Theater, Water, And Safe House By Solmaz Sharif

“Facing it” by Yusef Komunyakaa and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, are two powerful poems with the graphical life like images on the reality of war. It is apparent that the authors was a soldier who experienced some of the most gruesome images of World War I. In “Ducle et Decorum Est” Owen tells us about a personal experience in which he survived a chemical warfare attack. Although he survives, some of his fellow troops do not. As in “Facing It” Komunyakaa is also a soldier who has survived a war. Komunyakaa response to his war experience is deeply shaped by his visit to Lin’s memorial. Inspired by the monument, Komunyakaa confronts his conflicted feelings about Vietnam, its legacy, and even more broadly, the part race plays in

In everyday society cruelty is faced, weather yet another person is arrested for the killing of and innocent animal, or even the seemingly never ending brutality of the police forces going viral on YouTube yet again. Of course we have the do not touch subjects, such as war. The constant debate over is killing innocent people okay, just because it’s war. Jack London really brings this point alive in his short story “War”. In this thought-provoking piece of literature the odd uses of characterization, symbolism, morals, and irony lead a reader to an overall statement of theme that simply war is cruel.

In the poems of “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Facing It” written by Wilfred Owen and Yusef Komunyakaa respectively, two entirely different yet similar stories of war are told. “Dulce et Decorum Est” is told through the perspective of our narrator as he’s directly in the middle of a war and of the horrors he sees. From the unforgiving terrain to the description of the already beaten down soldiers, and quickly followed up with a gas attack, it is not a pretty picture. The poem tells of the soldiers scrambling to put their helmets on to shield them from the gas, but not all of them make it. One soldier helplessly fumbles with his helmet and does not manage to put it on in time. The images of his friend choking and drowning are all too real for

Whether it’s war or terrorism, children who want to grow securely is living amongst the affected nation. War is obliterating those talented individuals in their childhood who can radically transform the world itself. The two disputed countries may also have justifications to protect the welfares of their own people. There can be wealth and nuclear weapons to demolish this world as a whole. However, peacefully negotiated approach is coveted to compromise on each other. No country can rationalize weapons of mass obliteration and debacles. Often, it is a foolish decision of the pioneers of the country, making it a pretext for the combat. It’s the upright soldiers and their families who need to survive the demise and serious injuries from the weapons. For the last centuries, the spontaneous overflow of poetry has portrayed human emotions concerning wide range of universal issues. Both the poets Donald Bruce Dawe and Wilfred Owen exemplify this cataclysm of losing your families and the conditions the soldiers face, through their notable poems Homecoming and Dulce et Decorum Est.

The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.

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.

In Otto Dix’s “Shock Troops Advance Under Gas”, Dix presents the brutality of war for everyone to see. From the barbed wire snagging a troop’s arm to the gas masks, this work illustrates true horror. Dix’s illustration of war helps display that war truly is not something to write home about with pride. Thus, I present the argument that war is not something to be patriotic over, and it is not something we should be thanking the troops for. They are brave individuals, but the duties they perform are not – they are the product of cowardly nations. The purpose of this paper is to convey my personal feelings towards this work, war and how it is not the answer, and tying in my visit to the McNay Art Museum back to aspects of war.

A statement such as ‘War is unavoidable’, for some leave a bad taste in their mouth, as if the person stating such a claim was the devil himself, for others it is a way of life. “Facing It” by Yusef Komunyakaa a poem that takes place where most refuse to tread; a journey which displays the interpretation of each viewer and the memories and images the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial evokes. They erect various Memorials and Monuments which help individuals associate memories and the meanings; but only someone who went through it or experience a personal lost, will find release from conflict, memories left untouched for years, “I said I wouldn’t / dammit: No tears.” (3, 4)

During times of war, it is inevitable for loss to be experienced by all. In the poems “The Black Rat” and “The Photograph” written by Iris Clayton and Peter Kocan respectively, the idea of loss is explored through an omniscient narrator recalling a soldier’s involvement in warfare. While Clayton writes of a soldier’s abrupt loss of hope and how this experience negatively affects his life, Kocan explores how the loss of a loved one affects a family sixty years later. While both poems incorporate similar techniques in imagery and narration, the time setting for each poem is different as “The Black Rat” is set in Tobruk, Libya during World War 2 and “The Photograph” is set during World War 1.

In the incredible book, All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, the reader follows Paul Baumer, a young man who enlisted in the war. The reader goes on a journey and watches Paul and his comrades face the sheer brutality of war. In this novel, the author tries to convey the fact that war should not be glorified. Through bombardment, gunfire, and the gruesome images painted by the author, one can really understand what it would have been like to serve on the front lines in the Great War. The sheer brutality of the war can be portrayed through literary devices such as personification, similes, and metaphors.

was not the truth. This book showed the harsh reality of war that most people

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.

Tom Lux’s “The People of the Other Village” was written shortly after the first Iraq war and gained popularity after the 9/11 attacks.   The poem’s voice comes from an indifferent narrator whose unnamed village is at war with the people of an “other” unnamed village.  The exact reason that started this war is unclear; however, as the war escalates, the battle tactics evolve and are depicted in an alternating line structure that mimics the back and forth nature of reciprocal violence.  Ultimately, the author presents a poem that comments on human nature without committing to a judgment of that nature through subject matter, structure, and narrative voice.

Since the emergence of written history, many fables regarding war have encompassed a significant portion of prosodic literature. Two of the foremost war poets of the 19th and 20th century—Emily Dickinson and Rupert Brooke—have both written about profound implications of war on society and also upon the human spirit albeit in two very different styles. The book, Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, theorizes through Allie, that Emily Dickinson was indubitably the superior war poet. Furthermore, when we analyze their works as well, we realize the invariable fact that Dickinson’s work delves into war with a much more holistic approach as well. She not only honours the soldiers for their valiant efforts, but also deftly weaves notions of liberty and civilian duty in regards to war as well as compared to Rupert Brooke who carried a romanticized imagery of martyrs within his poetry. In summation, Emily Dickinson is a superior war poet for her incisive analysis of death, and human nature in correspondence to war as compared to the patriotic salvos of Rupert Brooke’s poetry.

As long as there has been war, those involved have managed to get their story out. This can be a method of coping with choices made or a way to deal with atrocities that have been witnessed. It can also be a means of telling the story of war for those that may have a keen interest in it. Regardless of the reason, a few themes have been a reoccurrence throughout. In ‘A Long Way Gone,’ ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ and ‘Novel without a Name,’ three narrators take the readers through their memories of war and destruction ending in survival and revelation. The common revelation of these stories is one of regret. Each of these books begins with the main character as an innocent, patriotic soldier or civilian and ends in either the loss of innocence and regret of choices only to be compensated with as a dire warning to those that may read it. These books are in fact antiwar stories meant not to detest patriotism or pride for one’s country or way of life, but to detest the conditions that lead to one being so simpleminded to kill another for it. The firebombing of Dresden, the mass execution of innocent civilians in Sierra Leone and a generation of people lost to the gruesome and outlandish way of life of communism and Marxism should be enough to convince anyone. These stories serve as another perspective for the not-so-easily convinced.