Turner, Brian. Here, Bullet. Farmington, Me.: Alice James, 2005. Print.
“Here bullet” is a poem by Brian Turner in which the persona is struggling to coup with the situation in which he finds himself. In this poem the persona is able to establish the low point in which they have reached with lines such as “If a body is what you want, / Then here is bone and gristle and flesh.” (LL 1-2). This line establishes right from the onset of the poem that the persona is at wits in. The poem could leave a first time reader of it wondering how the persona reached this point. This point in which the persona is fantasying about death with lines like “Here is where I complete the word you bring/ Hissing through the air, here is where I moan” (LL 10-11).
…show more content…
One must look at this poem and imagine what is like to live thru this experience of becoming so tired of expecting to die everyday on the battlefield, that one starts to welcome it in order to escape the anticipation. The effects of living day in and day out in such a manner creates a person who either has lost the fear of death or has become so frighten of how they once lived the compensate for it later by living a guarded life. The one who loses the fear for death ends up with this way of living in which they only feel alive when faced with death. The person in this poem is one who has lost their fear of death, and now thrives off coming close to it he expresses it when he states “Here is the adrenaline rush you crave, that inexorable flight, that insane puncture” (LL.6-7). What happens to this persona when he leaves the battlefield? He pushes the limit trying to come close to death to feel alive; until they push …show more content…
The Marxist criticism can be applied thru out this book if reading it thru that lens. First how did the soldier end up on the battlefield in terms out the larger force that entered the war and how the individual found himself there. John Crawford who is from the lower class joins the National guard as a way to try to uplift his social status thru affording himself a college education, and a monetary bonus as well as a desire to serve his country. It was that country that John joined to serve that used an invasion into Afghanistan to bring justice to those responsible for terror attacks on 9/11 as a means to guise a invasion into Iraq for economic purposes. There is also the wealth that plunging the America military into war brought to those in positions of power or interest in defense companies. It is by going into war and trying to improve his status that John does in the end only help to increase the divide between those of wealth and those of the working class. This story is not of the war hero that is typically romanticized in novels, but about a real person how struggles to find the right on his moral compass when placed in a situation in which right from wrong can be very hard to separate. In the end when the war is over for John he is left with issues concerning his conscience on whether what he did
My initial response to the poem was a deep sense of empathy. This indicated to me the way the man’s body was treated after he had passed. I felt sorry for him as the poet created the strong feeling that he had a lonely life. It told us how his body became a part of the land and how he added something to the land around him after he died.
Overall, dwell on this process of changing throughout the poem, it can be understood that the poet is demonstrating a particular attitude towards life. Everyone declines and dies eventually, but it would be better to embrace an optimistic, opened mind than a pessimistic, giving-up attitude; face the approach of death unflinchingly, calmly.
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
Marxist Literary Theory Question #1: Does the work reinforce capitalist, imperialist, or other classist values?
... horrors of war such as, his parents who still view war as glamorous and idealistic. War takes a heavy toll on soldiers who fight in it and in these dangerous moments anybody would have gone insane. It takes a very special type of soldier to be able to handle both the psychological and physical challenges that a soldier has to face in everyday battle. A soldier such as this must be capable of handling the sight of a mutilated comrade and not immediately chatter to pieces. The author conveys this message in his extreme use of words with negative connotation such as shells, typhus, dysentery, and trenches. In this portion of the novel a great deal of emphasis is placed on the word death which is repeated several times and standing on its own it holds a great deal of negative connotations. Therefore, due to the severity of the situation and the extensive use of words with negative connotations the overall tone of the novel appeared to be very depressing or serious. This selection also demonstrates just how mythical the character of war that many individuals who have not experienced the tragedy of battle believe to be true by illustrating just how appalling and grim war is in reality.
There is a major change in the men in this novel. At first, they are excited to join the army in order to help their country. After they see the truth about war, they learn very important assets of life such as death, destruction, and suffering. These emotions are learned in places like training camp, battles, and hospitals. All the men, dead or alive, obtained knowledge on how to deal with death, which is very important to one’s life.
Henry and his comrades walked for three days, nonstop. On the second day, some of his fellow soldiers were complaining that their bags were too heavy and dropped them, leaving them only with their guns, bullets, and food. On the fourth day, Henry was barely awake when the army started into a run, not a march, and he was afraid. He then said that, “The government brought me here, and now I’m going to die.” He now had that confidence he had at the beginning disappeared. He was deathly afraid of the war and began to walk away from the battle. When Henry joined his regiment again, he began to worry once more. He did not have a clear answer on whether he will fight or run. He began to form some maturity when he came to think about death. He realized that if he died, he would be able to rest, and some of that confidence that he lost began to grow
All the poems you have read are preoccupied with violence and/or death. Compare the ways in which the poets explore this preoccupation. What motivations or emotions do the poets suggest lie behind the preoccupation?
One Bullet Away is a military memoir written by and about Nathaniel Fick’s terrifying journey through blood, sweat and tears in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before he joined the Marine Corps, he was at Dartmouth University doubting his life decisions. He didn’t understand how his friends were signing six-figure contracts, going off to more schooling, and doing more reading and studying instead of living. Knowing that more college didn’t appeal to him, he wanted to go on an adventure to prove himself and serve his country. There was no better place to do that than the Marine Corps as an infantry officer, so he signed up and was shipped to Quantico Virginia.
A person should live life without fearing death and think of death as a pleasant rest. In the poem Bryant says, "When thoughts/Of the last bitter hour come like a blight/Over thy spirit,"(8-15). This quote implies when a person fears death he should listen to nature. He also states, "So live, that when the thy summons come to join/The innumerable caravans, …Thou go not, like a quarry-slave at night, /Scourged to his dungeon."(73-78). He explains here that a person should live life without fearing death. In the following lines the poet states, "approach thy grave, /Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch/About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."(79-81). By this quote the author is saying a person should think of death as a plea...
In the first instance, death is portrayed as a “bear” (2) that reaches out seasonally. This is then followed by a man whom “ comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse / / to buy me…” This ever-changing persona that encapsulates death brings forth a curiosity about death and its presence in the living world. In the second stanza, “measles-pox” (6) is an illness used to portray death’s existence in a distinctive embodiment. This uncertainty creates the illusion of warmth and welcomenesss and is further demonstrated through the reproduction of death as an eminent figure. Further inspection allows the reader to understand death as a swift encounter. The quick imagery brought forth by words such as “snaps” and “shut” provoke a sense of startle in which the audience may dispel any idea of expectedness in death’s coming. This essential idea of apparent arrival transitions to a slower, foreseeable fate where one can imagine the enduring pain experienced “an iceberg between shoulder blades” (line 8). This shift characterizes the constant adaptation in appearance that death acquires. Moreover, the idea of warmth radiating from death’s presence reemerges with the introduction to a “cottage of darkness” (line 10), which to some may bring about a feeling of pleasantry and comfort. It is important to note that line 10 was the sole occurrence of a rhetorical question that the speaker
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
...ar, O’Brien was able to turn his pain into a life purpose by immortalizing his loved ones. On the other hand, Bowker was not able to cope and resorted to taking his own life. In high-pressure environments such as war, instinct is the dominating force behind one’s actions. It is something inherent and extremely difficult to change for it corresponds with the person’s deepest desires. Therefore, instinctive reactions are accurate portrayals of a person’s inner identity and character. The cases of Bowker and O’Brien prove that it is the discovery of oneself during war, and not war itself, that has a profound impact on the human spirit.
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
These poems both use literary devices to convey this point in an understandable manner. Both authors show someone who feels very strongly about a subject and is barely controlling themselves from either letting death's grasp take over or exploding on an enemy. The authors also want the reader to understand that even if it takes the fiber of one's being that people must hold onto that sanity and reality of controlling themselves in desperate