War in Literature In every literary work I studied this semester, there was a war theme. What made each memoir, documentary, poem, and other variety of genre unique, however, was the perspective in which they were set. A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo, for example, is Caputo's particular memories of the war. It is a memoir of his encounters and close calls that make his writing unique from any other literary work on the Vietnam War. In the book You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon, the first story, which shares the book's title, is about a woman named Meg Bradley. She writes about the difficulties of being a stay-at-home wife, waiting for her husband to come home from war. In the poem “Here Bullet” by Brian Turner, Brian gets shot in the front line, which makes his experience and story unique. The footage I watched this semester also supports the war theme. For example, Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq, directed by Jon Alpert and Ellen Goosenberg Kent, is a documentary that consists of a group of wounded soldiers and their memories of the day they were wounded, or to interpret the title, it was the day they were reminded that they were alive. These memories are followed by an interview about how their injuries affect their lives in the present day. This film shows the perspective of war from those who fell in war and survived to tell the tale. All of these literary works are heavily based on war, but each of them has a completely different story to tell, leaving a different impact on the reader. This is because in this course we have approached the war from all points of view, so as to get a better and more cultured idea of... middle of paper... on the front line, or of a soldier taken away from the front to due to injury give us an inside perspective of what war is really like compared to what young students read in American history textbooks. According to these literary works, war affects everyone. Whether one's role is to kill the enemy, or simply to live with the ghost of one's husband, war changes people tremendously. Works Cited Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq. Dir. Jon Alpert and Ellen Goosenberg Kent. Perf. Sergeant Bryan Anderson. Attaboy Films, 2007. DVD.Caputo, Filippo. A voice of war. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977. Print. Fallon, Siobhan. “You know when the men are gone.” You know when the men are gone. New York: GP Putnam's Sons, 2011. Page no. Print.Turner, Brian. "Here's Bullet." Here, Bullet. Farmington, Me.: Alice James, 2005. Page no. Press.