Shane Koyczan's To This Day

The aftermath o the gas attacks is addressed in the last stanza. The reader is now apart of the poem by the use of the possessive pronoun "you too" that imposes the reader to empathise with the injured victim. The victim is then described by the gruesome alliteration and assonance of "watch the white eyes writhing in his face" that together enhance the vivid sight. The continuing imagery of "gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs" uses onomatopoeia to lead the reader to believe that war is incorrectly glorified. The last lines "My friend, you would not tell with such a high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory,/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Throughout the story the theme that actions have serious consequences is evident. In the moment the sniper is ready and eager to shoot at the enemy. But after the moment is over, the sniper realizes just how awful his actions are.

Through “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” the soldiers standing, watching as everything goes on around them, are not able to stop what is happening. The soldiers represent the unforgiving nature of war.

‘Weapons Training’ is a monologue about the harsh and dehumanising conditions of the training session for the soldiers. During the poem, Dawe uses a variety of crude words, insults and Australian slang to show the dehumanisation and attitude the soldiers had to endure. Dawe uses both crude words and insult to humiliate both Australian and Vietnamese soldiers. He uses phrases such as “unsightly fat” and “are you queer “to insult Australian soldiers and “little yellows” and “rotten fish sauce breath” to insult the Vietnamese. The slang that Dawe uses is able to show a representation of Australian culture, the slang is “old crown jewels,” “tripe’s” and “copped the bloody lot.” Using these words, the poet is able to show that the culture is strong even during war. All the words that Dawe uses is a way of degrading the soldiers.

His replica of the small details in his life, assist to highlight the tremendous changes he undergoes to become a child soldier. Here the detailed descriptions of loading the guns, attacking others, and the unending cycle of killing and death are interspersed with bland scenarios about his internal musings. Instead of being able to consider his ambitions of performing in a local talent quest, he is traumatized by the nightmares or flashbacks of being a ‘green snake’, the most effective killing machine he once was.

The similar theme is that war changes people and tears them apart due to the pain and suffering of the war. “Cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody”(O’Flaherty 208). The quote helps show that the war may cause you to curse things you never would've before, like, yourself. And from the poem “He thought he’d list perhaps/ Off hand like just as I/ Was out of work, had sold his traps/ No other reason why”(Hardy 16-20). This tells how war can force people to make erratic decisions, it changes your attitude and morals about any situation including joining the army and going to war. The difference between the two stories is that in “The Sniper” it turns him against his family and in “The Man He Killed” it turned the soldier against his friends. To prove this, “Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother's face”(O’Flaherty, page 208). Again this tells of the shock the sniper received when he saw it was his brother he had killed. But in the opposing story “Yes, quaint and curious war is!/ You shoot a fellow down/ You’d treat if met where any bar is/ Or help to half-a-crown”(Hardy 17-20). It explains of how he killed a man that the soldier would have befriended in any other situation. All in all, you can see both the similarities and differences in both stories

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 theme of death and violence is another important segment in indicating the evils of war. Each individual is engaged in killing their enemies and struggling for their own lives. As seen through the view of the sniper, the people¡¦s lives are centred around killing and death. Lifestyle, even to the extent of lighting a cigarette becomes risky and could lead to death. Citizens are forced to be locked in their homes for fear of being shot. The incident, where an old woman is hot by the sniper, who is then injured by his enemy is an example of war¡¦s destructive nature. The loss of innocent

The use of the metaphor ‘Dad the Impaler’, accentuates the idea that children saw this term in a very positive manner when in actual fact it has negative connotations. This highlights the brutality of war, and the negative influence of war on children because the children in the poem used ‘Dad the Impaler’ in a heroic manner.

In the second stanza the distinctive experience of power is present. The use of the technique of imagery and emotive words “to pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows’ tells us that the soldiers were strong, loyal and had enough power within a degree to assist fellow soldiers. The use of personification to create sound “sob and clubbing of the gunfire” This leads the audience to understand what the soldiers were up against without even directly saying it. The imagery visually shows the scene in their

At the same time, O’Brien struggles with destructiveness of the conflicting images of violence and peace in death through the juxtaposition of the imagery of the dead man. While “his one eye was shut, the other eye was a star-shaped hole.” The dead man has one shut eye that resembles a peaceful sleep, while the other side is obliterated by the grenade into a star-shaped hole. The image of the star-shaped hole in the dead soldier’s eye represents the hopes that he once had when he was alive: “He hoped the Americans would go away. Soon, he hoped. He kept hoping and hoping, always” (119). Furthermore, “his right cheek was smooth and hairless,” an image of untouched innocence that contrasts with his left cheek, which was “peeled back in three ragged strips,” destroyed by the violence O’Brien inflicts upon it. The juxtaposition of the butterfly that settles on his chin and the fatal wound on his neck, “open to the spinal cord…blood…thick and shiny” illustrate the complexity and ambiguity of the unnaturalness of war, depicted by the image of the dead man’s wrung neck, contrasted with the ironic peace and naturalism of death in the image of the fragile butterfly. These select images are also those that O’Brien chooses to fixate upon and develop throughout the chapter as he struggles to comprehend the moral implications of his actions. The innocence of the “slim, dead, almost dainty young man” is further reinforced when O’Brien describes his wrists as “wrists of a

Since the beginning of time, humans have sought after power and control. It is human instinct to desire to be the undisputed champion, but when does it become a problem? Warfare has been practiced throughout civilization as a way to justify power. Though the orders come directly from one man, thousands of men and women pay the ultimate sacrifice. In Randall Jerrell’s “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner”, Jarrell is commenting on the brutality of warfare. Not only does Jarrell address the tragedies of war, he also blames politics, war leaders, and the soldier’s acknowledgement of his duties. (Hill 6) With only five lines of text, his poems allows the reader to understand what a soldier can go through. With the use of Jerrell’s poem, The Vietnam War, and Brian Turner’s “Ameriki Jundee”, the truth of combat will be revealed.

O’ Brien starts the chapter off by telling us that the war “wasn’t all about terror and violence.” (30) Then, he tells us a number of very short stories about the sweetness of war. He introduce the readers through a detailed description of what being in a war feels like and why war sucks. “One leg for Chrissake. Some poor fucker ran out of ammo.” (30) tells us that the boy’s one leg showed how much war sucks and being in a war is very painful. The result of having that boy with one leg left is because of all of his ammo have been depleted to defend for himself. O’ Brien compares the war to a Ping Pong ball, saying that you could put a spin on it and make it dance. When he sits at his typewriter and remembers Kiowa dying in a field of dirtyness

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

causes the poem to flow, and thus lightens up the dark and serious issue of war. The lines "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place." are easy to read; however, their meaning is extremely