novel that focuses on mass side of Afghanistan war. This novel is based on the real stories occurred in middle class families during the Afghan war. Traditional Indian Tamil literatures talk more about ‘wars and brave ’. They combine wars and brave. According to Indian Tamil literatures, if a son had died in a war, his mother first looked for which part of his body was injured. Injuring in the chest was used as a symbol of brave for soldiers. Tamil Literatures illustrate ‘A soldier who gets injured in the back part of body’ as less heroic and ashamed to had him as a force. Anyhow according to my view, war literatures somewhat encourage wars as they are written with a purpose of researching them in future. Most of the war literatures exemplify war dominators as heroes. When a person who is in his early years gets reading it, he thinks up the war dominator as his role model and is further stimulating heroism in wars. So researchers and writers should write books based the impacts occurred to mass society during wars. It might be about refugee life or the persons who became physically challenged to continue their life or is about the psychological impacts. Writers and researchers of this generation should make war literatures as a mean to discourage wars and should not stimulating heroism on it.