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The War Prayer Rhetorical Analysis

Decent Essays

In today’s day and age, people don’t comprehend what wishing for war actually means. They are wishing for people to go out and die for their country, while they sit at home, far away, safe, and out of danger. People who do this might know what war entails, but don’t think of the consequences it brings. Mark Twain’s satire piece, The War Prayer shares how people are unaware of what war brings to a society. Twain uniquely uses satire, in the form of irony, to demonstrate society’s obliviousness about what they are wishing to occur or take place. Twain uses satire, but in the form of irony, to bring light to what wishing for war means. Irony fits this piece well as there is humor used when narrator states that “it was indeed a glad and gracious time, and… spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war [casted] a doubt upon its righteousness”. This embodies irony because during war, it isn’t a great time, it’s truly filled with death, loss, and tragedy. The satire is that people are actually praying for war, and thinking it’s glorious, while there’s actually a small amount of people not wishing for it. If you look at today, no one wants to actually go to war because we know the horrors that it brings with. Twain is able to use satire to …show more content…

An example of this is when members of the church were dreaming about going to war to see “the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, [and] the surrender” of war. This is irony because all of these things about war aren’t good things. Running into battle, sword fighting, gun-fire smoke, and losing the war itself are all the bad things that war brings to a culture. The people in the church are wishing to be soldiers and don’t comprehend what war actually does to a society. They only see the amazing things people talk about, and not the horrors it comes

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