Brooke Shields

Furthermore, Samuel examines how glorified soldiers for their service while Owen clarifies the desire for attention is not worth risking one’s life. The soldiers assume that war will be easy, so they picture themselves victorious. After they defeat the opponent they will arrive “arrive home from war, bronzed heros … submerged in golden seas of glory” (Twain). Being a “bronzed hero” conveys that the society places soldiers on a pedestal to flaunt them similarly to a trophy in a case -- the…

Defining war is easy; it’s an event in which two forces oppose each other. However, defining the war experience is more difficult. The war experience focuses on individuals rather than the forces as a whole. In the documentary “Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam,” viewers hear from many soldiers about their experiences. Tim O’Brien has talked about his experiences in the 1999 President’s Lecture and in his novels. From the documentary, the interview with O’Brien, and his novel, The Things…

The war poet and war poetry in general were terms used firstly within context of the World War I.. From the beginning of the war times, poetry was written mostly by civilians, not by poets. Such poetry had no established identity. It was later, between 1914 and 1918 when this type of poetry acquired notion of genre, and so-called soldier-poets became a species. Enormous increase in writing poetry related to the war occurred. War poetry became very realistic, describing situation as it was…

George S. McGovern once said “I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” McGovern is stating that the “old men”, the government use the young men of a specific country to fight the wars they initiate. War is most of the time seen as a sense of pride and tribute for one’s country, but many don’t realize the savagery battlefields hold. Just like George McGovern, the poet, Wilfred Owen, who was a soldier in World War One and died in that Great War wrote many…

The poem ‘War Photographer’ addresses the tragedies that take place at war and the issues in the way the western world perceive the photos that raise awareness to these horrible situations. The strong feelings of frustration, love of his job and suffering are portrayed throughout the poem. The photographer is ‘finally’ alone implying that he is welcoming his solitary connotes that his company was not welcoming. This is most likely due to the fact that the majority of them would be soldiers and…

Throughout history, few conflicts have been that horrific like the First World War. Being one of its combatants, the English poet Wilfred Owen was one of the first to question military propaganda which defended the old Latin proverb: “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori”; meaning ‘it is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country’. With nothing else than words, he created a distinguished and innovative masterpiece that condemned the grandeur of war by picturing how cruel and deranged the…

War, a controversial dilemma, can often resolve itself through an orderly fashion, rather than an atrocious disaster. In “The Sniper,” written by Liam O’Flaherty, a Republican soldier who fights for his life against the so-called “Free Staters” in the Irish civil war, comes to suffer from drastic emotional trauma when someone he loves becomes fatally wounded. In Liam O’Flaherty’s story, “The Sniper” uses irony to demonstrate how war reduces human beings to mere objects. Unexpected occurrences…

Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a scathing condemnation of war that uses vivid and visceral imagery to contradict the idea that battle is glorious. The title of the poem ironically refers to the Latin maxim promoting the sweetness and nobility of war, while the first stanza contradicts this in its depiction of the harsh conditions of the battlefield and the traumatizing aftermath of war. This jarring juxtaposition between the idealism of society and the reality of the soldier’s…

Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “Facing It” is intentionally composed to create the intense scene of a war veteran from Vietnam going to the war memorial and having momentous flashbacks and reflection. The first focus that the analysis of “Facing It” has is the meaning. The meaning of this poem is to mainly expose how Komunyakaa views war and the influence that he believes race has on war (Kraus 1). The next part of the analysis is the main themes of this poem, which are the brutal experiences of war,…

War is not about the victories and the heroes, but about surviving and carrying the burden of death as a soldier fights for their country and life. In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the author, describes the human side of war and what a soldier really endures when they trudge through the country side of Vietnam or during the horrors of the night while on guard duty; not only are there physical burdens during war, but also mental burdens. Mental burdens are emotions like fear, desire…