All I can say is that it really isn't the most exciting book I have ever read, but it is by far one of the best. Anthony Swofford really does a good job of painting a picture of what war is like for an average grunt, and the humiliation, torment, and agony a lot of the soldiers go through when fighting wars. The emotional and physical stress that soldiers go through is tremendous, every single facet of their life is hardship. The soldiers constantly have to wrestle with the fact that they don't know where, when, or how they might die. They have to deal with having emotional support severed from them. This happens mostly by finding out their wife or girlfriend has either separated from them, or is cheating on them, and the humiliation and despair that comes with losing their partner. To compound their problems, they are subject to seeing death and destruction all around them. They have to see it, smell it, even taste it. Their lives are small and insignificant, stripped of all identity for the sake of their country, and the huge war machine that they have become a part of. Anyone interested in reading a book not just about war, but about humanity and what real emotion is about, should definitely read Jarhead.
Looking back at things a previous version of yourself has written can say a lot about how a person develops. I have gone back and read some of my earlier posts on this blog and I am surprised at how much further I have moved forward in my life as a person. I feel that I can articulate myself much more efficiently and don't rely so much on cliche modes of speech or resorting to using obscenities to punctuate how I feel towards certain things. I have either deleted or reverted a lot of my posts back to drafts because at this point I can't read much of them and not cringe. I have done a lot of things with my life over the last fifteen years since I started this blog. I mainly meant to create it as a mental scrapbook, something I could look back on and maybe be a little proud of. I felt pretty much the exact opposite. I really came off as negative and focusing on things that while being important, I had little or no control over. I have come to realize that the world I live in can ...
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