Coming to Age as a Writer

"Seeking the truth you require and getting it mixed up with some truths the audience wants to hear." 

Propaganda is used to fight wars and combat disease, build unity and create division. Yet it can be difficult to identify. Fiction can be justified through Joseph Goebbels' mentality " it is better and more lasting to win the heart of a people and to keep it." As we come to age, it is vital we observe the influences around us and realize that everything can not be viewed at face value. 

Feeling, thinking, and being is not limited strictly to the experiences a writer has been through. Instead through observation of facts and history, characters and their realities may be created and interpreted according the the writers perspective. What would life on the HMS Belfast have been like and what would be some challenges? Perhaps sleeping in hammock in a mess hall where sleeping arrangements were a mere twenty one inches apart?

Though Robbie did not hold the Private position that his education and upbringing would have expected, his experiences and range of skills he had acquired prior to his time as a soldier in World War II helped him greatly in his survival. As a student of literature, Robbie was able to place himself in somebody else's shoes; the ability to think from the perspective of others. His education in French allowed for communication and an in-tune sense of the environment around him. His education provided him with an open mind and the keen sense of the difference mankind hold as a student of Freud. 

Florence Nightingale fought to be a nurse as she felt trapped by her life of luxury and social duties hailing from a well off, well connected, upper middle class family. As an author of two hundred books and over fourteen thousand letters, she wrote with the intention to share her visions and to argue against the unjust. 

Following the calling she recieced from God to be a nurse, Florence Nightingale paved the road for the medical feild we know and benefit from today. As a woman writing about the events of World War II, she had to, similarly to Briony, have a strong confident voice. This dedication to the individual voice and emphasis they both had on sharing their viewpoints aided both women in coming to age as writers.