What is the tone/mood in this essay? Explain each one

Question

When I was a kid in the 1970s, I loved reading accounts of American bravery during the Second

World War.. And I was proud that my uncle had earned a Bronze Star for his service on

Guadalcanal. So it came as something of a shock when, in 1980, I first heard Yoda’s summary

of warriors and war in

The Empire Strikes Back

.

Luke Skywalker, if you remember, tells the wizened Jedi master that he seeks “a great warrior.”

“Wars not make one great,” Yoda replies.

I was struck by the truth of that statement even then, as I was preparing for a career in the

military. Certainly, military service (especially the life-and-death struggles of combat) can

provide an occasion for the exercise of heroism, but simply joining the armed services does not

make you a hero, nor does the act of serving in combat.

Still, ever since the events of 9/11, there’s been an almost religious veneration of U.S. service

members as “Our American Heroes” (as a well-intentioned sign puts it on the wall of my local

post office). But a snappy uniform — or even dented body armor — is not a magical shortcut to

hero status.

A hero is someone who behaves selflessly, usually at considerable personal risk and sacrifice, to

comfort or empower others and to make the world a better place. Heroes, of course, come in all

sizes, shapes, ages and colors, most of them looking nothing like John Wayne or John Rambo or

GI Joe (or Jane).

I come from a family of firefighters, yet our hero was my mother, a homemaker who raised five

kids and endured without complaint the ravages of cancer in the 1970s, with its then crude

chemotherapy regimen, its painful cobalt treatments and the collateral damage of loss of hair,

vitality and lucidity. In refusing to rail against her fate, she set an example of selfless courage

and heroism I shall never forget.

Whether in civilian life or in the military, heroes are rare — indeed, all too rare. Heck, that’s the

reason we celebrate them. They’re the very best of us, which means they can’t be all of us.

But does elevating our troops to hero status really cause any harm? What’s wrong with praising

our troops to the rafters and adding them to our pantheon of heroes? A lot.

By making our military a league of heroes, we ensure that the brutalizing aspects and effects of

war will be played down. In celebrating isolated heroic feats, we often forget that war is

guaranteed to degrade humanity as well.

“War,” as writer and cultural historian Louis Menand noted, “is specially terrible not because it

destroys human beings, who can be destroyed in plenty of other ways, but because it turns

human beings into destroyers.”

When we create a legion of heroes in our minds, we blind ourselves to evidence of destructive,

sometimes atrocious, behavior. Heroes, after all, don’t commit atrocities. They don’t, for

instance, dig bullets out of pregnant women’s bodies in an attempt to cover up deadly mistakes,

as the Times of London recently reported may have happened in Gardez, Afghanistan. Such

atrocities, so common to war’s brutal chaos, produce cognitive dissonance in the minds of many

Americans, who simply can’t imagine their “heroes” killing innocents and then covering up the

evidence. How much easier it is to see the acts of violence of our troops as necessary, admirable,

even noble.

Even worse, seeing the military as universally heroic can serve to prolong wars. Consider, for

example, Germany during the First World War, a subject I’ve studied and written about. As the

historian Robert Weldon Whalen noted of those German soldiers of nearly a century ago: “The

young men in field-grey were, first of all, not just soldiers, but young heroes, Junge Helden.

They fought in the heroes’ zone, Heldenzone, and performed heroic deeds, Heldentaten.

Wounded, they shed hero’s blood, Heldenblut, and if they died, they suffered a hero’s death,

Heldentod, and were buried in a hero’s grave, Heldengrab.” The overuse of “Helden” as a

modifier to ennoble German militarism during the war undoubtedly prolonged the war, for how

could the government make peace with the villains who had killed these heroes? Wouldn’t their

deaths then have been in vain?

In rejecting blanket “hero” labels today, we would not be insulting our troops. Quite the

opposite: We’d be making common cause with them. Most of them already know the difference

between real heroism and everyday military service. Even the young “Helden” of Wilhelmine

Germany knew that service alone didn’t make them heroic. With the typical sardonic humor of

front-line soldiers, they preferred the less comforting but more descriptive label (given their

grim situation in the trenches) of “front pigs.”

Whatever nationality they may be, troops at the front know the score. Even as our media and our

culture seek to elevate them into the pantheon of demigods, the men and women at the front are

focused on doing their jobs and returning home with their bodies, their minds and their buddies

intact.

So, next time you talk to our soldiers, sailors or airmen, do them (and your country) a small

favor. Thank them for their service. Let them know you appreciate them. Just don’t call them

heroes

Answer 1

Hello Dsfgd A.,

This essay seems as though it is aiming to challenge the common opinion about people who serve in the military being portrayed as "heroes".

While there are many different ways to describe an author's tone, some phrases that come to my mind after reading this essay are:

Cautionary, gentle, pensive, pragmatic...

Are there multiple choice options you are choosing from?