The main plot of Battle Cry was about the United States entering World War II on the behalf of the attack on Pearl Harbor. This novel recounts the lives of the soldiers that were in the battles such as Guadalcanal in which most people know as one of the most gruesome battles. The novel shows not only the firefights between the Japanese and the Marines but also showed the problems of Malaria spread by mosquitoes and the effects that it had on them. From Pearl Harbor, most men were starting to just volunteer to go to the war but at couple years later the draft came into effect.
This obviously was quite a big effect on the Americans who stayed at home from ages 18-45, lives were drastically changed such as Danny Forrester who left his parents, his college and his girlfriend for going to the marines. People were also changed from normal citizens to marines through 9 weeks of boot camp. People were turned into lean mean fighting machines there with experience with rifles, marching, and taking orders. Another change from the beginning of the war to the end is the change from the depression to normal America.
Like weve learned in class, after entering World War II our economy bounces back up because of the fact that we need to build war machines to win this war against the Nazis. This novel was quite the interesting because we get to see the blood and guts story that would be in a movie such as Black Hawk Down or Saving Private Ryan. You see that the Marines arent just a bunch of ruthless killing machines but that they are people and they have lives within the camps and have as much fun as possible like any other person, well maybe more.
You learn that being a marine is hard not only on yourself but on the family, if you were married, the wife has got to suffer at home, seeing you once everyone six month if they are lucky and any children at home wont see their dad for a long time. But perhaps a foreigner read this novel; they would see the stereotypical United States though. This depicts the marines as rowdy, hard working, rough tough crazy Americans which we are no doubt but its to an extreme. Battle Cry might have affected how people think about the government also because of how later in the book it speaks about the military and how that works.
The military of course is controlled by the government but is still its own department but without the proper authority the military cant execute any of its important jobs such as fighting the second World War. My opinion on the project is that it was quite difficult and that this book should not be one of the four fiction novels available. The biggest problem that I faced was buying the book without spending too much money since this book has been out of publishing companies for quite sometime.
However the literary circles werent too bad since we could discuss topics and information we didnt understand when reading alone, when we had our jobs it made it seem a little hard to work with because I usually like to enjoy a book without analyzing everything about it like in English but I know that if we didnt have the jobs, no one would read their parts. I did understand a lot more due to the literary circles also because sometimes someone else can broaden a topic much better then I can or they can explain it much easier.
