Ko Un: The Most Known, The Most Misinterpreted. The forgotten war, his childhood gone. He was 17 when birds in the morning were replaced with the sounds of guns shooting. The life of a war survivor is tragic but usually long lived with the will and strength to do so. Ko Un was a mere high school student, when the Korean War began. And as the final battle ceased, he remained while his relatives and friends did not. Most of Korea's history has been bloody, but this man decided to spend his remaining time on Earth in peace. Underlying in Ko Un’s poetry, or more specifically his poems Two Beggars and If May Passes by Forgotten, we are able to identify that both religion and heritage has shaped his ideals in his poems by expressing compassion, history, and the unification of people under certain …show more content…
Ko Un following the end of the Korean War, joined a monastery traumatized by the events he had witnessed. He found refuge at the monastery and was influenced by the ideals and beliefs of Buddhism. Compassion, a belief, can be clearly identified in many of his writings. “Two beggars sharing a meal of the food they've been given. The new moon shines intensely,” Two Beggars by Ko Un. The poem is simple and short, and the surface messages can be quite coherent. The two impoverished individuals were given a meal, and they share the meal. They are compassionate and sympathetic. But there’s also a deeper meaning, these two men are sharing a moment. A moment where they are neither better nor less than one another, they are humans being living and struggling together in familiar circumstances. The connection that two beggars are having is something that not everyone can experience, giving all one may have to a stranger when one himself does not have enough. In the short poem Two Beggars we are able to identify religion as one of the most prominent influences as it speaks about sharing compassion to
The modern world is full of social issues and people use all different kinds of way to express the way that they feel and how they see things. Bruce Dawe uses his poem ‘War Without End’ and Christopher Mann with his poem ‘Country Matters’ to convey important messages.
Believe it or not, the very short lines of the poem he wrote always made an impact in society. His personality traits would be described as a passionate and non-judgmental. When you take the poem that he wrote “Face it”, one particular phrase that took caught the reader’s attention is “outside/inside the wall, now/then, reality/illusion and life/death”. (Komunyakaa1309). According to the speaker, he has not yet come to terms with the outcome of the war, and that it was a brutal and despicable way to take a human life. The speaker himself could never find closure with the Vietnam War. He felt as though he had an obligation to the victims to remember them and memorialize them. This poem was the only way to go public about his feeling and to express his opinion, especially when he is one of the minority
This poem in general is very pro-war and talks a lot about the how the
deeply by the citizens yet returns no love in exchange. Green’s explanation of the koan exposes a contradiction in itself.
The thirty years the Vietnamese spent fighting the war destroyed the value system of Vietnam culture. The war devastated the country, villages, and families. After the war, the Vietnamese began reconstructing their way of life. The character of Kien, in The Sorrow of War, shows the plight of the people of Vietnam before, during, and after the Vietnam War.
Much of Li-Young Lee’s Poetry revolves around his memory and circles back to the present. He contemplates, and through focusing on one particular incident touches upon the insecurities he felt as an immigrant in the United States, his love for his mother, his reverence for the man his father is and his grief over the imminent loss of his father’s faculties and eventually his life. Though the text is rather simple and is written in prose, this poem is extremely raw and full of emotion, and this can be seen in the literary devices Lee uses. Even the simplicity of Lee’s language contributes to the poem’s sense of passion, heartache, and inspection of the universal. Lee fosters a Monist philosophy, meaning he believes that all things are connected
As one can imagine, Kien is haunted daily by gruesome hallucinations and memories from the battlefield. Kien begins to write about his war experiences, which turns into an obsession. He claims it is obligated as his duty to write about the war, and yet “seems to write only to rid himself of his devils” (Ninh, 49). His motivation is to “expose the realities of war and the tear aside conventional images” (Ninh, 50).
Being in the war left a dark mark in his mind which was shown through his poetry and other writings. Usually the characters in his poems are viewed with pity, even when not writing with the theme of war. He used powerful language to make his point in his works and to show that he felt strongly about the subjects he was writing about. The poem “Eighth Air Force” was published in 1969, four years after his death, and was one of his many war themed poems.
Yusef Komunyakaa, the poet of war, vividly describes his vacillating emotions about the Vietnam War and his relation to it as an African-American veteran in the poem, “Facing It.” Komunyakaa, the protagonist of his narrative, reflective poem, contemplates his past experiences as he promenades around the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, struggling to conceal his ardent emotions and remain hard and cold as “stone.” He writes one stanza in a dark mood, and by using metaphors and visual imagery, he paints a picture with his words for all to see.
The article ‘No Link Exists’ Item 334, sourced on the Literature and blog series is that of an interesting opinion. The article unfortunately failed to recognise how text and context go hand in hand with one another through War literature. Both WW1 and the Vietnam War. Text is what is written and the context is the interpretation, it is what forms from an event, statement or an idea. In which terms can be fully understood. Today’s entry will be a analysis and breakdown of some famous war poetry and how they have relations between text and context.
Thinking back to our childhood, we all remember hearing many kinds of fairy tales. Some of them inspired us others confused us, and most of them taught us valuable lessons. Through out centuries tales and stories have been used as a valuable tool to pass on our culture to new generations. There is a strong belief that these fairy tales mirror and influence society. All cultures interpret tales in their own unique way. They add and subtract various aspects of the tale to fit the needs of their particular society. The same tale in the United States is different from the tale told in Asia. A good example of tale evolution can be seen in one of the most famous tales ever told which is “Cinderella”. As a professor of women’s history Karol Kelley points out in her essay Pretty Woman: A Modern Cinderella “There are some 700 versions of Cinderella”.This fairy tale as many others has been changing for many years, and in recent years Cinderella has come under some criticism for its depiction of women’s roles in society.
However, after reading the poem over again, I was lead to grief. I believe the point of view, which is the parents of the soldiers is the key factor on why the central idea for “War” is about grief. In “War”, the father that lost his child, explains to the other parents that their children at their current age are doing their duty and for their love of their nation. Yet, once he comes to terms with the passing of his son, he grieves by sobbing uncontrollably. The following quote supports the central idea, after the woman on the train asks if his son is really dead the man reacts “His face contracted, became horribly distorted, then he snatched in haste a handkerchief from his pocket and, to the amazement of everyone, broke into harrowing, heart-breaking, uncontrollable sobs”.
Many poems have been written during times of War, from the Civil War to World War II, many were pro-war and still just as many, if not more, were anti-war. When you look back in time, you may notice and recognize a few authors for their contributions to our colorful country's history from your studies, but two names are almost always recognized, even by the unstudied, to have offhandedly advanced our culture, changed politics, and even confronted the impact of war on communities and families in two different countries. Walt Whitman is often recognized as the founding father of American poetry, his powerful poem “Beat! Beat! Drums!” written during the start of the Civil War in 1861, is a commanding and rugged
The style of writing which an author uses is a key determinant in how the reader will receive and interpret the work. Style, which is the author’s combination of diction, structure and vocabulary in order to elicit a particular response from the reader, is specific to an author. The differences in style arise due to the different backgrounds, ideologies and overall thinking process of one author from another. In The Sorrow Of War Bao Ninh tells the story of Kien, a veteran of the Vietnamese war, and his experiences during and after the war, as well as how they have influenced his relationships with those closest to him, such as Phuong, his first love. The sensuous style present in The Sorrow of War is used as a means of connecting Bao Ninh
War has occurred in several occasions throughout history. We've had several important wars in the twentieth century, World War I and World War II, and Vietnam. Each and every war has had an effect on those who lived through it, and those who fought in it. Poets write about what effects, and inspires them. If they were soldiers in war they often times have a strong opinion of war. This comes out in their poetry. Seigfried Sassoon, and Rupert Brooke were English poets who both served in World War I. Sassoon, a true survivor of trench warfare, wrote, 'Everyone Sang'; protecting war. While Brooke, who did not see the trenches, wrote, 'The Soldier';, and a patriotic war-supporting poem. Each man wrote a splendid war poem, but each from different spectrums of war.