Harmonium and Nettles Harmonium and Nettles both highlight the theme of memory. As they both are looking back over past memories that are painful, the poems feature the feelings of being helpless in stopping the hurt that was caused. The writer in Harmonium feels remorse for the things he hadn’t said to his father as Armitage states “then mouth in reply some shallow sorry phrase or word too starved of breath to make itself heard”. The writer in Nettles is protective of the recurring threat to his child that he can’t destroy. “rain had called up tall recruits behind the shed,” this quote shows the father cannot destroy them .They differ in the way they felt powerless however as in Nettles the father is feeling powerless because of a physical threat whereas in Harmonium it is an emotional threat of the inevibility of death and unspoken feelings that makes the writer feel powerless.
War is not depicted as glorious or patriotic but rather as the destroyer of young lives as the realities of the hardships faced are exposed. The unnamed soldier in Disabled is key, as Owen refers to the soldier as “he” we never truly get the sense of whom he is talking about. The anonymity of the soldier suggests that he is representative of all soldiers. The soldier initially a footballer now finds himself in a wheelchair. In the beginning of the poem the soldier starts to reminisce about his past.
24 November 2014 “Slaughterhouse-Five” Literary analysis essay Kurt Vonnegut uses the novel Slaughterhouse-Five as “Exposure Therapy” due to experiences that have haunted him as he has grown up into a writer from his past days as a soldier. “Exposure therapy is a type of cognitive-behavior therapy that involves having the person we-live the traumatic experience, or exposing the person to objects or situations that cause anxiety.” (Cleveland Clinic). Exposure therapy is therefore a way for Vonnegut to express his experiences in a controlled environment as he will only speak about events when he is ready. He requires this exposure therapy as he is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD), this is a serious condition which often develops after someone experiences or witnesses a traumatic event in which serious physical harm has occurred or was threatened. (Cleveland Clinic) PTSD wasn't diagnosed until after the Vietnam War, this shows that Vonnegut grew up in a time where no one really understood why soldiers found it so hard coming back from war and soldiers didn't receive aid to come to grips with their experiences.
Categorized | Feature Article A Critical Analysis: The Things They Carried Posted on 14 October 2008 by admin By Ronnie Wright In his short story The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien reveals the horrendous physical conditions and fears a man will subject himself to in order to save his reputation. The story takes place around 1968. It’s a story about an Infantry Platoon fighting in the jungles of Vietnam and the weight, both physical and emotional, that they must carry. These modern day warriors were equipped with every piece of equipment you could imagine. Most of what the soldiers carried was largely determined by necessity, such as can openers, pocketknives, helmets and flack jackets (O’Brien 281).
Although I could only come up with a few similarities the list of differences are way larger. The setting being one of the biggest you must also consider the difference in the characters. With a little research I also realized how different the two authors are in their young lives and in their writing. Michael Bruce was a gunner in the Canadian Army during the second world war, he said that he came up with the idea for “War” in the barracks when an argument started about if it was all right to kill some men if saving the lives of others. It seems like an odd conversation but the men were using whatever they could to get their minds off of the war.
In his preface to the novel, Remarque maintains that "a generation of men ... were destroyed by the war" (Remarque, All Quiet Preface). Baumer's closest comrades fall one after the other. The conditions in the German army are to harsh, they have no food, ammunition, moral is low they could not keep fighting. An important episode in the novel is when Baumer is issued a period of leave when he visits his home town. This leave is disastrous for Baumer because he realizes that he can not communicate with the people on the home front because of his military experiences and their limited, or nonexistent, understanding of the war.
This can be interpreted as Owen attempting to illustrate the voice of many soldiers, through a poem. The line, “…Waiting for the dark” indicates that soldiers were simply waiting for death to come, either because they were critically injured, or because they were waiting to go into battle. Another interpretation of this is that soldiers cannot bear the day, as the sight of their injuries, and their comrades’ injuries is too big of a strain for them, therefore they would rather choose isolation over companionship. The rest of the first stanza, Owen describes how war had changed everything. He writes that “voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn” which indicates that laughter of children saddens him as he isn’t capable of laughing, because of the war.
This is how Duffy, conveys the issue of how cruel and gruesome war is in stanza one. In stanza two Duffy writes about his job and how he, the persona struggles to accept it. ”he has a job to do.” Duffy uses the word job to show a sense of duty and obligation, therefore it makes it seem that this is something that he has to do and accept. ”Beneath his hands which did not tremble then though seem to now” this shows us how the persona feels and how he is devastated but at the scene of the war, he cannot afford to shake and take a bad photo. ”home again to ordinary pain” This line shows us that the persona has seen what real suffering is like.
Their way of living should not be respected, but it is true that each of them is somehow struggling with their lives The antagonist and narrator of the story, Jake Barnes, experienced World War I as a soldier. During the war, a number of people were wounded and lost their morality on the battlefields. Jake is one of them who is suffering from the trauma from the war. Jake has an injury from the war and as a result, he is unable to physically make a love to women. This disability left him psychologically and morally lost, and takes his masculinity away from him.
No one hears his cries for help or recognizes his struggle. This poem explores the idea of isolation by being misunderstood by the people around you. The poet deepens the reader’s appreciation of the theme by employing imagery, contrast and an unclear tone. The poems' overall theme is that the dead man was lost his entire life. He was never waving to the people that passed in and out of his life, but crying for help all along.