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Dulce Et Decorum Est By Stephen Crane: War Is Kind

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Many have wondered how writers are extremely successful at protesting war? Some examples of writers who were very successful at protesting war are Tim O’Brien, who fled from the USA when drafted to go to war but quickly came back and filled his position in the Vietnam War. He is now serving as a professor at a university; Kevin Powers, who enlisted to serve in Iraq at the age of seventeen and was positioned as a machine gunner for two tours in Iraq before returning to the USA; Wilfred Owens, who served in WWI and died one month before the war ended in 1918 at the age of twenty-five; and lastly, Stephen Crane, who never fought in the Spanish American War but was placed as a war reporter and experienced first hand many realities of war. These …show more content…

In the third stanza of “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Wilfred Owen states, “If in some dreams you too could pace/ Behind the wagon the we flung him in,/ And watch the whites of his eyes writhing in his face,/ His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;/ If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,/ Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud/ Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-/ My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory,/ The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/ Pro patria mori. This quotation protest war using irony by describing a horrific and brutal death of a soldier due to a gas attack. The soldier's eyes writhed in his face as he coughed up blood from his “froth-corrupted lungs” and the scene was described as “...bitter as the cud/ Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-...” After this scene is described the poet then states “Dulce et decorum est/ Pro patria mori.” which translates to “It is sweet and right to die for one's country.” That quotation is very ironic because it tells you completely opposite of what just happened in the poem. Nothing about the soldier’s death which had just died was “Sweet and right,” it was everything but that. The author uses that quotation at the end of the poem to show you how citizens viewed the war. …show more content…

In the poem “War Is Kind,” Crane uses structure to protest war by having three regularly placed stanzas in his poem and two indented stanzas in his poem. The three regular stanzas shows how war on the loved ones of a soldier who has died while the two indented stanzas show many traits of war, along with the realities of war. This type structure is effective in protesting war because it emphasizes the effect of death in war using a soldier and his loved ones. The narrator of the poem having to describe the soldier's death to the loved ones also shows the brutality of war along. It also shows the reality of death. This truly shows how horrific war can be to the soldiers but also to the families of the soldiers. Using the other stanzas which are indented emphasize the scenery and actions in war but also clearly states that every soldier is destined for death. The fact of death is very effective at protesting war because no one wants to leave earth earlier than they should. In the excerpt from The Things They Carried, O’Brien states “...The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits,

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