Compare And Contrast War Is Kind And A Mystery Of Heroism

The poem War Is Kind by Stephen Crane is ironic. He is saying war is kind, but yet the reader can see that war has not been kind to anyone. A person would think that with the title War Is Kind that the poem would reflect about the good aspects of war not “a field where a thousand corpses lie.” (11) The theme of this poem is war is not kind displayed by irony because Crane writes about how war is devastating despite his title.

The description of a wounded soldier falling is an image etched in the minds of the soldiers in the battlefield. “He danced with tall grass / for a moment, like he was swaying / with a woman” (lines 1-3). The soldiers had to hold on to whatever hope that had of seeing their families again. This is evident in the fact that the dead soldier had a picture of his loved one in his hand when he died. “I slid the wallet into his pocket / & turned him over, so he wouldn’t be / kissing the ground” (15-17). The black soldier putting the picture in the dead soldier’s wallet and the wallet back in his pocket shows respect for the fallen, no matter the race of the soldier or if he was the enemy. Turning the soldier face up, shows dignity and honor to the fallen one. This act also shows compassion on the part of the black soldier. A fallen soldier reminds them that they never know when they will become a casualty of war. When it comes to loss, all the soldiers on both sides share a common

Nothing will end war unless the people refuse to go to war”, Albert Einstein. Stephen Crane, the author of “War is Kind”, had no experience with war; that was until the Spanish-American War, where he became a foreign war correspondent. “Dulce et Decorum Est”, was written by Wilfred Owen; Owen survived as a foot soldier during World War I and lost his life fighting for his country. The author of The Things They Carried, was Tim O’Brien who served in the Vietnam War. The final writing was The Yellow Birds, it was written by Kevin Powers after he served terms in the Iraq war. All of these authors use imagery, irony, and structure to protest war.

“So why not just find a spot and curl up and die . . . cowardice got you into this mess because you wanted to be a man. . .” (Powers). Stephen Crane, an American poet who wrote the poem “War is Kind,” was a reporter during the Spanish-American War; he died at the age of twenty-eight due to tuberculosis. Wilfred Owen, an English poet who wrote the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”, was a World War I soldier who died a week before the war ended; his poems were published after his death by his family. Tim O’Brien, an American author who wrote the novel The Things They Carried, is a Vietnam War veteran. Kevin Powers, also an American author who wrote the novel The Yellow Birds, is an Iraq war veteran. Each of these writers protest war by using either imagery, irony, or structure.

Stephen Crane is a naturalist writer who uses many narrative elements in his writing to create naturalist themes. Naturalists believe that a person’s life is determined by factors like environment and chance, that free will is an illusion, and that people should endure their suffering with quiet dignity. Naturalists also believe that natural selection and survival of the fittest govern all people. Crane uses setting, characters, plot, and conflict to develop his naturalist themes. By comparing and contrasting his two stories “A Mystery of Heroism” and “An Episode of War,” readers can see different ways he uses narrative elements to produce naturalist themes.

The first recorded war was fought in 2700 BCE. Countless wars have been fought since. Like all issues, people have an attitude toward war. Stephen Crane, the author of “War is Kind” and “A Mystery of Heroism,” has a negative attitude toward war. “War is Kind” is a poem describing the results of war. “A Mystery of Heroism” is a short story centering on Fred Collins, in the midst of battle. Crane uses irony is “War is Kind” and “A Mystery of Heroism” to reveal his dislike of war and its outcomes, thus reflecting his negative attitude toward it.

“War Is…?” Introduction by Patty Campbell and “War is Kind” by Stephen Crane both show a different attitudes and opinions towards the meaning of war. “War is…?” Has many different moods about war, War is Crazy, history, deception,Worse for civilians, impossible to win, inevitable, unbearable, delusion, male, and linked with religion. Patty Campbell seems to have a different definition of war and what war is. War is very crazy and war is history, but war was created for a reason, it was created to show two Countries differences and their conflicts they have with each other. “As a first step, young people considering the military as an option need to have the realities of war clearly revealed to them in many different voices so they can make

“An Episode of War” begins with a leiutenant getting his troops’ share of coffee beans in the morning, but then he is shot in the arm. At the moment he is shot, his mentality changes because he instantly became different from those who were around him. As he’s walking to the field house, he is moving slower the he would if he was able to actually fight in the battle. But since he can’t fight, he is able to watch from a new perspective, only as a spectator, so he notices things he wouldn’t have other wise. The battle isn’t the only thing he sees differently now that he’s wounded; he sees himself differently too. The soldier considers himself as good as dead because he knows what they’ll have to do his arm once he actually reached the field hospital, given his leisurly way of going. Sorrentino supports this by describing the soldiers reaction once he’s wounded, “As he heads for the field hospital, an increasingly widened perspective of “many things which as a participant in the fight were unknown to him” (Prose and Poetry 672) represents metaphorically the shift in his attitude towards battle and life in general” (Sorrentino). The soldier’s emotion once he was wounded shows his

The smell of gunpowder fills the battle ground. Thousands of men lay dying from fighting for their country. Sounds of cannons and gunshots echo through the field and town. Poet, Stephen Crane, in his poem, “War Is Kind” defines war as a grateful event. Crane’s purpose is to convey the idea, through a sarcastic tone, that conflict is negative. He use syntax and diction the reveal the meaning of war as a destructive force.

When someone thinks of war they do not think of sunsets and rainbows, they think of death and destruction. The propaganda surrounding war however, tries to make civilians think war is an amazing place. In Stephen Crane’s poem, “War Is Kind,” Crane tells the horrors of war, but then says it is okay because war is kind. Crane makes the reading think about how all this horrible things happen, but yet the media still tries to say war is safe and the military is a great place to make money and travel the world. The media does not tell you the consequences of war, just tries to sell you on the positives.

War is not kind to the soldiers in combat. War is not kind to the innocent civilians who reside in the area of war. However, war is kind to the economy. Society likes to disregard the emotional and physical trauma that those involved with the war deal with and focus only on the high points of war. One might argue that war stimulates the economy and a strong army is necessary for protection, but how far are we willing to go when the hands of young men and women’s lives are in our hands? We have to draw the line at some point, and in the interview with David Grossman, he says that “The truth is, we exist by virtue of killing”. Stephen Crane tried to send out a similar message when he said “Point for them the virtue of slaughter, make plain to them the excellence of killing”. He was criticizing the way the military trains their soldiers, and how they are setting their men up for trauma later on in

Have you ever lost loved ones to war? War and violence is essentially the constant theme throughout the majority of Stephen Crane’s works. His background has a huge impact on the subject matter for his poems. In “War is Kind”, Crane uses irony and imagery to establish that in fact, War is evil and cruel.

This perpetuates the mindset of the soldiers at war. They are losing their humanity and their capability to feel emotion. This is backed up by another situation he recounted where their own soldier was shot, but they kept working and doing their job right beside him and also when they found a man wounded in the trenches, but forgot about him and he “probably died” (“The Trauma of World War I”, p. 6). All of this illustrates the pure animalistic nature that these people had to turn into in order to survive the War. This can also parallel Brittain and her life during the War.

In “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, the author explores a variety of myths and elucidates the fundamental structure that most of them share. In most cases, the heroes adopt the true picture of heroism, where the heroic personalities make painful personal sacrifices in order to save situations that are dear to them. In addition, most heroic figure appears humbled by the respect accorded to them by the society and always acts in a selfless manner to defend the society. However, there are a few instances when the heroes assume a status way above average humans and using that status to hoard all the social benefits for themselves. This is the argument that Joseph Campbell puts forward regarding Minotaur, the tyrant monster. According to literature, Minotaur was a monster that had quite intimidating body, half of it man and half of it a bull. The monster basically personified ego unlike typical monsters that showed humility and self annihilation. The only food that the monster ate was human flesh and none of the strongest heroes would dare challenge him. It is the reason why fourteen children would be sent to it every year from Greece to the Island of Crete, where it lived. The people believed that this was the only way to prevent the society from experiencing some of the worst calamities.

The poem “War is Kind” by Stephen Crane, is a very interesting piece of literature saying that ‘war is kind’. Let's think about is war really kind? It takes love ones away from each other, fathers away from children, sons away from mothers, and separates lovers. But war could actually be kind. It tells a country wheres it weaknesses are, its gets the economy up and provides more jobs to work in factories to create weapons or to join the military to fight for the country.