Charles Hamilton Sorley was born in Aberdeen, Scotland (Scottish Poetry Library). The son of William Ritchie Sorley, a professor of moral philosophy, Sorley was an academically gifted child (Poetry Foundation).The family moved to Cambridge when he was five, and Sorley attended King’s College choir school as well as Marlborough College with some study in Germany (Britannica). He began publishing poetry in the school journal and won a scholarship to Oxford University (Poetry Foundation). Sorley was in Germany when World War I broke out and was interred for one night in prison at Trier, Germany (Irish Times). Making his way back to England, he enlisted in the army and served in the trenches of France (Scottish Poetry Foundation). Sorley was killed …show more content…
An interpretation of the poem is that the use of the second personal pronoun throughout the first stanza demonstrates means the desire of the poet to speak to the German people. As we can see, this poem is showing the thought that the author had when he was fighting. He is making a comparison between German soldiers and British soldiers. The author is telling them that they fight without knowing what their final destiny is. They fight in order to achieve pride and honor and to obtain the interest of their respective nation, but they are “blind” (Sorely 1). They follow the instructions of their captains, who lie to them to believe that when the war finishes, better times will come. When the author says “the blind fight the blind” he is telling us that none of them knows what the real reason of being is (Sorely …show more content…
The author is enumerating some situations that can take place when the war will finish. “When it is peace, then we may view again” (Sorely 9). In this stanza we can find adjectives, which create a relaxed atmosphere, where everything stays calm and everyone lives in peace. We can interpret the verse “with new-won eyes each other's truer form” (Sorely 10) as the author’s will of having a good relationship with the German people. This is produced because he spent one year of his life in Germany. During this period, he established relationships with them and now, during the war, he feels bad fighting against them, because in one period of his life they were his friends, and now they have become the enemy. But on the other hand he could ask the German: "Why are we fighting? What is the real reason of being here?" Though they come from different countries, they are equal. Perhaps he thought that if they finished with the war, they would leave in peace and without any
Sberna, Robert. House of Horrors: The Shocking True Story of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland Strangler. Kent, Ohio: Black Squirrel Books, 2012. Print.
Using references and quotes from three wartime poems I will explain what they tell us about wartime life and the thoughts and feelings of civilians and soldiers. I will also clarify how the poets communicate emotional and moving responses to the disturbing war. The three poems that will be analysed are: · Route March Rest - by Vernon Scannell, · Night Raid - by Desmond Hawkins, · The Battle - by Louis Simpson. I have selected these poems because they contain both similarity and contrast. These aspects are important in order to produce a high-quality essay as they provide a more balanced view of the poems.
Later in the book, he again reflects on the war. He catalogs the proofs that he has been given — injured and half-starved countrymen — but persists in his existential doubt. He notes, “So we knew a war existed; we had to believe that, just as we had to believe that the name for the sort of life we had led for the last three years was hardship and suffering. Yet we had no proof of it. In fact, we had even less than no proof; we had had thrust into our faces the very shabby and unavoidable obverse of proof…” (94). Because he has not seen the battles, he has difficulty acknowledging the reality of war.
This opening paragraph is a simple, poetic version of the main theme behind All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The point of the story is to show that war is not romantic, glorious, or fantastic. In fact, those words could not be further from the truth. War is a disgusting competition of human instinct, fought by the wrong people. It brings out the worst in everyone; it destroys their compassion, honesty, and ideals. The beginning chapters of All Quiet on the Western Front are devoted to showing that warfare hardens soldiers against true emotions. Their main priority is survival, second is comfort, followed by gain.
The speaker in "War is Kind" is an officer who grapples with his own conscience in an internal monologue. He is struggling with his feelings of guilt over leading younger soldiers into battle and his military responsibility to cover up the truth. One way of interpreting this poem is to consider that the officer is attending a traditional military funeral for one of his soldiers. This can be seen in the way the stanzas are set up in the poem. In the first, third, and fifth stanzas, the speaker appears to be consoling the weeping loved ones of a soldier who died in the war. This would normally be the job of an officer who leads a regiment into battle. Consoling the family members is a powerful tool for conveying the reality of war. Addressing loved ones of a deceased soldier illustrates the loss and suffering to be dealt with by those left behind. He speaks to a "maiden" (1), a "babe" (12), and a "mother" (23), thereby, conveying one of the most significant truths about wa...
The author also uses anaphora to stress the point that the poem is about the boxers. Third person pronouns are used repeatedly throughout the first stanza, such as they, their, and them. This gives the reader the idea that the young child is learning though example, not personal experience. This clue is reiterated in the last line which concludes, “The world inspired in its sons” (27). The theme of courage in the face of adversity is a lesson that, according to the author, is meant to be taught by the world.
One of my favorite aspects about the poem is how he shows his empathy for the heroes he describes. Instead of telling the reader, “I have empathy for the heroes who rise to confront challenges”, he assumes the role of the heroes in action and describes the events in first person to show the reader examples of courage. One line in the poem reads, “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” When I first read this line, I had difficulties understanding what he meant by “become the wounded”. However, after reading the poem, a couple of times I realized that he means that he can empathize with the heroes. To further show his empathy, he assumes the role of the heroes and narrates the events in first person, while using “I” “me” and “my” instead of “he” or “she”.
...nd die, sometimes unknowing what they were fighting for or how it started. They travel on horses, by foot, they go into battle, risk their lives, die by the thousands. Later on, all that is left are ruins and corpses. Mostly, people are angrier than before. There was no purpose, it was meaningless, no goals were accomplished, and we ask ourselves if it was necessary to do it. The outcome usually is worse. In the poem his repetitive line "War is Kind" is using irony to explain the same idea. "Do not weep, babe, for war is kind. Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches, raged at his breast, gulped, and died…"(p.494). Romanticists would go beyond and find some beauty, some heroic act, a dim light in the distance, while Crane realizes the truth and tells us to open our eyes, to see the tears, and the destruction, and the blood, there is no point in war.
He feels like his youth is lost. Everything that he had known before the war doesn’t matter anymore. At the same time he feels old, experiencing things a young doesn’t see in a normal life. “How long has it been? Weeks—moths—years? Only days. We see time pass in the colour-less faces of the dying, we cram food into us, we run, we throw, we shoot, we kill, we lie about, we are feeble and spent, and nothing supports us but the knowledge that there are still feeblers , still more spent, still more helpless ones out there who, with staring eyes, look upon us as gods that escape death many times.”
Firstly I will be exploring metaphor as it is used so much in this poem. The first metaphor which I will examine is “Haunting Flares” on line 3 of the first stanza. This quote has so many connotations, my first opinion on this was that the flares which the enemy are firing to light up the battlefield are said to be representing the souls of the soldiers fallen comrades. This could also be said to represent the power the enemy has on their own mortality as the bright flares would light up the battle-field exposing everything to their view, this indicates that the enemy always seem to have power upon the soldiers, almost godly. The second metaphor which I will explore is: “An ecstasy of fumbling” in line one of the second stanza.
The simple definition of war is a state of armed competition, conflict, or hostility between different nations or groups; however war differs drastically in the eyes of naive children or experienced soldiers. Whether one is a young boy or a soldier, war is never as easy to understand as the definition. comprehend. There will inevitably be an event or circumstance where one is befuddled by the horror of war. For a young boy, it may occur when war first breaks out in his country, such as in “Song of Becoming.” Yet, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” it took a man dying in front of a soldier's face for the soldier to realize how awful war truly is. Both “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” are poems about people experiencing the monstrosity of war for the first time. One is told from the perspective of young boys who were stripped of their joyful innocence and forced to experience war first hand. The other is from the perspective of a soldier, reflecting on the death of one of his fellow soldiers and realizing that there is nothing he can do to save him. While “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” both focus on the theme of the loss of innocence, “Song of Becoming” illustrates how war affects the lives of young boys, whereas “Dulce et Decorum Est” depicts the affect on an experienced soldier.
Throughout the poem two phrases are repeated many times, emphasizing their importance, and giving them more power. As they are repeated the reader is shown the indifference of the narrator when he says, "First they came for the ..." "and I did not speak out Because I was not a..." (Niemöller, 1-6). These phrases and their interchangeable endings show how the narrator does not care who is facing troubles as long as it is not them. This indifference is detrimental because it shows a lack of empathy and cares for others in the narrator. Niemöller's repetition of these two phrases during his poem highlights the narrator's consistent disregard for people different than them. A shift in the pattern of thinking of the narrator is seen when he says, "Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." (Niemöller, 7). After repeatedly ignoring the injustices against others the narrator realizes their mistake when they find themself in the same situation as the people they had previously ignored. This change in how the narrator thinks shows how their lack of action to help others face their injustices was done so partly in ignorance. The narrator had not yet realized that everyone faces struggles at a point during their lives, and that the only way to get through them is by supporting and having the support of
‘The Falling Soldier’ is one of many poems by Duffy which deals with the subject of human mortality. Duffy expresses what could have been over a harsh reality; this is characteristic of her as also seen in ‘Last Post’ and ‘Passing Bells’ which both seem to be largely influenced by poet peer Wilfred Owen’s personal experiences of war. In the ‘The Falling Soldier’ Duffy paradoxically captures the essence of Robert Capa’s famous photograph of a man falling after being shot during the Spanish Civil War (1936). She employs the form of an impersonal narrative voice, using second person to question the possibilities, to explore the tragic and cyclical nature of war. The futile reality of war contrasts to her central theme in ‘The Bees’ anthology of bees symbolising the grace left in humanity.
simple words. We see that a similar line in the beginning also refers to the victory of the war that
The poem shows that the young man grows up to become a fighter who does not know when to stop all in the matter of a few lines that amount to one sentence. Then in an even shorter sentence, he dies in combat. Writing this as two sentences accentuates the idea that life is short, but can even be shorter if we can not get along. The speaker’s mourning tone probably ponders if the man avoided fighting maybe he could have lived longer as suggested when mentioning killing war elephants were not enough for the man who immersed himself in the battleground. By putting oneself in an environment of anger and aggression to the point of a questionable noticing of an arrow inside of oneself can only lead to a shortened