Throughout history, there have been many wars that altered the physical and mental state of the individuals involved. “In Flanders Fields” is a war poem written by Canadian physician and poet John McCrae during the battle of World War 1 (Furlong-Bolliger 1). This poem comes from the perspective of the dead during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium. The second poem, “Facing It” is written in the first person by Yusef Komunyakaa, an African American Vietnam War veteran, as he visits the Vietnam Memorial (Mack 1). Yusef uses his own experiences to reflect on the emotional aftermath of war. War soldiers face lasting physical and mental difficulties, hence affected soldiers deserve remembrance. Both poems explore the lasting effects of war and …show more content…
McCrae tells us that the story is being told from the perspective of the dead soldiers “We are the dead” (Line 6). Using “We” (6), also notifies the reader that more than one soldier is telling the story. McCrae also gives more evidence of the mass casualty, “The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below” (Line 4-5). Upon analysis, the author is alluding that even though the birds are singing, they can not be heard. As the reader can infer, since there is enough gunfire to drown out the birds, there is an equal amount of death. Similarly, in “Facing It,” Komunyakaa displays the immense amount of lives lost during the Vietnam War, “I go down the 58,022 names” (Line 14). This line alone shows us the number of lives lost during the Vietnam War. Each name represents a soldier who was lost during the horrific war. Komunyakaa continues to display the mass amount of death from war, “Half-expecting to find my own letters like smoke” (Line 17-18), the veteran runs his hands down the wall and they all seemingly blend together, representing the endless amount of names to take over the entire
The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.
The novel All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the poem, “In Flanders Field,” by John McCrae and the film, Gallipoli, Demonstrates how war makes men feel unimportant and, forces soldiers to make hard decisions that no one should half to make. In war people were forced to fight for their lives. Men were forced to kill one another to get their opinion across to the opposing sides. When men went home to their families they were too scared to say what had happened to them in the war. Many people had a glorified thought about how war is, Soldiers didn't tell them what had truly happened to them.
Many soldiers who come back from the war need to express how they feel. Many do it in the way of writing. Many soldiers die in war, but the ones who come back are just as “dead.” Many cadets come back with shell shock, amputated arms and legs, and sometimes even their friends aren’t there with them. So during World War I, there was a burst of new art and writings come from the soldiers. Many express in the way of books, poems, short stories and art itself. Most soldiers are just trying to escape. A lot of these soldiers are trying to show what war is really like, and people respond. They finally might think war might not be the answer. This is why writers use imagery, irony and structure to protest war.
...often times tragic and can ruin the lives of those who fight. The effects of war can last for years, possibly even for the rest of the soldiers life and can also have an effect on those in the lives of the soldier as well. Soldiers carry the memories of things they saw and did during war with them as they try and regain their former lives once the war is over, which is often a difficult task. O’Brien gives his readers some insight into what goes on in the mind of a soldier during combat and long after coming home.
Brian Turner's "The Hurt Locker" captures his personal and painful experiences during his time spent in war and furthermore, express the tragic events he witnessed. Brian Turner's poem is miraculously able to gather multiple first hand accounts of tragic, gory, and devastating moments inside a war zone and project them on to a piece of paper for all to read. He allows the audience of his work to partially understand what hell he himself and all combat veterans have endured. Although heartbreaking, it is a privilege to be taken inside "The Hurt Locker" of a man who saw too many things that should not ever be witnessed by anybody. Turner's words bring to life what many have buried deep inside them which subsequently is one of the major underlying problems facing combat veterans today. Reading this poem, I could not help but wonder what the long term effects of war are on a human being, if it is worth the pain, and how does a combat veteran function properly in a society that is unfamiliar with their experiences?
Tim O’Brien states in his novel The Things They Carried, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat” (77). This profound statement captures not only his perspective of war from his experience in Vietnam but a collective truth about war across the ages. It is not called the art of combat without reason: this truth transcends time and can be found in the art produced and poetry written during the years of World War I. George Trakl creates beautiful images of the war in his poem “Grodek” but juxtaposes them with the harsh realities of war. Paul Nash, a World War I artist, invokes similar images in his paintings We are Making a New World and The Ypres Salient at Night. Guilaume Apollinaire’s writes about the beautiful atrocity that is war in his poem “Gala.”
...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.
Throughout the times war has effected people immensely both physically and mentally. All people deal with their circumstances differently to help cope with what they dealing with. Whether it’s a fatality in the family, or post traumatic stress disorder most people find a way to heal from injury or emotional damage. In Brian Turners poem, “Phantom Noise,” he writes about the constant ringing he hears from the war he served in. The poem expresses that Turner seems to deal with his emotional damage by writing poetry about what he feels, hears, and sees during the time he spent in war and in civilian life. Even though Turner is no longer in war it still effects him greatly each day. The overall tone of the poem is very solemn and makes the reader
Each soldiers experience in the war was devastating in its own way. The men would go home carrying the pictures and memories of their dead companions, as well as the enemy soldiers they killed. “They all carried emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” These were the things that weighed the most, the burdens that the men wanted to put down the most, but were the things that they would forever carry, they would never find relief from the emotional baggage no matter where they went.
Autobiographies, diaries, letters, official records, photographs and poems are examples of primary sources from World War One. The two primary sources analyzed in this essay are the poems, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen and “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae. Primary sources are often personal, written from the limited perspective of a single individual. It is very difficult for the author to capture their own personal experience, while incorporating the involvement and effects of other events happening at the same time. Each piece of writing studied describes the author’s perception of the war. Both of the poems intend to show to grave reality of war, which often was not realized until the soldiers reach the frontlines. The poems were both written at battle within two years of each other. However, the stark difference between the two poems is astonishing. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” gives a much different impression than “In Flanders Field” despite the fact that both authors were in the same war and similar circumstances. The first two lines in “In Flanders Fields” “…the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row.” are an image o...
Wars affect everyone in some way, especially soldiers who fight in them, like those in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. O 'Brien concentrates a lot on the psychological trauma that solders, like himself, confronted before, during, and after the Vietnam War. He also focuses on how they coped with the brutality of war. Some were traumatized to the point where they converted back to primitive instinct. Others were traumatized past the breaking point to where they contemplated suicide and did not fit in. Finally, some soldiers coped through art and ritual.
...n’s desolation and pessimistic views towards life. This sentence, located at the poem’s denouement, provides a lasting impact and allows the reader to ponder on the psychological distortions imposed by war. Furthermore, the sheer individuality addressed in this poem forges a profound sense of empathy, hence sympathy, for the veteran as the subconscious intricacies elaborated enables us to fully submerge ourselves in the veteran’s perspective—when reading “Disabled” one merges with the poetic voice, whilst for “Refugee Blues”, the poem is narrated in second person and the readers are being told what is occurring by the poetic voice, therefore viewing everything from an exterior approach. Thus, in overview, Owen’s poem “Disabled” presents the impact of war in a more empathetic and effective way.
For centuries, the horrors of war were often forgotten as the glories of war were celebrated. Women and children lined the streets to celebrate victories of returning war heroes, and men often sought the glory of the battlefield. Indeed, the benefits of battle — of war — have often overshadowed the realities of war and the horrors that leave men changed and women husbandless. After the war is over, men spend sleepless nights dreaming of the reality of the battlefield they had left behind. There was always those who would not make it home, always those who were never the same, and always those faced the horrors of war head on, never forgetting they once imagined its glories.
The vision of war is presented in several different ways through the three poems. John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields, gives a voice to the dead, and presents a different type of patriotism to encourage men to fight in the war: guilt. The purpose of continued fighting that it presents is to avenge the deaths of all of the soldiers who have already died. If, in the nation of France, the French don’t win, then all the already deaths would be for nothing. The alive have a responsibility, a duty, to more than something than just their country.
Written in the preface of one of his many poems, war poet Wilfred Owen explained, "My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity”. Often referred to as the “soldier’s poet”, Wilfred Owen established a clear distaste for war and the insufferable conditions that soldiers were placed under. His poems, written during warfare, address the many issues that conditions of war placed upon soldiers. Owen’s war poetry reflects strong sentiments on the war at the time and possesses a brutal honesty to the conditions of war in Europe, which were often filled with sickness and dirt.