“All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men”, (William Penn a preacher, minister, and missionary in the late seventeenth century). In The Absolutely True diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexies shows us how alcohol abuse affects Junior's life, how painful it is to deal with the effect, and how it leads to violence and death of the ones he loves. Alcoholism is a disease that affects millions of people and it isn't different for Indians as we see in every other page of this novel. To understand why alcoholism is a disease, it's important to look up it's effects.
This simile is an important contrast of the information people were fed at the time of soldiers being strong and proud. Owen strips away the image of a glorified war to reveal the bitter and cruel nature of the war. The bitter imagery “Coughing like hags” and “but limped on” also develops the idea of these young man seeming old. Owen takes pity on these tired and weary soldiers as he describes them in the most unglamorous, inglorious manner. The statement “all went lame, all blind’, while being somewhat hyperbolic suggests that the soldiers had lost all previous objectives of war along with the line “cursed through sludge”.
For example the first stanza starts of by telling us that they the homeless, though there are millions of people in the city who have some kind of home but the refugees have nowhere to go. The phrase ‘yet there is no place for us my dear’ suggests how they view society as unfair in the way that it treats people. The poem then moves on to talk about how they cannot even leave the country due them not having a passport and the poem describes people in that position as ‘officially dead’ suggesting they have absolutely nowhere or no-one to turn to. Though the poet describes the committee advice as ‘polite’ the fact that they were asked to return ‘next year’ clearly presents the fact that no real help was offered and that they were still left with nowhere to go for today. The poet also uses many contrasts throughout the piece such as ‘ten million souls’, ‘ten thousand soldiers’.
To be able to judge whether the average Tommy really was unfit for service, what exactly makes them unfit first has to be decided, for example many of them were drunk, as the lowest of society were recruited in bars, initially this is actually the fault of the army as they chose to recruit their forces in inns and alehouses, this therefore results in the Tommys being unfit for service. To an extent the view that the average Tommy was unfit for service could be agreed with, as source J, for instance, shows a Boer General describing them as a “thoroughly helpless creature”, “helpless” portrays them as being unprepared and incapable of tackling the challenges necessary of their position, the opposite of how a soldier, especially one during a war, should be described as. Despite this, there lies a controversy between whether the Tommys themselves, as soldiers, were actually unfit for service or whether it was the fault of the government and of the army for inadequately supplying and preparing them for their role. Source I provides evidence for the government’s ill treatment of the Tommys, a picture from Punch Magazine, published in 1890, shows a Tommy being well looked after, or “treated rational”, as this was satirical it shows that they were not treated like this at all and instead raises the question of whether the men were unfit for service or the way the government treated them caused them to be unfit for service. It could indeed be argued that the average Tommy was unfit for service, source J, published in 1902 by a leading Boer General, not only describes the Tommys as being “a thoroughly helpless creature”, but also continues on to say that “this individual helplessness has undoubtedly been one of the shortcomings of the British soldier during the War”.
Really unpack the symbolic possibilities. Gatsby didn’t marry Gatsby because he was poor, and Tom was rich, in the simplest of terms. But when you delve deeper the problem for Daisy now is that her marriage with Tom is a failure, and a man she loves, rich beyond his means, has basically knocked on her door asking for her. I think Daisy sobs not only because now Gatsby is a class above her, but she know they can never be together. She comes from one social status the wealthy, sophisticated community of West egg.
A technique used to enhance the mood is imagery. Such as, describing the soldiers as “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”. By using this simile it gives us a good description of the soldiers and suggests how unclean, malnourished and the health the soldiers are. Another good image used is “Drunk with fatigue” this implies the idea of the soldiers being unaware of things happening around them but by saying they are drunk with fatigue gives the idea they are struggling to move, even stand because they’re so tired from fighting. By using words like “sludge” and “trudge” contrasts with the way an average person perceives the idea of a soldier, they are usually seen as marching and singing songs to keep up spirits however this is not the case here.
Owen is addressing the reader, who possibly doesn’t have the first hand experience of the war, and criticising the enthusiasm with which the war is described, particularly to vulnerable children (BBC, 2013). Owen uses the language and a variety of literary devices to vividly depict the true reality of war and suffering of the soldiers. This is evident from the first two lines where Owen uses simile to describe soldiers who are ‘like old beggars’ and ‘coughing like hags’ (lines 1,2). They are ‘blood-shod’, ‘drunk with fatigue’ (lines 6,7). Owen depicts soldiers not as undefeatable heroes, but desperate, weak, and pitiful human beings.
In “Dulce et Decorum est” one particular man is severely suffering from an awful gas attack. The gas is entering his lungs and drowning them, the rest of his friends have to merely watch as he is “Guttering and choking”. This would be a traumatic scene to experience as well as to witness; it would probably mentally scar the soldiers. At one point the Soldier dying directly asks the narrator for help, this is a very prominent part of the poem and emphasises the pure desperation. Also, similarly to “The Send Off” Owen continuously uses sarcastic and rude comments towards the government.
Not only are their lives wasted, gone without the holy ritual of funeral, but the lives of their loved ones at home are also ruined. This poem starts off at a quick pace, and then continues to decelerate throughout the poem, drawing to a slow, solemn and sombre close. Throughout this poem the traditional feel of an elaborate ceremonial of a Victorian style funeral is constantly compared and contrasted to the ways in which men died in the war. The title 'Anthem for Doomed Youth,' with anthems usually being associated with love and passion, is very deliberately ironic. It is a way in which Owen shows how ridiculous he really thought the war was.
This positive representation of conflict could be linked to Tennyson’s role of Poet Laureate under Queen Victoria’s reign. On the other hand Futility could be considered as an elegy for the unnamed solider and opens with a tender and sad tone shifting to pointlessness in the second stanza. The use of the pronoun him in the opening line suggests this could be any soldier from World War one demonstrating the number of men who would remain unnamed and unclaimed during this conflict and how bad it was that so many people died, and even the most patriotic soldiers would still die, unnamed in the end. The Charge of the light Brigade comprises of six stanzas, of varying in length from six to twelve lines and goes in chronological order. This could offer the reader the sense of riding in to the battle with the soldiers.