Irony, And Structure: How Do Authors Protest War

In every American war combined, about 1.2 million soldiers have died fighting in battle. Many look past the effects and consequences that going to war can lead to and every soldier is assumed to be a hero. Others believe that killing anybody, whether they are innocent or on a battlefield, is in no way honorable. Writers who protest war use imagery, irony, and structure to explain the negative effects of battle.

In the book All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque uses literary devices such as metaphors, similes, and imagery to help the reader have a better understanding of what he went through in the war. On page 70 the recruits are getting attacked by bombs and deadly gas. When Paul is talking about being bombed and having to use gas masks to breath he says “I climb out over the edge of the shell-hole. In the dirty twilight lies a leg torn clean off; the boot is quite whole,”(Remarque 70). This piece of text is an example of imagery because Remarque describes a very detailed picture of how graphic and traumatizing it was to be in the war. It is very disturbing to look around and see bloody body parts everywhere, but Remarque does a good

War is devastating and tragic. It affects the daily lives of the people that are involved in the war. In the excerpt from, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, it displays a man who is dreaming about war. When the man wakes up, he lays sweating on the ground, remembering the painful memories that the dream has brought. In the end, the man realizes that from now on he will have to live in three worlds; his dreams, the experience of his new life, and memories from the past. Meanwhile, in the image, “In Times of War” by The New York Times, there is an angel on a cloud looking over the dreadful war. Then the angel walks away because the view of people dying makes it sick. The theme of the excerpt A Long Way Gone, and the image, “In Times of War,” is that the war brings death, seriously injured, and psychologically broken people.

Periods of conflict often conjure a variety of texts with contradictory representations of war to either propagandise involvement or highlight its traumatic effects. Dalton Trumbo’s novel, Johnny Got His Gun and Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Mental Cases” serve to illustrate the harsh realities of war and its ramifications which are generally excluded from more modern thrillers such as Pearl Harbour (2001). Often impacted by personal experiences or the cultural and societal views of the time, creators’ individual attitudes towards war are commonly reflected in their works through the deliberate implementation of various cinematic or literary techniques that aid in the communication of specific messages to the audience.

Whether it’s war or terrorism, children who want to grow securely is living amongst the affected nation. War is obliterating those talented individuals in their childhood who can radically transform the world itself. The two disputed countries may also have justifications to protect the welfares of their own people. There can be wealth and nuclear weapons to demolish this world as a whole. However, peacefully negotiated approach is coveted to compromise on each other. No country can rationalize weapons of mass obliteration and debacles. Often, it is a foolish decision of the pioneers of the country, making it a pretext for the combat. It’s the upright soldiers and their families who need to survive the demise and serious injuries from the weapons. For the last centuries, the spontaneous overflow of poetry has portrayed human emotions concerning wide range of universal issues. Both the poets Donald Bruce Dawe and Wilfred Owen exemplify this cataclysm of losing your families and the conditions the soldiers face, through their notable poems Homecoming and Dulce et Decorum Est.

The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.

Kurt Vonnegut is able to put a man’s face on war in his short story, “All the King’s Horse ”, and he exemplifies that in a time of war, the most forgotten effect on nations is the amount of innocent lives lost in meaningless battle due to unjust rulers fighting each other against a nation’s will. As Americans, we are oblivious to the fact that we have people fighting every day for our country. In addition, we ignore the fact that we do a lot of collateral damage and hurt innocent people unintentionally in order to get what we want. Vonnegut shows the reader in Pi Ying’s own sadistic way of demonstrating how he feels about war brings attention to the point that war, while unruly and cruel, is nothing

War is something that all countries have been apart of at some point. War, is an awful thing, but it is inevitable and impossible to avoid is many cases. Although, sometimes war cannot be avoided, it is still protested by many people. Many protesters who are also former soldiers; protest war by writing about it using certain techniques of writing. Writers use irony, structure, and imagery to protest war in their writings.

These memorials are in memory of the fallen soldiers and sometimes the soldiers that made it out alive.

Why would we send soldiers over into another country to fight when our own country is chaotic? Today there are terrorists taking over the Middle East and are attacking other countries. How do writers protest war? Imagery is something that is described visually. Irony is when something contradicts what is being understood. Structure is organization and arrangement. Writers use imagery, irony, and structure to protest and attempt to stop war.

The collection of poems “Theater”, “Water”, and “Safe House” by Solmaz Sharif shows the varied viewpoints of how war affects the speakers and how death is all too common in the midst of warfare. The author uses a spectrum of literary techniques to enhance the experience of the reader, so we can fully grasp the severity of each speaker’s plight. All of Sharif’s poems differ in form with the use of white space and indentations in “Theater”, colons in “Water”, and a style of abecedarian using the letter S in “Safe House”. While her diverse use of forms generate different emotions from the reader, they share the same notion of how violence is problematic. Each poem has a unique outlook to the sight of war: “Theater” being in the position of a victim and an assailant of war, “Water” explaining a war mission and fatalities in terse terms, and “Safe House” as an observer of an activist against war. Sharif’s strategy to exemplify the effects of how war affects the victim and the civilian is particularly critical because mass media tends to hide the collateral damage of war and only illustrates why we should attack the “enemy”. Another approach the author uses to critique the speakers central conflicts is by arranging words from the US Department of Defense 's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, to concur with the message of the several ways war influences the lives of those who are unwillingly encompassed by it. Sharif uses poetry as an outlet to show the underlying tone

Intensively striking war imagery emerges throughout the course of the text and therefore effectively joins its underlining fore.  Graphic images of the grotesque face of war characterize and develop the

Poets frequently utilize vivid images to further depict the overall meaning of their works. The imagery in “& the War Was in Its Infancy Then,” by Maurice Emerson Decaul, conveys mental images in the reader’s mind that shows the physical damage of war with the addition of the emotional effect it has on a person. The reader can conclude the speaker is a soldier because the poem is written from a soldier’s point of view, someone who had to have been a first hand witness. The poem is about a man who is emotionally damaged due to war and has had to learn to cope with his surroundings. By use of imagery the reader gets a deeper sense of how the man felt during the war. Through the use of imagery, tone, and deeper meaning, Decaul shows us the

by Shoshanah Ghanooni, the author demonstrates a theme of the panic of war through literary devices such as metaphors, similes and alliteration. Ghanooni uses metaphor to help the reader connect with the emotions in war, and simile to describe the danger of war, while using alliteration to make a point about war. All three devices use descriptive language to help the reader connect to the poem. Ghanooni uses the metaphor of “Stormy skies of death and blood and brooding and war go on forever in the horizon” (5) to describe the bleakness of war.

An effective way in which writers can protest war is through vivid imagery. For instance, Document A provides the poem “War is Kind” by Stephen Crane. This poem includes lines of imagery, such as “Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment” and “A field where a thousand corpses lie.” These pieces of imagery can help picture the occurrence and the aftermath of war.