The Tradition Of War Poetry Essay

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.

Even a century long time after his death, Wilfred Owen is still famous for his war poetry written during World War 1. In his poems, Owen uses various language techniques to vividly illustrate the horrendous reality of war. Hence, he communicates his own anti-war feelings, that are embedded beneath his techniques. However, although he is now known as an anti-war poet, for once, he had been a naive boy, who had been pressured by the propaganda and volunteered to fight in war.

The moms may not have spent time with the kids making them feel like she doesn’t love them. “`In the midst of all this you realize you’re sacrificing their childhood.`” (Foerstner 12). She may be sacrificing their childhood, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t spend her free time with them. With that little time she has, she probably would spend it making memories with her kids, no matter how tired she is. Queen Penelope loved Telemachus with all her heart, even though her heart was broken because Odysseus still hasn’t returned. Mothers have this type of love for their kids that no one else really has. It’s the type that makes them want to strangle their kids for not listening but still love them no matter how much the kids mess up in life. Moms don’t have the experience for the to be a father figure for the kids. “ a priest at his parish helps him sort out the issues when he and his mother disagree on family rules such as a curfew.” (Foerstner 16). Moms may not have the experience of being a dad but she could always ask for help from male figures. The kids would be more exposed to the feeling of how having a dad is like. Just like Telemachus, he was very close to Odysseus's loyal shepherd, Eumaeus because he was a father figure to Telemachus. Although Eumaeus was not his dad, Tele came back from his 2 year search for his father, and Eumaeus was the first person he visited. These single mothers

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).

The Universal Soldier is less of a man or human and more so the idea of every soldier combined as well as the perspective war personified. Throughout the song, the Universal Soldier is referred to as “him” and the songs depict what he is and what he does. The lines 1 and 4 are both representative of the height and age parameters for soldiers in 1961, which supports the idea that he represents all soldiers in war. The lines 22-24 depict him as the armies both Hitler and Caesar have; without both of their armies, they could not have accomplished what they did.

“A Splendid Little War” was an alternative title to the Spanish American War named by Ambassador John Hay to his good friend Theodore Roosevelt. This war was one of the shortest wars of all time, lasting only about four months. Surprisingly, the main cause of death in this war wasn’t by being shot, but by dying of diseases such as Yellow Fever, Malaria and other diseases. Only 9,413 Spaniards were killed by wounds and combat and 53,540 were killed by many diseases. In this “Splendid Little War” America was able to free Spain's overseas empire which included Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The United States was also hungry for foreign good that weren’t available to them in the homeland. After an easy victory over Spain, American was able to control islands in the seas such as Cuba, The Philippines and Guam. After this war, Spain was no longer a world power and the United States was on its way to the top.

Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is a novel that is a personal view of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Vietnamese soldier. Like the American novel “The things they carried”, this novel brings about the effects of war on people, and especially how it defeats the human capacity for things such as love and hope. Bao Ninh offers this realistic picture of the Vietnam War’s impact on the individual Vietnamese soldier through use of a series of reminiscences or flashbacks, jumping backwards and forwards in time between the events most salient in memory, events which take on a different theme each time they are examined. His main protagonist Kien, who is basically Bao himself, looks back not just at his ten years at

We feel that our men need us to take care of them so we have a place in their life and can draw some security from that fact. Especially if we see how much he loves his mother, we feel if we treat him the same way as his mother he is going to love us as well.

Mother’s want success and happiness for their family and they will help in whatever way they can to make that

mother feels like she is expressing her love to her son, then she uses sex as a

It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.

The Experience Of War Many authors have written about war themes, some extracts of the stories and poems that I have read and researched are The Upturned Face by Steven Crane .It is about a fictional war being fought in an imaginary Europe. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell describes his senses and feeling of getting shot in the neck during battle. Exposure by Wilfred Owen,describes the horrors and reality of being in the trenches of the First World War. And The Making of Me by Robert Westall is about a shell-shocked grandfather who has the responsibility of looking after his grandchild.

War has been a part of human culture since it's birth. It has led to a great many massacres and has shown us the evil that exists within the souls of humanity. Some have even gone as far as saying that war is human nature. To better understand the reasons behind war and how it affects others, I've examined several different societies and cultures so as to better understand the necessity of war and see the cause of their external war attitude. To do so, different variables from two topics (military institutions and external war attitude) were matched up and crossed so as to look into the answers to these questions. The variables were then calculated and through these graphs, I was able to find different societies in which

Thornhill, Rodger. "World War I and Wilfred Owen's Poetry." Yahoo! Contributor Network. Yahoo Voices, 30 July 2009. Web. 04 May 2013.

How is the theme of war portrayed through imagery in the poems Lament by Gillian Clarke and War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy?