Explication of Ogichidag by Jim Northrup Essays

I related the overall war to everyday life. Sometimes it goes smoothly and other times there are “battles”. Whether the battles are mental, physical, or emotional and if you win depends on you and how hard you are willing to push back. Sometimes you get wounded. “I was shot twice…I almost smiled, except then I started to I might die” (180). “…when I was released from the 91st Evac Hospital, they transferred me over to Headquarters Company-S-4” (182). Sometimes in life there are challenges, but eventually with determination, you can preserve and in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It’s about sunlight. It’s about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow” (81). I think that it’s important that you take in the little things, because that’s what life’s about. It is about taking chances and making the most out of life. Life’s about going through the struggles and hard times in order to make the good ones even better than they would’ve been

The novel and poem both express the central idea that the horrors of war suppress

War is unforgiving. He’s seen the bodies scattered around the fields, hastily buried in shallow graves before they begin to fester and rot. He’s seen them shot down before him, bodies hitting the ground and sinking into the mud- whether friend or foe, it matters not. They’ll all die here in the end. All he can do is wait it out, pray to survive until at least this war is over, and return home to a life of suppressing the memories and forgetting the images of men wiped out and dying, forgotten, in these turgid pits of death.

As Douglas MacArthur once said, “The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” In Ilya Kaminsky’s poem “We Lived Happily During the War,” he elucidates the immoral decisions made by the government. The severe consequences of war are not considered when profit can be made. Syntax stresses the government’s ignorance to the speaker’s view on war.

The soldiers had to experience many hardships and so much death and a lot of people at home had a distorted view of the war. People praised them and revered them but did not understand the consequences and did not understand that the war didn’t make you a glamorous hero. This disconnect that the war caused made many soldiers bitter and cynical toward those at home. In addition, resentment was stirred up in soldiers due to the “wartime employment of women in traditionally male jobs” (Berenson 432). Also wartime propaganda was false creating cynicism (Berenson 434). In addition to remarking on the hardships of war, in many of Sassoon’s poems, he speaks to civilian disillusionment. Which can be seen in the poem “Suicide in the Trenches,” previously discussed, and “Does it Matter?” There is an underlying attitude that war was a “futile, meaningless and tragic waste” In “Suicide in the Trenches” Sassoon also discusses civilian’s disillusionment of the war. In the last stanza Sassoon says calls the people “sumg-faced crowds” showing his bitterness toward them. He ends the poem by saying “Sneak home and pray you’ll never know/ The hell where youth and laughter go” He is saying that these people don’t understand. This can been seen in Sassoon’s poem “Does it Matter?” in which he speaks of the consequences of the war. Sassoon outlines several consequences of the war; losing limbs, losing sight and nightmares from the war. He questions whether or not these things matter because when they return people don’t understand. The final line is “And no one will worry a bit” what he is trying to say is that people aren’t worried about their well being when they get home because they don’t understand that what they experienced in the war follows them

This source is important in its larger historical context because this poem shows the reality of the life during World War I and it creates a true picture of the horrific life living in trenches. World War I was a serious issue that no one should take lightly. Many newspapers and political propaganda stressed patriotic action which concealed the true pain that war created. Many government officers would have to censor all pending letters because, for the well-being of the whole army, the government wanted to keep government secrets such as war tactics and other negative comments about the government. It was exhausting to have to live most of your life in trenches barely eating anything and having to risk your life for your state.

The goal of the poem is to open up the readers’ eyes to see the effects that war has on people involved. The article “The Ethics of War” has a primary focus of the entire article that debates whether or not war is or ever will be completely justified. The author stated that “the opinions that come out of war are out of feeling rather than thought.” This statement seems to be very valid because every person has a different opinion on each and everything that goes on in the world. It is not possible for every person to agree on the same thing because it is human nature to have our own rights to different

<br>The content of the poem describes the younger soldiers, mainly "boys" who are marching to the front line where they will most probably meet their death. The poem is

In addition to the content of the poem relaying the message of the importance of memories and their driving force and their ability to allow an individual, or a group, to lay claim to immortality, the form in which the poetry was written subtly alludes to the same concepts of heroism and memories. This is demonstrated in everything from the subtle changes in tone that occur throughout the poem. An example of this change of tone affecting the mood of the poem could be demonstrated while studying the character’s loss of humanity throughout the poem. In the second stanza the narrator presents war in an

The poem states “With proud thanksgiving a mother for her children. England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit. Fallen in the cause of the free.” This means even though the mother solutes her children she also still mourns for them, she also solutes others during the war and mourns for other people's children too, she also says they will never be forgotten for their hard work. The Speaker is speaking to anyone who has lost a loved on in the war and she could be speaking to anyone who is going through what she is. The message is to let other people know the effects of what could happen to their loved ones. The mood & tone of this poem is depressing because it has to do with death in

The narrator is trying to convey their thoughts regarding war, how it can be wrongly glorified but that realistically is horrible to experience or witness for those who lose

The speaker talks about how the soldiers look “like old beggars under sacks” and how they are “coughing like hags” (1, 2). The imagery in this poem gives a closer look at how the soldiers are feeling about the war. The soldiers are “drunk with fatigue” so tired they did not pay any heed to the dropping gas bombs (7). When the bomb drops on the group there is “an ecstasy of fumbling” to put gas masks on; these descriptions show how quickly the soldiers need to react (9). One soldier, still shouting the warning, began “flound’ring like a man in fire” (12).

In these phrases he is describing how soldiers will probably feel after war, ringing the idea of PTSD back to the readers mind. The use of the phrase “he’s probably” seem to be shooting down assumptions that people make. People may assume that: ’he is alive, so he must be okay,’ but this poem is saying that he really isn’t fine at all. The line “it feels like my eyes have been stretched wide open” uses metaphor to convey the fact that the trauma of war makes it hard to sleep or close your eyes, because when your eyes shut it brings back the memories of the horrid place.‘Stretched’ is such a forceful word and again draws on the fact that they have no control over the trauma still effecting them when they leave war. This idea of the long lasting effect war, is also seen in the line “images of memories imprinted in my mind, the boy they knew before Is what they’ll never find” This stanza perfectly sums up the theme of the poem as it shows that war completely changes people and therefore is not a nice or pleasant

An idea that is getting explored is that these men who are dying were not always soldiers they were once farmers and many other things this is shown in the line ‘At home, whispering of fields half-sown.’ These men who are dying are only here because there king ordered them while the trained soldiers who were in the army prior to ww1 were often in command tents far from the front lines. It also shows the ideas of suffering with the mention of limbs not working and bodies still war but unmoved. This is what the poem is focused on him and a group of soldiers in ww1 standing over the body of their dead friend contemplating about his death and the loss of potential.

In the fourth stanza, the poet shifts his attention from the soldier to “new young men”, most of who are marching to their deaths as the soldier once did. This indicates that the war will not simply end with his death, but will consume the lives of more innocents. The cycle would continue. It also implies that the