BSJ

The Butler Scholarly Journal

Category: War Issue

  1. The World’s Greatest Weapon

    What is the greatest weapon that the world has ever seen? There are a number of strong contenders: the bow and arrow is one of the most enduring and effective weapons in history, whose origins date back 12,000 years; the AK-47 is the most popular gun in the world with between 75 and 100 million in existence; the atomic bomb has the ability to wipe out whole cities in the blink of an eye. These weapons have been ruthlessly efficient at inflicting harm on people across the globe, but in this author’s opinion, none of them count as the world’s…

  2. Perception, Interpretation and Remembrance of the Great War Through Poetry and Fiction

    The First World War has undoubtedly taken an unprecedented and exalted role in British and world history, culture and imagination with a pervasive rhetoric of tragic heroism, sacrifice, ultimate futility and both the rejection and celebration of the concept of chivalric suffering. The literature of the Great War has contributed significantly to the overriding perception of the conflict over the last century and has to a certain extent provided the lens through which we view the years 1914 to 1918 and beyond. But how far has fiction and poetry alone actively ‘shaped’ and sculpted our view, independent of the realities…

  3. Slaughterhouse-Five: A Crisis of Representation?

    Literature can be something we use for pleasure and escapism. We find narratives comforting because they convey meaning onto events which may otherwise seem illogical and upsetting; stories may use certain common tropes to settle the reader with something familiar and often offer some form of satisfying closure when they come to an end. What we sometimes forget is that literature can also be the site of cultural, societal, and political criticism in ways which may be jarring and unsettling. Literature which seeks to really make us think often consciously breaks away from typical narrative forms in order to challenge…

  4. War Monuments, Memorialisation and Forgetting

    ‘The postmodern age is obsessed with memory’ (Sherman, 1999: 1) Memorial monuments and war monuments in particular have become increasingly ubiquitous over the last two centuries. An emphasis has been placed on making sure that every event is remembered, and remembered in the correct way. In this time, the study of memorialisation and monuments has also flourished and on the eve of the 100 year anniversary of the First World War this discussion is still alive and well. With Michael Gove continuing to squabble with ministers and academics over the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways in which the war is remembered…

  5. Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word…

    Wars do not just end once the armistice is signed and the combatants have agreed to a ceasefire. During WWI, German occupying forces devastated the Belgian economy by requisitioning resources, deporting labourers and moving entire factories to Germany to support the war effort. The Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II left the city in ruins and 25,000 civilians dead. The Kosovo War in the late 1990s left over 200,000 internally displaced in its wake. With the development of total war, the effects of war, and the consequences of decimated populations or devastated infrastructure, persist long after the cessation…

  6. The Damage After the Shells Stop Falling: An Anecdotal View

    War is an awful thing. An absolutely, hideously, unfathomably awful thing. The shocking devaluation of life has brought with it some of the worst horrors mankind has ever witnessed. In this piece, I’ll be writing about one war in particular, the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, and how I’ve indirectly seen it’s repercussions on those around me as I’ve grown up. The People’s Republic of Bangladesh was born out of a bloody, gruesome war. For 8 months, the Pakistani Army dealt out a wave of hideous atrocities upon one of their own territories, the then “East Pakistan”. Around 1-3 million civilians…