Break of Day in the Trenches

In the middle of the poem, the speaker arrives at the number of casualties from the war. When he reads this number he can’t believe that he is still alive. As he reads down the names he uses the visual imagery and simile to describe how he expected to find his own name in “letters like smoke” (line 16). This helps the reader understand how lucky the speaker felt about somehow escaping the war still alive. As he goes

The poem describes the life of a man during the Vietnam War, a conflict involving the United States and local Vietnamese who supported a communist regime, and how unexplainable sporadic events saved his life. He gives thanks to an unknown force that saves his life multiple times throughout his tour in Vietnam because the instances are what some people consider luck and others and act of a higher being or deity. Throughout the poem he expresses his gratitude towards the entity that watches over him but later he questions the existence of a god because why would one allow there to be a war in the first place and then send

The author was giving a message then at the end of the poem it changes. He was giving the message that war happens to everybody and that they will have to go to war at some point in there life. The problem is that they don’t know the bourdon that it puts on the people that he has supported and been supported by until his son is sent of. He gets a totally different feeling when he doesn’t know what could happen to his son. He gets his message across by proving that every body has something to do with war wether they like it or not. Your parents might have been to war, if not them then your uncles, cousins, friends, or your neighbors(old men). Then if it isn’t them it could be your child who is going and the feeling is different, you lose the feeling of security when you cant protect your child. He

The poem was written to show that war is a waste of human life as the soldier knows he will die one day as well as the men around him, just some quicker than others. This can be evident in stanza four of the poem: “I know I’ll join them somewhere, one day.” The language used is more casual than formative, this is effective as it shows the personal feelings and thoughts of the soldier during the time

The title of the poem automatically shifts the reader's mind to expect a poem about war and death. However, after reading the title and seeing how clear it is, when taken literally, line one of the poem is very confusing. If we try to understand the poem at a basic literal level, here’s what's happening: There is a gunner in the ball turret, underneath a bomber plane. It is so cold up high that the lining of his wet jacket is being

War is often thought about as something that hardens a soldier. It makes a person stronger emotionally because they are taught not show it and deal with it internally. People say that death in war is easier to handle because it is for the right reasons and a person can distance themselves from the pain of losing someone. However, there is always a point when the pain becomes too real and it is hard to maintain that distance. In doing so, the story disputes the idea that witnessing a traumatic event causes a numbing or blockage of feelings. Rat Kiley’s progression of sentiment began with an initial concern for the buffalo, transforming into an irate killing of the animal, and then ending with an ultimate acceptance of death. These

During times of war, it is inevitable for loss to be experienced by all. In the poems “The Black Rat” and “The Photograph” written by Iris Clayton and Peter Kocan respectively, the idea of loss is explored through an omniscient narrator recalling a soldier’s involvement in warfare. While Clayton writes of a soldier’s abrupt loss of hope and how this experience negatively affects his life, Kocan explores how the loss of a loved one affects a family sixty years later. While both poems incorporate similar techniques in imagery and narration, the time setting for each poem is different as “The Black Rat” is set in Tobruk, Libya during World War 2 and “The Photograph” is set during World War 1.

The memories and feelings that the memorial brings forth from the veteran are the driving force to the tone of the poem. The poems is heavy and heartbreaking. It clearly shows that the visit to the memorial has an enormous impact on the author. The author describes several different visions he has while at the memorial. The visions that he has are as real to him as if they were physically present. The author makes it easy to see and feel things through his eyes. The words used to describe his thoughts and feeling evoke emotions of sadness and at times, even despair.

This internal war starts the second that you set foot in this unknown word as a baby, all the way up to the last step you take to say your last goodbyes to this world. The poem begins with a life of a child in whom people around him tended to call the child “...crybaby or poor or fatty or crazy and made [the child] an alien…”(Sexton), and the child “...drank their acid and concealed it.”(Sexton) illustrating how painful it is, not react and take actions,but counseling is the best method the child seemed fit. Furthermore, courage in a person can also cause a war, in which the author shows the imagery, how the child’s “...courage was a small coal that [the child] kept swallowing.”(Sexton) and encouraging to society to make his own future. As an adult, the person endured many difficulties, such as the of enduring “...a great despair…”(Sexton), but you didn’t do it with a companion but rather “...did it alone.”(Sexton) and endured that suffering within yourself. Being an adult is not only passing a time with your loved ones and remembering the ones that sacrificed their time to make you who you are now, from your teachers to your peers to your parents, but to actually live your life the fullest and make each day worth living.Until the last moment that has been waiting since the beginning in which the death “...opens the back door...” and “...[the adult will] put on [his] carpet slippers and stride out.”(Sexton), exemplifying how all you have done, from engulfing the pain given by the society to living your whole life just to see a tear of happiness from seeing your grandchild, will not be taken with you at the moment when you really need it the

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.

Trenches were infested with rats, disease and mud. Rats infested the trenches. There were two kinds of rats- black and brown. Brown rats were the most feared as they gorged on more human flesh and could grow to the size of a small dogs. This quote describes rats perfectly- Great, sleek, corpse-fed rats ran in squads between our legs and over our feet as we stood. Their obscene squeaking could be heard at all times. Some men conceived an unmeasured hatred of these loathsome things, and were always trying to slaughter them. I wondered, as I stood, did they picture themselves as those scattered corpses- a prey to these. Imagination is decidedly not good for a soldier. It is one of the things Kipling forgot to tell us- George Mitchell.

In Tim O’Brian’s short excerpt, How to Tell A True War Story, the narrator recounts his hardening experiances in the Vietnam War (1956-1975). O’Brian details the story of Rat during the war, and his experiances losing his best friend. Through the use of literary divices such as imagry, paradoxical ideas, as well as themes that juxtapose each other, O’Brian is able to deliver an effective message in reguards to the complex relationship between physical war and war stories. The use of imagery and discriptive language allows for a realistic experience for the reader, and ultimatly amplifies the audience’s percenption of the text. Additionally, paradoxies are included

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

Although the subject of nightmare is only in two lines of the whole poem, this minor contribution is highly effective for it allows the audience access to the traumatising aftermath of the horrors of war.

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.