Critical Analysis Of Lapis Lazuli

In the satirical poem, Ad (1938), author Kenneth Fearing, founding editor of Partisan Review, asserts that people mindlessly accept the practices of war and suggests people are too willing to join war without the idea of consequence. Fearing’s poem is stylized as an advertisement for soldiers to fight in World War 2, however, the heavy satirical tone makes it clear this advertisement is for gore and not for glory. Fearing uses diction, style, and imagery to reveal his theme of anti-war. The diction is placed strategically, showing the true means of war and bloodshed, the style containing strong italicization and capitalizations, and using imagery to give the audience a true look into just how real war is. Kenneth Fearing’s poem reached millions

Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front has a central theme of the harsh realities of war and a general negative attitude toward the subject. This attitude is synonymous of other war poems such as Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen and War Is Kind by Stephen Crane; however, the attitudes are revealed differently in all three pieces through each respective author’s use of diction, imagery, and tone.

Literature and poetry are a reflection of society. The words are reflected in numerous feelings that we can almost touch and can be deeply felt in its reach. Most poets expressed their perception and emotion through their writings. Unfortunately the art and poetry describes one of the worst things that human can do to one another. The legalized murder called "war." Hence, this type of self-reflection called "poetry" has help create new fundamental ideas and values towards our society. In this essay, I will discuss the issue of the "War Poetry" during the "Great War" along with comparing and contrasting two talented renowned poets; Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967).

In Otto Dix’s “Shock Troops Advance Under Gas”, Dix presents the brutality of war for everyone to see. From the barbed wire snagging a troop’s arm to the gas masks, this work illustrates true horror. Dix’s illustration of war helps display that war truly is not something to write home about with pride. Thus, I present the argument that war is not something to be patriotic over, and it is not something we should be thanking the troops for. They are brave individuals, but the duties they perform are not – they are the product of cowardly nations. The purpose of this paper is to convey my personal feelings towards this work, war and how it is not the answer, and tying in my visit to the McNay Art Museum back to aspects of war.

“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell is able to accomplish so many thing with so little lines-mainly through the use of metaphor and diction. It explains the terrors of wars in gruesome detail and explains the ways in which wars, in a sense “breed” and “birth” death. To some, this poem is seen as the ultimate poem of war, and rightly

The Other is configured in the two writers’ works as victims of power play, their unjust mistreatment subsequently exposing underlying social inequalities. Through adopting the Gothic medium characteristic of Romanticism, the texts induce within the reader emotions of terror and pity towards the marginalised, leaving a profound effect which impactfully conveys the intended social criticism.

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.

‘No doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and the strain / have caused their stammering, disconnected talk,’ writes Siegfried Sassoon in the poem Survivors (1917). Sassoon’s irony in these lines condense a prevalent view of non-combatants during the First World War that the soldiers would recover from their physical injuries and mental illness after the phase of shock had concluded. In the short story Speed the Plough (1923), Mary Butts articulates scepticism towards the idea that Shell Shock will simply pass. Instead of employing the habitual indicators of war, the story showcases Butts’s fixation in avoiding them. Modernist writers, such as Butts, were interested in innovation and experimentation with language to create new forms of expression. The following analysis will explore how the modernist aesthetics shape this passage in order to express the experience of war but avoid recurring to the same language that explicitly evokes it.

Intensively striking war imagery emerges throughout the course of the text and therefore effectively joins its underlining fore.  Graphic images of the grotesque face of war characterize and develop the

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

In this poem, ‘The Man He Killed’, the poet Thomas Hardy explores a complex theme, which is war, using the simplest language. Throughout this essay I will be discussing the thoughts and opinions Hardy has on war.

“In his poetry, Wilfred Owen depicts the horror and futility of war and the impact war has on individuals.”

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.

Throughout Wilfred Owen’s collection of poems, he unmasks the harsh tragedy of war through the events he experienced. His poems indulge and grasp readers to feel the pain of his words and develop some idea on the tragedy during the war. Tragedy was a common feature during the war, as innocent boys and men had their lives taken away from them in a gunshot. The sad truth of the war that most of the people who experienced and lived during the tragic time, still bare the horrifying images that still live with them now. Owen’s poems give the reader insight to this pain, and help unmask the tragedy of war.