Chapters 10 - 12 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 10, "The Ideological Vacuum", considers the common soldier's rationale about fighting the war. The typical soldier had no ideas about the meaning and purpose of the war. Most of the time, the average soldier didn't even know what his direct purpose was in the big picture. Instead, the war was simply inconvenient, brutal, violent, dangerous, and uncomfortable—but it wasn't about anything definable. This lack of meaning is clearly evident in the many prose and verse quotations provided in the book. The ideological vacuum was also evident on the home-front where advertisers sought to link their products to the war effort. In this way, the war can be seen as a sales devise for contemporaneous products.

The long Chapter 11, "Accentuate the Positive", considers the media's tendency to forget the negative aspects of war and put forward the positive...