War correspondence of Martha Gellhorn, Joan Didion, and Molly Moore : their contributions to journalism and literature

Martha Gellhorn, Joan Didion, and Molly Moore represent three different prototypes of war correspondence spanning a fifty-year period. Gellhorn's book, The Face of War, is about the effects of war on women and children; Didion in her book, Salvador, reports war as someone who was inside a war; and Moore's book, Woman At War: Storming Kuwait with the U.S. Marines, is a report of war from the front lines.

This thesis examines war news, women war correspondents, and literary journalism. Also studied were the backgrounds, problems encountered in writing, and contributions to journalism and to literature made by Gellhorn, Didion, and Moore. The research found that each writer wrote about war differently, yet each made a valuable contribution both to journalism and to literature. Gellhorn's journalism consists of magazine articles that show the horrors of war for women and children, and her writing stands as a lasting editorial on the subject. Joan Didion wrote about the war in El Salvador, and her report gives the author's view as well as that of those involved in the war. Her book is an outstanding example of literary journalism. Molly Moore gives a comprehensive, on-the-scene report of the ground war in the Persian Gulf. Her writing presents an historical and chronological reflection about war in the 1990s.