What Were They Like By Denise Levertov

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Recommended: War as positive poems

In the poem What were they like, Denise Levertov uses various language features to protest against America’s participation in the Vietnamese War and to convey that what is lost in war is more than just lives but culture. Levertov uses narrative structure, antithesis and repetition to convey the devastating effects of war. In the poem what were they like, Levertov conveys the consequences of war through the use of antithesis. The antithesis “Sir, their light hearts turned to stone” shows the change in the people of Vietnam. Light refers to the lanterns in the first stanza “lanterns of stone”, lanterns give the image of something that are able to lead you and alongside heart this gives the image of life. This is contrasted with the word stone,

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