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PDF 138.18 KB
undergraduate thesis
3
1
I am an American Soldier: Motivational Aspects of Soldiering in Gulf War Memoirs
Jure Zelenika (2015)
Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Cite this item:
https://urn.nsk.hr/urn:nbn:hr:142:440185
Metadata
Title
I am an American Soldier: Motivational Aspects of Soldiering in Gulf War Memoirs
Author
Jure Zelenika
Mentor(s)
Sanja Runtić
(thesis advisor)
Jasna Poljak Rehlicki
(thesis advisor)
Abstract
Motivation is an important part of everyone’s life, but it might be even more important in drawing people into the military and, almost certainly, the war. This paper analyzes characters from five Gulf War memoirs in order to find the motivational aspects which influenced their decision to enlist. The surveyed memoirs are Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles (2005), Nathaniel Fick’s One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (2005), Chris Kyle’s American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History (2011), Kayla Williams’ Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army (2005) and Matt Gallagher’s Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War (2010). The specific motivational aspects of each of the soldiers have been derived from their memoirs by analyzing their writing. Those have then been sorted into categories which were used in the empirical studies from the field of psychology. Studies surveyed for the purposes of this paper are: "Towards an Understanding of Army Enlistment Motivation Patterns” by Pliske et al. and "Enlistment Motivations of Army Reservists: Money, Self-Improvement, Or Patriotism?" by Gorman and Thomas. The categories of “self-improvement”, “money” and “serve” have been derived from the Gorman and Thomas’s study. It has been found that the motivational aspects of soldiers derived from the memoirs and those derived from the empirical studies match to a great degree; hence, a conclusion is drawn that people drawn to the military calling have similar motivation for enlisting.
Parallel title (Croatian)
Ja sam američki vojnik: Motivacijski aspekti vojne službe u memoarima Zaljevskih ratova
Granter
Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Place
Osijek
State
Croatia
Scientific field, discipline, subdiscipline
HUMANISTIC SCIENCES
Philology
Anglistics
Study programme type
university
Study level
undergraduate
Study programme
English Language and Literature (double major)
Academic title abbreviation
univ. bacc. philol. angl.
Study programme type
university
Study level
undergraduate
Study programme
Pedagogy (double major)
Academic title abbreviation
univ. bacc. paed.
Genre
undergraduate thesis
Language
English
Defense date
2015-09-09
Parallel keywords (Croatian)
motivation
Gulf War memoirs
Gulf War
enlistment
Resource type
text
Access condition
Open access
Terms of use
URN:NBN
https://urn.nsk.hr/urn:nbn:hr:142:440185
Committer
Bernardica Plašćak