Owen sympathizes with the vain young men who have no idea of the horrors of war, who are 'seduced' by others (Jessie Pope) and the recruiting posters. The detail in Owen's poetry puts forward his scenes horrifically and memorably. His poems are suffused with the horror of battle. Many of Owen's poems bring across disturbing themes and images, which stay in the mind long after readers have read them. His aim is not poetry, but to describe the full horrors of war.
Slaughterhouse Five Essay Question 3 War has the ability to affect and inspire people to many degrees. It was the horrors of World War II that inspired Kurt Vonnegut to write Slaughterhouse Five, a unique anti-war novel in which the main character, Billy Pilgrim, has become “unstuck in time” and travels simultaneously through phases of his life, concentrating on his shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden. Throughout this novel, Vonnegut uses scientific motif and narrative structure to cope with the emotional impact of war, enhancing the overall meaning that our existence is finite; death is the only constant. Kurt Vonnegut injects elements of science fiction with Billy’s belief in Tralfamadorians, aliens who have a four dimensional view that time does not flow, that all moments exist concurrently and it is only an illusion if they appear to have any linearity. After the unexpected death of his wife Valencia, Billy begins to seriously advocate this view for it helped him mitigate the pain of what seemed like wrongful death.
O’Brien tells these stories with different tones depending on which recollection; it is light and hopeful during “Love” or dark and hopeless within “The Man I Killed.” To create these works he uses imagination and invention to describe the true difficulties of a true war story. The first place for difficulties to lie is in perspective. There is a tear of perspective, an enormous gap, between the eyes of a soldier and the eye of a citizen. Only the soldier sees the true horror of the events. They are the only ones that know the truth; sometimes the truth is to
This notion is further emphasised through the use of jargon in the lines, “The Japs used to weigh us, to see how thin our bodies could get before we started dying”. This statement implies the nature of the camp to be brutal and unforgivable. Misto has incorporated both visual images and jargon to create an effective sense of authority to therefore relive their experience of war through memory. Likewise, the poem Dulce et decorum est by Wilfred Owen is how the post himself saw war with no knowledge, imagination or training which prepared Owen for the shock and suffering of front line experience. Its horrifying imagery has made it one of the most popular condemnations of war ever written.
The book “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque is a novel which although very profound and harrowing, depicts the story of a young German soldier, Paul Baumer, during World War I. The novel was written to reflect the horrific nature of war, and to illustrate some of the effects which it has on individuals who are embroiled in it. The novel illustrates the process of war through the eyes of a young man, who initially believes, along with his friends, that war is a glorious conflict however this viewpoint begins to change during the course of the novel. This paper has been written to provide a comprehensive critique of the book and to demonstrate an understanding of whether the writer succeeded in their aims, and it will also present a thesis about the book. The thesis which will be investigated and illustrated is how Paul Baumer is representative of the Lost Generation, and that his character development throughout the book reflects this change in attitudes towards war of the young men who went to fight in World War I.
The name of the poem implies that the poet was a proponent of war, but contradictorily we discover that he was not. Undoubtedly, Owen had the practical, realistic knowledge to informatively and effectively portray the war scene. He experienced first-hand the physical, psychological and emotional effects of war on a human being. Although both speakers had contradictory concepts about war based on their own values, knowledge and experiences, they presented their theories with equivalent zeal, tenacity and passion. The speakers are fixated in their beliefs, and adamant about their concepts of war.
O'Brien once describes his friend Rat Kiley's stories, which were not lies, per se, but he “wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt” (O'Brien 85). By creating the character of Rat Kiley and making him out to be a storyteller who enjoys lying to make his stories more dramatic, O'Brien succeeds in relaying the confusion of the war. Because of his description of Kiley's storytelling, there is a brief sense of surrealism within the passage that brings out the true nature and role of fiction of war. Later in the novel, O'Brien replays a conversation between two of his friends, in which Henry Dobbins claims that “I do like churches. The way it feels inside.
Symbols show the theme of loss of innocence very clearly. For example, Finny's pink shirt represents his individuality and aura of Finny-ness, and Gene's wearing that shirt shows his desire to become like Finny. Also, Leper's two identities, before and after enlisting display Gene’s final perception of the reality of the war, and what it is to him. As the adult Gene recounts his story, the changed ideas of war stand out in his memory as a foil of one another, showing the intense contrast between Gene's previous misconception of the war's glory and his newfound realization of its true nature. Finally, and most strongly the tree off which Finny and Gene jump represents innocence; jumping from the tree is against the rules and in doing so the boys accept the loss of structure.
A poem which arouses a strong emotion in me is “Green Beret” by Ho Thien. The poet has written the poem to show the brutality of the Vietnamese War and to show that the Americans are not always the good ones. He also shows the Vietnamese point of view on how the Americans treated innocent Vietnamese civilians. The poem is divided into two verses. In the first verse Ho Thien describes the weakness of a young Vietnamese boy as the American soldier in charge, Green Beret commands him to reveal the location of the Viet Cong.
‘The send -off’, shows Owen’s cynical attitude towards war. He opens with the line “Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way”. The deliberate alliteration of the “d’s”, of ‘down’ and ‘darkening’ display Owen’s cynicism towards the war. I think Owen is cynical because he himself knows the illusion of war. The soldiers are, “grimly gay”, which is oxymoronic as this quotation seems to be implying that they are forcing themselves to be happy.