100 Poets Against The War Essay

Whether it’s war or terrorism, children who want to grow securely is living amongst the affected nation. War is obliterating those talented individuals in their childhood who can radically transform the world itself. The two disputed countries may also have justifications to protect the welfares of their own people. There can be wealth and nuclear weapons to demolish this world as a whole. However, peacefully negotiated approach is coveted to compromise on each other. No country can rationalize weapons of mass obliteration and debacles. Often, it is a foolish decision of the pioneers of the country, making it a pretext for the combat. It’s the upright soldiers and their families who need to survive the demise and serious injuries from the weapons. For the last centuries, the spontaneous overflow of poetry has portrayed human emotions concerning wide range of universal issues. Both the poets Donald Bruce Dawe and Wilfred Owen exemplify this cataclysm of losing your families and the conditions the soldiers face, through their notable poems Homecoming and Dulce et Decorum Est.

War is a scandalous topic where peoples’ views differ as to what war is. Some people see it as pure evil and wicked while others think that it is brave and noble of what soldiers do. Looking at poems which had been written by people affected by war help show the messages which are portrayed. The two sets of poems which show different views of war as well as some similarities are “the Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred Lord Tennyson, “To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars” by Richard Lovelace and “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, “The Song of the Mud” by Mary Borden. Both these poets use linguistic devices to convince the reader of their view of what the war is. Tennyson and Lovelace show how war is worthy

Protest poems and songs are, and have been throughout history, an effective medium of expressing their composer’s concerns or protests to a wide audience. The main themes behind each of these creative media are influenced heavily by the context in which they were created and focus on the composer’s opinions about controversial issues of that time. Poet Bruce Dawe, through his poem ‘homecoming’ and singer-songwriter Barry Maguire, through his song ‘Eve of destruction’ were able to explore and express their similar concerns about the harsh and dehumanising aspects of war and the effects on society, with Maguire focussing on the ignorance of society toward the detrimental effects of war and Dawe reflecting on emotional trauma experienced by those who lost love ones to the brutality of war.

In the poems ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson and ‘Exposure’ by Wilfried Owen, both poets incorporate ideas of patriotism to convey a message about the futility of war. This is revealed in many similar and different ways:

The purpose of this essay is to compare the of Wendell Berry’s essay, “The Failure of War”, Dorianne Laux’s poem, Staff Sgt. Metz and Damon Winter’s photograph of Sgt. Brian Keith. All three of these pieces represent the controversial issue of War which is a topic for a argumentative piece. In two of the written pieces the writer acknowledges the opposition, however, the picture the opposition is implied. Each piece has a purpose aimed at an audience with an emotional appeal.

Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is a novel that is a personal view of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Vietnamese soldier. Like the American novel “The things they carried”, this novel brings about the effects of war on people, and especially how it defeats the human capacity for things such as love and hope. Bao Ninh offers this realistic picture of the Vietnam War’s impact on the individual Vietnamese soldier through use of a series of reminiscences or flashbacks, jumping backwards and forwards in time between the events most salient in memory, events which take on a different theme each time they are examined. His main protagonist Kien, who is basically Bao himself, looks back not just at his ten years at

Weigl has dug deep into his recollection of the war to produce work that can be thought of as artistically beautiful. It’s his aim to find the means, despite everything he’s endured, to transcend misery in his poetry. This is done on purpose and allows Weigl to employ a style in his poetry that’s dependent on the sound of words, to express an image so openly that the verses depict a genuine emotion that doesn’t pose as an insult to readers. Underneath the rubble of his misfortune there is a level of integrity on display that readers can appreciate. Weigl likes to view the world objectively and so does his poetry in a very responsible and accountable manner.

The collection of poems “Theater”, “Water”, and “Safe House” by Solmaz Sharif shows the varied viewpoints of how war affects the speakers and how death is all too common in the midst of warfare. The author uses a spectrum of literary techniques to enhance the experience of the reader, so we can fully grasp the severity of each speaker’s plight. All of Sharif’s poems differ in form with the use of white space and indentations in “Theater”, colons in “Water”, and a style of abecedarian using the letter S in “Safe House”. While her diverse use of forms generate different emotions from the reader, they share the same notion of how violence is problematic. Each poem has a unique outlook to the sight of war: “Theater” being in the position of a victim and an assailant of war, “Water” explaining a war mission and fatalities in terse terms, and “Safe House” as an observer of an activist against war. Sharif’s strategy to exemplify the effects of how war affects the victim and the civilian is particularly critical because mass media tends to hide the collateral damage of war and only illustrates why we should attack the “enemy”. Another approach the author uses to critique the speakers central conflicts is by arranging words from the US Department of Defense 's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, to concur with the message of the several ways war influences the lives of those who are unwillingly encompassed by it. Sharif uses poetry as an outlet to show the underlying tone

In “September, 1918”, Amy Lowell shows her readers an interesting and illuminating poem. That war can be an ugly time and the people that experience it often seems to live in a “broken world” (19). To fight an evil, sometimes war is needed, nonetheless it is still costly to the people living through the war. Some in a literal sense, like soldiers fighting in a war, while some in a physical sense by the world that they now see and live in. I find the poem truly interesting though, in how the author shows that even in war we can still hold onto hope for more promising days. Lowell portrays a melancholy mood throughout her poem that makes her readers thinking about war but also the hope of it being over.

Tom Lux’s “The People of the Other Village” was written shortly after the first Iraq war and gained popularity after the 9/11 attacks.   The poem’s voice comes from an indifferent narrator whose unnamed village is at war with the people of an “other” unnamed village.  The exact reason that started this war is unclear; however, as the war escalates, the battle tactics evolve and are depicted in an alternating line structure that mimics the back and forth nature of reciprocal violence.  Ultimately, the author presents a poem that comments on human nature without committing to a judgment of that nature through subject matter, structure, and narrative voice.

Since the emergence of written history, many fables regarding war have encompassed a significant portion of prosodic literature. Two of the foremost war poets of the 19th and 20th century—Emily Dickinson and Rupert Brooke—have both written about profound implications of war on society and also upon the human spirit albeit in two very different styles. The book, Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, theorizes through Allie, that Emily Dickinson was indubitably the superior war poet. Furthermore, when we analyze their works as well, we realize the invariable fact that Dickinson’s work delves into war with a much more holistic approach as well. She not only honours the soldiers for their valiant efforts, but also deftly weaves notions of liberty and civilian duty in regards to war as well as compared to Rupert Brooke who carried a romanticized imagery of martyrs within his poetry. In summation, Emily Dickinson is a superior war poet for her incisive analysis of death, and human nature in correspondence to war as compared to the patriotic salvos of Rupert Brooke’s poetry.

Poets frequently utilize vivid images to further depict the overall meaning of their works. The imagery in “& the War Was in Its Infancy Then,” by Maurice Emerson Decaul, conveys mental images in the reader’s mind that shows the physical damage of war with the addition of the emotional effect it has on a person. The reader can conclude the speaker is a soldier because the poem is written from a soldier’s point of view, someone who had to have been a first hand witness. The poem is about a man who is emotionally damaged due to war and has had to learn to cope with his surroundings. By use of imagery the reader gets a deeper sense of how the man felt during the war. Through the use of imagery, tone, and deeper meaning, Decaul shows us the

It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.

When faced with the countless problems of war including death, disease, sorrow, and loss, soldiers develop and intense bond between one another as they seek support in one another. A brotherhood is formed among these soldiers who rely on one another for protection and companionship amid a time in their lives where they are faced with the constant threat of death and violence everyday of their lives. But what happens to them after the war? In After the War, poet brings awareness to how the war-torn soldier attempts to reestablish their self in a society they have been isolated from for so many years through use of free verse and repetitive phrases, which further reinforces the theme throughout the poem.

Poems using strong poetic technique and devices are able to create a wide range of emotions from the readers. Wilfred Owen’s poetry effectively uses these poetic techniques and devices to not only create unsettling images about war but to provide his opinion about war itself with the use of themes within his poem. The use of these themes explored Owen’s ideas on the futility of war and can be seen in the poems: Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility and The Next War. The poems provide unsettling images and belief of war through the treatment of death, barbaric nature of war and the futility of war.