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Creative writing war theme
Essay war photographer
What is the effect of war in literature
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The theme of war is used to explore how innocence can be lost. “War Photographer” is about a photographer who utilizes the suffering of refugees for the “Sunday supplement”. The photographer feels guilty about his “job” and still can hear the “cries” of a man’s wife, which indicates that these memories are haunting him, and made him lose his innocence due to what he had witnessed. Duffy uses imagery like “blood stained into foreign dust” which has many uses; “blood” symbolizes the pain and grief of the refugees, and how it has been “stained” into the land so the people themselves. Furthermore the word “stained” implies that the photographer has been permanently affected, causing him to lose his innocence, like the veterans in “Mental Cases”.
“Mental Cases” is about the effects of war on soldier’s mental state. The poem paints a picture of horror and pity for the war veterans. The soldiers are described to be “baring teeth that leer” which suggests animalistic qualities by showing their teeth defensively. The “multitudinous murders they once witnessed” is an alliteration to emphasize the mass killings. This refers to the literal genocide that happened in front of soldier’s eyes. This brings up the lasting mental effect as the images would haunt them forever. “Once witnessed” implies that before the war they were ordinary people, and after witnessing the war, it turned them into ‘mental cases’. This implies that the veterans have lost their innocence due to war because of their job, a theme prevalent in “War Photographer.”
Owen describes the soldiers as “purgatorial shadows”; the word purgatorial has biblical connotations, where it is a place or state of suffering. This implies that the soldiers are trapped in their suffering and...
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... the child and other mothers in the refugee camp. It shows the love that the mother has for her almost dying child and it also implies that she is not willing to let the child lose his innocence by being taken away by death.
Likewise in Ballad of Birmingham, Randall portrays a mother – child relationship. The use of dialogue between the child and the mother and colloquial language in their communication shows the deep affection they have for one another. The repetition of ‘No, baby, no’ reflects the mother’s desperateness for her child to be safe. Both mothers lose their innocent child due to hardships that they are facing. “Bits of glass and brick” implies that not only was the bond between mother and daughter broken, but daughter’s innocence as well. The “glass” conveys a fragile image for the girl, which shows how innocence can be lost so easily and quickly.
Most readers of Dudley Randall’s “Ballad Of Birmingham” have said or heard the “But mom…” before and so this use of voice brings life to the daughter and mother. By using a relatable spoken phrase, Dudley Randall creates an atmosphere where the reader feels connected with the daughter.
The narrator in “The Things They Carried” deals with the subjective conditions of war. Throughout the story, straining emotions often brought O’Brien’s teams emotions, especially after a death, causes a “crying jag” with a “heavy-duty hurt” (O’Brien 1185). The fury of emotion associated with death begins to erode the sharp minds of the soldiers and become mentally effective. After an event of large magnitude, it still began to take its toll on the protagonist as they often “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might dies” during the war (O’Brien 1187). The travesties that occurred with the brutality of war did not subside and began to affect those involved in a deeply emotional way. The multitude of disastrous happenings influenced the narrator to develop a psychological handicap to death by being “afraid of dying” although being “even more afraid to show it” (O’Brien 1187). The burden caused by the war creates fear inside the protagonist’s mind, yet if he were to display his sense of distress it would cause a deeper fear for those around him, thus making the thought of exposing the fear even more frightening. The emotional battle taken place in the psyche of the narrator is repressed directly by the war. The protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is also faced with the task of coping with mental
Portrayal of War in the Pre 1900 Poetry Before 1900, war was always seen as a glorious thing. People truly believed in the words of the ancient writer Horace, "Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori. " This phrase can be translated, as "It is a lovely and honourable thing; to die for one's country". Pre 1900 war poetry was strongly patriotic and glossed over the grim reality of death, preferring instead to display the heroic aspects of fighting. If death was mentioned, it was only in a noble and glorious context.
A. Philip Randolph was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement and once said “Freedom is never given; It is won.” Our American soldiers fight every day so we can stay free and have the privileges we have today. We do not just get to be free. There are people fighting for our freedom. However, the poem and the song both talk about fighting for freedom but they have a separate motive. Both the poem named “Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?” by Langston Hughes and the song “American Soldier” by Toby Keith both have the same theme by freedom is worth fighting for and everyone wants freedom, but in the poem the soldier is fighting for freedom and in the song the soldier already has freedom.
Family bonds are very important which can determine the ability for a family to get along. They can be between a mother and son, a father and son, or even a whole entire family itself. To some people anything can happen between them and their family relationship and they will get over it, but to others they may hold resentment. Throughout the poems Those Winter Sundays, My Papa’s Waltz, and The Ballad of Birmingham family bonds are tested greatly. In Those Winter Sundays the relationship being shown is between the father and son, with the way the son treats his father. My Papa’s Waltz shows the relationship between a father and son as well, but the son is being beaten by his father. In The Ballad of Birmingham the relationship shown is between
Rifle There's a crack in the air, and I'm split by the sound the moment deadly still until it's broken by another crack. A long sinuous echo hangs in the air, so physical I might try to wave it away like smoke. Then a third and fourth crack, and I'm on my feet, even though shots aren't unheard of in hunting season, these rural woods overfull with deer. But instead of this, I think of the uneven unpolished grain in the stock of my first rifle, the weight of it on the shoulder, the trigger worn dull with use. That first sighting with the left eye looking out.
"A picture is worth a thousand words," we say. From the eyes and mind of the archivist studying the pictures of Robert Ross' experience with war, they are worth a lot more. The photographs in the epilogue of Timothy Findley's "The Wars" play an important role in Findley establishing both a trust with the reader, and a sense of realism to his war story. This satisfies the need for realism in his tale. The result of this image that is brought forth through the medium of the photograph, is that we are forced to see the "before" and "after" of Roberts "experience" and figure out our way through what is deposited in between: the cause and effect.
and she begins to try to make the event fit into a typical romantic ballad. While each of these poems have their own narrators and own strategies regarding shifts of narration or focus, one main strategy that both poems employ is the use of mother figure to appeal to the emotions of the reader. In “Ballad of Birmingham” the reader gets the direct words of the mother as she tells her daughter the streets are not safe and that the child should go to church to “sing in the children’s choir” (Randall 16).
‘The Falling Soldier’ is one of many poems by Duffy which deals with the subject of human mortality. Duffy expresses what could have been over a harsh reality; this is characteristic of her as also seen in ‘Last Post’ and ‘Passing Bells’ which both seem to be largely influenced by poet peer Wilfred Owen’s personal experiences of war. In the ‘The Falling Soldier’ Duffy paradoxically captures the essence of Robert Capa’s famous photograph of a man falling after being shot during the Spanish Civil War (1936). She employs the form of an impersonal narrative voice, using second person to question the possibilities, to explore the tragic and cyclical nature of war. The futile reality of war contrasts to her central theme in ‘The Bees’ anthology of bees symbolising the grace left in humanity.
War is cruel. The Vietnam War, which lasted for 21 years from 1954 to 1975, was a horrific and tragic event in human history. The Second World War was as frightening and tragic even though it lasted for only 6 years from 1939 to 1945 comparing with the longer-lasting war in Vietnam. During both wars, thousands of millions of soldiers and civilians had been killed. Especially during the Second World War, numerous innocent people were sent into concentration camps, or some places as internment camps for no specific reasons told. Some of these people came out sound after the war, but others were never heard of again. After both wars, people that were alive experienced not only the physical damages, but also the psychic trauma by seeing the deaths and injuries of family members, friends or even just strangers. In the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh about the Vietnam War, and the documentary film Barbed Wire and Mandolins directed by Nicola Zavaglia with a background of the Second World War, they both explore and convey the trauma of war. However, the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” is more effective in conveying the trauma of war than the film Barbed Wire and Mandolins because of its well-developed plot with well-illustrated details, and its ability to raise emotional responses from its readers.
Sassoon shows many examples of how the soldier in this poem gets pulled back into war-like terrors by meaningless things. The soldier is simply sitting in his home yet gets flashbacks of war and it haunts him. In this poem Sassoon is using a soldier as the example of repression as someone who has experienced war and the impacts it has on life after. “The poetic evolution related directly to Sassoon 's war experiences was initially gradual. His poetry became more serious and evocative in the early days of the war, but continued to inhabit the fatal logic of soldierly glory in poetic uniform” Avi Matalon claims (30). Poetry was influenced greatly by World War I and left poets creating new pieces that they never would have imagined
The detailed descriptions of the dead man’s body show the terrible costs of the war in a physical aspect. O’Brien’s guilt almost takes on its own rhythm in the repetition of ideas, phrases, and observations about the man’s body. Some of the ideas here, especially the notion of the victim being a “slim, young, dainty man,” help emphasize O’Brien’s fixation on the effects of his action—that he killed someone who was innocent and not meant to be fighting in the war. At the same time, his focus on these physical characteristics, rather than on his own feelings, betrays his attempt to keep some distance in order to dull the pain. The long, unending sentences force the reader to read the deta...
In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall, a mother attempted to protect her daughter by sending her to church. However, in the end, the child has her entire life stolen from her. The dramatic situation in the poem is portrayed and developed through Randall’s use of descriptive imagery, dialogue, irony, and a tonal shift.
Brooks writes, "the damp small pulps with little or no hair." In the last half of the poem (lines 20 to 33), she changes who she is addressing. Instead of telling the mother what she is missing she is now talking to the "child". When she does this it expresses other emotions. These new emotions are ones of sorrow, love, searching for forgiveness, etc.