Stephen Crane's War Is Kind

In every American war combined, about 1.2 million soldiers have died fighting in battle. Many look past the effects and consequences that going to war can lead to and every soldier is assumed to be a hero. Others believe that killing anybody, whether they are innocent or on a battlefield, is in no way honorable. Writers who protest war use imagery, irony, and structure to explain the negative effects of battle.

Throughout the history of the world, war has been prevalent. Sometimes necessary, sometimes not, war ruins countries, governments, communities, and families. War used to make heroes, legends of the battlefield; romanticized through time. Stories of knights and great battles of the past have a tendency to be portrayed as honorable, courageous duals. Ever since the Civil War in the mid-1800s, the view on war and the men and women who fought in them have been receiving a more realistic point of view. There are still heroes and great battles but they are far less romanticized. The story has begun to change for the men and women involved in wars. The nature of war is gruesome, violent, and pure death. The things people see in a war zone takes

“War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” (80)

War is not one of the most pleasant images this world has seen. Usually it is regarded as one of the most

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a

War is a reality many people must face every day. War can bring out the best in people, and unfortunately the worst. This pit of war can render people inescapable and powerless. This pit of war affects the decisions people make, and this horrid pit torture and blind the mind to see life in the true colors of black and white.

War has been apart of history for a long time, ordinary humans fought for our existence today, most stories told today glorify the reality of war making soldiers look like heroes and bring out the good in evil. The reality of war is equal to manslaughter in today’s society, it is the stories of war history that are told today that makes us think of soldiers in war as heroes despite the fact that they are committing crimes

Pain, violence, blood, and suffering, are all descriptions of war. Stephen Crane is known for his various works that use the use of sarcasm and symbolism. Many of his works were about wars his poem “War is Kind” and “ A Mystery of Heroism” are very similar yet very different at the same time. Stephen Crane uses irony in the poem “ War is Kind” and the short story “A Mystery of Heroism” to prove to the readers that he is opposed to the war by showing his negative view on the war by ironically stating war is a positive thing. He also tries to show the readers the effect the war has on the soldiers families.

The poem “War is Kind”, by Stephen Crane, contractively describes the negative effects of war on those involved and those waiting back home, often in vein. The general feeling of the poem is that was is actually unkind. Crane expresses his theme convincingly using comparative language, imagery, language use, line breaks, and the avoidance of clichés to be original. Comparative language in “War is Kind” is quite clearly present and a big part of the poems ironic message. First off, the title/phrase “War is Kind” is used several times throughout the poem.

He tells this woman not to cry over her man who was shot off a horse in the heat of battle because war is kind. In reality , how could one not? Crane plagues the end of this stanza (and more to follow) with irony as he states that war is kind, even though he just finished discussing the death of a man. War appears heroic and manly from the outside, but from experience, it is the total bloodshed and mass killing of man. Crane continues in the next stanza saying, “Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment/Little souls who thirst for fight/

Crane’s poem “War is Kind”(Crane) has a very distinct and thought out structure that plays a big part in the poem. Crane’s poem has an unindented paragraph then an indented one and it switches off, in the unindented paragraphs someone is telling a family member of a soldier that they should not weep for war is kind, in both of the indented paragraphs the third line states “These men were born to drill and die”(Crane). In the third line Crane reveals what war is truly like and what the soldiers true purpose is to the reader after he tells the family members in a sort of mocking tone to not weep for war is kind. “War is Kind”(Crane). Is a very structured poem but on the other hand you have an excerpt from the book The Yellow Birds (Powers) which appears to lack structure, though more accurately it contrasts the structure of “War is Kind”(Crane) by flowing endlessly with no breaks. The continuous flow shows us an internal monologue he has regarding his efforts to make conversation with friends from high school. “Or should I have said that I wanted to die, not in the sense of wanting to throw myself off of that train bridge over there, but more like I wanted to be asleep forever”(Powers). Powers did this because he is giving the reader an insight into what the speaker feels after being in the war. This quotation demonstrates that soldiers usually regret many actions they took while in war, and are haunted by them day in and day out when they return home. The speaker in The Yellow Birds(Powers) has suffered his loss of innocence and is no longer able to walk up to an old group of friends from high school and have a normal conversation, the speaker just wants everything to be over with. The war has caused the speaker to want to commit suicide, not in a violent way

In the poem “War is Kind,” by Stephen Crane, the speaker displays how the war causes people and society to suffer. A military man is known as the speaker of “War is kind.” The situation of the poem was around the 1950’s in the Vietnam War. Wars always cause a lot of deaths and also make people go through pain from losing a loved one. The refrains, irony, and imagery illustrate how one would have the belief that war should be non-existent.

War is many things. It may be many different things depending on each individual. Many soldiers get trained so their mentality is to characterize their opponents as less than human, so their lives lose all worth. Some soldiers however, are not prepared for this, even though they have been trained. One thing is training for it, another thing is actually killing a human being. As they kill more people, it becomes normalized for them. All they have seen changes their mind, while all of their dreams get swept aside by bloody hands of the hypnotized while they carry the cross of homicide. But why kill other strangers? What’s in it for the soldiers? War feeds the rich while it buries the poor. Rich people are power hungry, selling soldiers in human grocery store, using them as their little puppets who obey their master, making them go around killing each other in order to determine who is right, but in the end, war determines who is left. “The Man I Killed” by Tim O’Brien shows how soldiers who commit violence become traumatized and how that changes over time.

Crane’s “War is Kind” conveys the theme of warfare. Although the title of the poem is “War is Kind”, war is anything but kind. War splits apart lovers, it takes sons from their mothers and fathers from their kids. War causes death, sorrow, pain, suffering, and heartbreak. Even though war is known to be very bad it continues to happen. This is because there are men who are willing to send others to their deaths. Crane states,” These men were born to drill and die. /Point for them the virtue of slaughter,

Crane, Stephen. “An Episode of War.” Great Short Works of Stephen Crane. New York: Harper