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The War Works Hard Analysis

Decent Essays

The Relentless Machine
Through satire and irony using her perspective as an Iraqi woman, Dunya Mikhail personifies war as a machine, rather than the traditional masculine perspective of heroism on the battlefield. In “The War Works Hard” war is never ending; it is relentless and without mercy as it destroys everything in its path, leaving an endless generational wake of scars among the civilian victims caught in the zone that the war has chosen. The war scars forever.
Wars are often glorified in tone to give praise and respect for those on the battlefields. There is an overall understanding that there are sacrifices needed in order to accomplish a larger goal. Excluded from this understanding is the realization that the effects of war …show more content…

This in turn lubricates and fuels the machine to continue its “efficient” (3) vicious cycle of an eye-for-an-eye “… with unparalleled / diligence!” (51-52) so that it can “swing copes through the air” (8) tomorrow. Never pausing and becoming thoughtless the routine of the war machine becomes muscle memory, and from muscle

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