War Changes People

There are both positive and negative effects of going to war. This semester we studied two short stories that showed a negative change in character due to war.

 In the short story “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich, two brothers, Lyman and Henry, share a love for a car that Henry bought the summer before he left for war. When Henry returns, he has changed and no longer has any interest in the car anymore. Lyman notices that the war has changed his brother and states that the “change was no good!” Lyman grows so angry about his brother’s change that he beats up the car to get Henry to notice it. To his surprise, Henry shows concern and begins to spend all of his time repairing the car. When he has finished fixing the damages, he invites Lyman to go for a drive to the beach with him. When they got there, Henry walked out into the ocean until the water overflowed his boots and he drowned. This was not at all expected of the happy and unselfish version of Henry who Lyman knew before war changed him permanently.

Another short story that we studied was “Stones”, by Timothy Findley. This story was told from Ben Max’s perspective in flashback form. Ben is telling readers about his childhood and how dramatically his dad had changed when he returned home from war. Prior to going to war, David, Ben’s dad, was a happy and outgoing young man who was very kindhearted and deeply involved with his family. When he returned, years later, he was an entirely different person. He was very depressed and had become both physically and emotionally abusive, spending most of his time inside the house, alone, drinking his pain away. Ben says that there was “not a mark on his body, but – far inside – he had been destroyed.” One night David came into Ben’s bedroom and lifted him out of his bed, resulting in a broken collarbone. He even tried to kill his own wife with a hammer. All of this was due to David’s guilty conscience after surviving the war. Since all of his men died, and he was the only one to survive, he felt as though he should have died with them and wants to be punished.
In both of these short stories, the two people that went to war were changed and affected eternally. It is unfortunate to see the pain that not only those who have gone to war must go through, but also that of their loved ones. Both families in each of these stories suffered emotionally as they lost a person they once knew. Though Henry and David are still alive, physically, they have died internally and there is nothing their families can do to get back the Henry and David they once knew.

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