War is an unnecessary evil. Throughout humanity, many lives have been lost during times of bloodshed. Whether these times of bloodshed can be argued or not; one common theme can be connected to all wars. One must sacrifice his life for his honor. In “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim,” Walt Whitman uses imagery, persona, and allusion to protest against a world of war.
Using imagery, Whitman depicts the grim conditions of war. As a soldier awakes to yet another working day with a musket, the beauties of this world seem to fail. As the soldier approaches a hospital tent Whitman writes, “Three forms I see on the stretcher lying, brought out their untended lying/ Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket.” Whitman uses this gloomy imagery to paint a horrid picture in our brains. He wants to drill in the readers mind these young men lying still and hopeless. He brings the reader in and makes them really see his viewpoint and perspective. In Charles Oliver article “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim,” Oliver assersts, “there are also a number of color images that add to the oppressive tone … The
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Whitman writes his poem as the main character. He tries to walk himself through the life of the character. Whitman writes, “As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent.” Whitman uses his unique point of view to walk the reader through the story. He wants the reader to walk in the shoes of a soldier who has seen first hand the horrors of war. This allows the reader to think like a soldier. Oliver writes, “the poet uncovers a dead soldier, third ‘a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory.” Oliver points out that the poet is the main character. This is Whitman use of persona. He allows himself to take on the role of the soldier. He allows the reader to imagine the thoughts of a man seeing comrades lying on a death
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields”, Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel, and Lewis Milestone’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” present different accounts of World War I. McCrae displays the sorrow of losing comrades while exhorting the public to continue to fight in memory of those who died. Junger writes a gripping account of his experience as a fearless young man in the war. “All Quiet on the Western Front” combines both the sorrow of McCrae’s poem with Junger’s fearless attitude to deliver a war story reminiscent of the personalities of the soldiers. All three works manipulate the use of syntax to evoke a sense of remorse as their audiences recognize the reality of death that manifests in war. McCrae employs syntax to display remorse through his stylization and organization
This imagery shows the effect of being shot in the head. We learn how the soldier looked and how he was so disturbed. Tim O'Brien's use of imagery made the story come to life and the reader is able to understand the significance of the horror of the
“In fantasy unreal, the skirmishers begin,” Walt Whitman states in “The Artilleryman’s Vision.” Walt Whitman is describing what happened during the Civil War. He described it like “suffocating smoke,” and, “warning s-s-t of the rifles. In “The Artilleryman’s Vision”, Walt Whitman uses imagery and tone to make it feel like you are living the war. Whitman starts the poem with the narrator in his room with his wife and his infant.
Siegfried Sassoon takes on a narrative style in his poem “The Rear-Guard”, and combines it with complex syntax to portray the speaker’s horrific experiences throughout the war. The poem exposes a soldier’s experience of finding the violent battlefield above while searching through the death-filled tunnels below. Pairing the speaker’s point of view with specific word choice clearly demonstrates the excruciating mental and physical pain being a soldier inflicts, and leaves a glooming effect on the reader. Sassoon fills the poem with explicit imagery to reveal the pacifist theme he is trying to convey. Sassoon wants the audience to realize that war and violence is not the solution, and he portrays this theme through his poetry.
His imagery creates the scenes of the entire story and helps to let the reader actually go there with all their senses. His explanation of not just the color of the world around him but including the details such as “it was uncomfortably warm” when talking about the bullet helps you get the feeling of being there with him. This use of imagery helps use understand what happens when the cannon fires and he gets tossed around and helps the reader understand what is going on.
Additionally- like Dickinson, Whitman uses vivid imagery, such as “The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,” to paint various pictures—whether it be the background of a scene or a feeling his encountering—in a clear, compelling, and creative way. The author’s use of detailed verbiage and robust wording acts to make the reader imagine his thoughts artistically and
“All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Remarque, “In the Field” by Tim O’Brien, and “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen are all war stories that all share a similar theme. They all illustrate the terrible and gruesome imagery of modern war. The authors clearly have no intention of romanticizing the idea of war and only want to write the truth as they have experienced it. Literary devices such as similes and imagery is used throughout all of these works to depict the harrowing and appaling images of war in the reader’s mind.
In the first three lines of the poem, a picture of an old man surrounded by curious children is painted. The beginning of the story starts out as most war stories do, with the excited questioning of the young about acts of valor and bravery, but as the narrator recalls, these memories are not fond. The wound-dresser says, "Arous'd and angry, I'd thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war, / But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd and I resign'd myself, / To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead" (Whitman, lines 4-6). In this text, the narrator refers to how his perspective on war has changed.
A moment in the American Civil War is written down by Walt Whitman’s Cavalry Crossing a Ford. It is about a cavalry unit crossing an unknown river. The poet is simply showing the soldiers from a variety of points and at the same time tests the reader’s understanding of the word “cavalry”. It takes away the militaristic side of the term and in its place uses the imagery of a group of men. The poem starts by the poet observing the soldiers from far away, as a “line in long array”.
By doing this Whitman introduces himself and at the same time identifies with the reader. He also states that he should be celebrated not only by himself, but also by the reader because they are the same. He also gives off a feeling that his writing is true and good, we get the feeling he is one of us and at the same time a poet. This leads to comparing Whitman with a preacher or public speaker of some sort, he wishes to be
Walt Whitman captures his audience’s attention with his realism poetry and free verse poetry throughout much of his life as a poet. Whitman was a man of the civil war era and in his poem “The Wound-Dresser” shows his life experiences in the war come full force in the way he conveys his contribution in the civil war. His view of the war as a wound-dresser and he describes some of the most horrendous scenes imaginable from the eyes of an everyday man. His poem “The Wound-Dresser” doesn’t show the war from a distance, but from right on the battlefield in its unedited version as written by Whitman. The way Whitman conveys his poems of the everyday man’s life in his time-period is presented by utilizing his realism style to connect to the audience and his gruesomely descriptive vocabulary.
Rather than writing in a detached manner about the happenings of the Civil War, Whitman writes about what is happening to the people in the Civil War. Whitman, for example, writes “Out doors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, &c., a full load for a one-horse cart” (citation). This first person point of view shows audiences that Whitman witnessed this occurrence, not that it just was an occurrence. It creates an emphatic speaker, rather than a detached narrator. Whitman’s utilization of a first person point of view practically forces the audience to deglamorize the Civil War, making it so spectators are unable to romanticize an event that forced men to witness terrible sights just footsteps from the door.
The speaker of Whitman’s poem demands that the drums and bugles “burst like a ruthless force, / Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,” and play “Over the traffic of cities.” This contrasts the third stanza where he requests that “even the trestles shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses, / So strong you thump O terrible drums--so loud you bugles blow.” The first two stanzas express the side of Whitman that knows war is necessary while the final stanza conveys how war is extremely disruptive and will bring life to a halt. He wants the Civil War to stop everything and cause chaos for the ultimate good, but realizes that there will be a great deal of death and destruction. Writing about the third stanza, Oliver determines, “the poet is now sarcastic, urging the drums and bugles to cover the sounds of men dying.”
In this grand poem, Whitman glorifies the unity of all people and life. He embraces the geographical diversity as well as the diversity of culture, work, as well as sexuality or beliefs. Whitman’s influence sets American dreams of freedom, independence, and self-fulfillment, and changes them for larger spiritual meaning. Whitman appreciates hard work as well as being simple and non-egotistical. His major ideas are things such as soul, good health, as well as the love of nature.
In Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself’, one can appreciate the poem properly by understanding the poem’s voice, imagery, figures of speech, symbols, word choice, and theme. To understand it though requires a great deal of thought to arrive to the meaning behind the writing. Especially since this poem was written in the nineteenth century and is written in a very loose structure and free verse. Firstly, the speaker of the poem is an individual, Walt Whitman himself, as seen by the repetition of “I” in the poem.