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War's effect on literature
War's effect on literature
Literature affected by wars
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“Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood; Of those who resist, fail and resist; and God, reduced to a hostage among hostages”. – “To be a Jew in the twentieth century” by Muriel Rukeyser was published in 1944 in a sequence which contained ten poems in “Letter to the Front”. It is said Rukeyser covers the Spanish Civil War and WWII on its pages. A reason to choose this passage and group with the other two is that they all either symbolize, verbalize and share the sense of being bound together. To be grouped as one and to be united, as a family, a race, a society and to be viewed as such. This sense of belonging and togetherness goes beyond being father, mother, brother and sister. It is their Heritage, part of their culture, their history and
they will be damned if they do not act as such. It is so powerful and meaningful to them they choose to remember it, even all the horrors, deaths, precious and beautiful memories too. To them this makes them who they are as a person, family and even ancestors to a later generation. Some suggest that the bond a mother shares with her newly born baby can diminish if the child is kept from any physical and emotional contact with her. The baby will then grow up and have a hard time making these meaningful connections with anyone. With all the pain of childbirth mothers go through the love is always unconditional. Fathers make sacrifices too, working hard and long hours to provide, trying not to let their past interfere with raising this next generation of children. Sometimes a parent or even ancestor’s past will get in the way forgiveness for the future. Their pain lies so deep within that it can only be completely revealed and healed as a family. Something similar happens for some who grow up without siblings, some maybe taught to share toys and other things but they also do not get to experience the special bonds siblings share. A family is the first group a person belongs to and it is also the first social structure it encounters. With rules, boundaries and obligations toward the members in it.
Elli Friedmann has returned 50 years later for a ceremony to the spot where she was once liberated by the American army. Living during the Holocaust, she has chosen to give us her story.
This poem captures the immigrant experience between the two worlds, leaving the homeland and towards the new world. The poet has deliberately structured the poem in five sections each with a number of stanzas to divide the different stages of the physical voyage. Section one describes the refugees, two briefly deals with their reason for the exodus, three emphasises their former oppression, fourth section is about the healing effect of the voyage and the concluding section deals with the awakening of hope. This restructuring allows the poet to focus on the emotional and physical impact of the journey.
Philip Levine’s “Bobby Hefka” develops a deeper message, theme, of American society in the 1940s where people avoid racism and its many other issues. The poem exposes the fact that with society, avoiding its issues, they are not learning from them thus, society isn’t making any progress. Levine pinpoints a main cause to the stagnant society which is the stresses of World War II. His use of a metaphor guides us; the readers, to get a grasp on the size and prevalence of World War II in society, “Beyond him the dark clouds of 1945 / were clustering over Linwood” (33-34). The author is comparing the war to dark clouds and gives 1945 a negative connotation to help highlight that it represents the war. This metaphor provides the text with a meaning and with it we can decipher that society is solely focusing on the war and can’t address other issues, racism.
The Holocaust was a tragic event in history which instilled fear and sorrow in so many. This time can be seen as one without order, because the law at the time said the actions taken were just (epigraph translation). A poet was able, however, to take such a chaotic time in history in the poem The Book of Yolek, and create a more personal attachment (for the reader) to the topic. The poet Anthony Hecht has taken the Holocaust (more specifically the moving of Jewish orphans to a concentration camp) and made it simple and nostalgic, taking a more calm approach to the subject ("5th August 1942: Warsaw Orphans Leave for Treblinka"). By using the form of a Sestina (very precise form difficult to properly do), along with the images, rhetorical use of grammar, and the tone portrayed throughout the piece, Anthony Hecht demonstrates a peaceful outlook can be given to the most chaotic moments in human life (Strand et al. 20). However, he also demonstrates the need for emotional attachment when referring to an occurrence (in history) of the past.
The poem “The action in the ghetto of Rohatyn, March 1942” by Alexander Kimel is an amazing literary work which makes the reader understand the time period of the Holocaust providing vivid details. Kimel lived in an “unclean” area called the ghetto, where people were kept away from German civilians. The poet describes and questions himself using repetition and rhetorical questions. He uses literary devices such as repetition, comparisons, similes and metaphors to illustrate the traumatizing atmosphere he was living in March 1942.
World War I and II brought the worst of times for some people; loved ones were lost, families were separated, homes were destroyed, and innocent lives were taken during this time. There are many ways to deal with these hardships; Jewish poet, Avrom Sutzkever, used his hard times as inspiration for his writing and as a way to deal with the war and survive it (INSERT CITATION). This part of history also resulted in other great works of art as a way to deal with what the war brought, during and after the war was over. Avrom Sutzkever wrote his poem “Frozen Jews,” using such dark and depressing imagery, connotation, and diction because of his historical and biographical background.
It is easy to depict the theme of suffering that appears from opposing ideologies in the short story "Medal from Jerusalem." Ruth, a Jewish girl, explains to a young American boy from Vermont the suffering she has experienced being a Jew in Europe during World War II. The theme truly emerges from the story when the two young lovers walk to Ruth's apartment and Ruth is telling Mitchell about her past in Berlin, and states, "'My father was taken to a concentration camp and we decided it was time for me to leave [Berlin]'" (Shaw 196). She expresses the struggles she has faced when she tells Mitchell she split up with her family to survive.
In the “American Holocaust” by David Stannard, Stannard points out how the Spaniards, British, and Americans were treating the indigenous people differently. In chapter 1 of the “American Holocaust,” Stannard talks about how the Europeans main goal was to find and acquire gold. When the Europeans began to arrive in America they began to discover a land that contained a variety of gold. Once they discovered that there was gold they began to establish and did not see the indigenous people as part of the land. Indigenous people were required to work in forced labor and take care of the land however they were not part of the land and did not have their own property, towns and villages. In the first chapter of the American Holocaust Stannard
While reading Carolyn Forche's poetry in her book The Country Between Us, I often wondered what this woman has gone through while spending her time in El Salvador. She lived in El Salvador during an ugly state: a time when this country was in the middle of a civil war and bloodshed. All those acts of cruelty that she faced and so clearly wrote about must have been troublesome on her heart. And now thanks to her we can understand a piece of history and the cruelty of mankind through her poems. These poems that strike interest in our minds, would seem as if they would still strike fear in hers. That is, to overcome those terrible memories would take a lifetime, if that were even conceivable. But in her final poem of this book she suggests that these unforgettable details can possibly be put aside. This poem she dedicates to Terrence Des Pres, someone who also has gone through similar tragedies and titles it "Ourselves Or Nothing." The experiences they had and endured, Terrence Des Pres and Carolyn Forche, in turn, allowed Forche the stamina and fortitude which she encouraged within Des Pres, and thus dedicated her writing to him.
...overcome their hardships and grow from the memories, not to let the memories define their sense of self. For, “the definitions belonged to the definers—not the defined” (Carden 405). Their union is representative of a tree given life once more, able to bloom again after a rebirth into a community where a family will take place soon. Their romance is a symbol of life after a crippling past, that it is capable to find one’s self again through love and a supportive, nurturing community. Sethe and Paul D symbolically represent the mass loss of selfhood for the masses of slaves that encountered split families and torturous treatments and through uniting together as a community can the past be overcome, can slavery be destroyed and from the ashes can a newborn race rise to fulfill and gain their own individual identity, separate from a damaging historical lifecycle.
Should I help this old lady who’s struggling to cross the street? Our lives are the embodiment of the phrase “to be or not to be.” We are constantly faced with decisions at every turn and these choices shape our life and our lifestyles. At this level of thinking, there can be a notion of right and wrong. The “right” thing to do in the question I provided, as many have voiced in their heads, is to help the lady cross the street. But could it be that in a different culture, the right thing to do would be to disregard or even maim her? In “The Individual and the Patterns of Culture”, Ruth Benedict, a renowned anthropologist, would say that there could exist such a culture. She’d inject her method of cultural relativism and advise that every individual be judged
In her essay, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Margaret Fuller discusses the state of marriage in America during the 1800‘s. She is a victim of her own knowledge, and is literally considered ugly because of her wisdom. She feels that if certain stereotypes can be broken down, women can have the respect of men intellectually, physically, and emotionally. She explains why some of the inequalities exist in marriages around her. Fuller feels that once women are accepted as equals, men and women will be able achieve a true love not yet known to the people of the world.
There were many important historical events and reforms happening in the world between 1910 and 1945. Of these many life changing occurrences there are three that are particularly significant over many others. These events include the First World War, the Great Depression, as well as the murder of around six million Jewish people in the Holocaust. Throughout these events the beliefs of militarism and nationalism can be seen clearly in most of them. Each of these incidents led to adaptations of the circumstances in many types of literature. As such, poems were used as significant ways to transport their feelings, three specific poems that do this includes “Peace”(Brooke, Rupert, 1914), “Pantoum of the Great Depression” (Justice,
Nicholas Kristof continues using sentimental appeal to draw the audience emotion out. He wants the audience to understand the desperate and fear of the refugee lose their life. In a way, Kristof using the audience emotion as his own personal gain to his column. By using sentimental appeal, he brings the audience to do something that may help the refugee even if it small or to protest about it. Kristof said, “It was the Nazis who committed genocide, but the U.S. and other countries also bear moral responsibility for refusing to help desperate people.” Kristof is basically saying what make us any different than the people who slaughter thousands of Jewish if we won’t do anything to stop the killing. Are we really going to sit back and let history repeat itself? If we have the power why aren’t we doing something useful, we can save the refugees. Are we
This type of writing interests me because it was used as a tool to open people’s eyes to the brutality of war. In a way it protested and spoke up against this injustice and most importantly gave a voice to the people who became the biggest victims of war – the soldiers themselves.