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POETRY & POWER

​Alone vs. Together – Aubrey A.

2/28/2016

1 Comment

 

Something that really jumped out at me in last week’s readings was the divergent sense of unity and isolation presented in the war poems. I hadn’t previously taken the narrator/author’s perspective into consideration in this way, but last week it became really clear that in the background of these war landscapes, each writer has a very definitive sense of company —or lack there of.
 
What I mean by this statement is: when addressing the subject and experience of war, some writers make clear that throughout the toils and unspeakable horrors of war, no one is suffering alone. And although comradery doesn’t lessen the harsh realities of war, it alleviates the burden, and there seems to be a great deal of consolation in this solidarity.
 
“Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen opens with this stanza:         
       
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.”
 
To Owen, there is a sense of fraternity and unity between the men fighting. They share a cause, they share the same deteriorating physical and mental state, they share the same reality. As he tells his story, he avoids isolating himself, and instead opts for writing using “we,” “our” and “all.” The man who is killed at the end is even referred to as “My friend.” All of these diction choices suggest that while war is in every way horrific, the men fighting are in it together and never without a common connection.
 
As readers of “Dulce et Decorum Est,” we don’t picture a lone soldier making his way through a warzone. Instead, we see an entire army of wounded men trudging through a battlefield.
 
On the other end of the spectrum we have Yeats and Auden. Both poets feel extreme isolation positioned at the forefront of a war. W.B. Yeats’ “An Irish Airman foresees his Death” reads:
 
 
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
 
Yeats’ poem is utterly solitary, alone and isolated. The airman narrating the story never felt called to fight for and protect his home. He’s presented as unaffected and ambivalent by his situation, as he doesn’t care about the country he’s protecting and doesn’t hate the country he’s fighting. The countrymen he’s meant to guard are poor and will likely die anyway. There is no conviction in his role; he signed up because he didn’t mind dying. To match this position, Yeats only writes using first-person singular narration. There is certainly no use of “our,” “we,” “us” or “all.” The poem is entirely about “I” and “me.”
 
Zooming out from World War II and other international conflicts, I think it’s important to consider what these differences mean in relation to social justice. For example, we may think of gang activity as a parallel to war. There are similarities in terms of borders and territory, violence, membership/inclusion, sense of purpose and initiation. Another war parallel is fighting against stereotypes, experiencing domestic abuse, or breaking out of poverty.
 
 
But what does it mean for someone to feel fraternity and unity within a gang, versus feeling alone and not sure why they’re partaking? What does it mean for an abused woman to feel alone versus one of many? How else does social justice relate to isolation? Which perspective is better? Which makes the most sense? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below, and I look forwarding to considering this theme in upcoming readings!
1 Comment
Helena Chung
2/29/2016 12:18:57 pm

Hi Aubrey! Thanks so much for sharing this post, I think the differences in diction that you are pointing out are very important and interesting!

I thought that perhaps these differences can be attributed to difference in purpose? For me, "Dulce et Decorum est" is a denouncement of patriotism, saying that war (and death in war) is never the glorious and heroic thing that one might initially believe it to be. I think this works well with the diction of using the first person plural, because it gets us to care/think about all of these people suffering, then hit us with this soldier's death, that ends up being so horrifying and pitiful almost. This also helps the foreboding warning we get in last four lines with the mention of "our children." I think in this poem, with the use of "we," etc. we as readers are being asked to stand in the place of the speaker and see for ourselves the reality of war.

On the other hand, I think in "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death," there is more a sense that we the readers are supposed to try and understand the speaker, as opposed to stand in their place. That is, it seems that poem wants to explain to us why someone would willingly go fight in a war. The last four lines here seem to get to the heart of the matter, almost saying that this person chose to fight in the war because it is better than staying and not fighting. To me, this elicited a lot of sympathy; the idea that the speaker either very much believes what he's been told about the glory of war, or that the speaker feels that truly the place he is in is so terrible that war is a better option.

Anyways, I only addressed part of what you're talking about here, and I'm also unsure about where this leaves us in regards to your other questions, so I'd really love to hear what other people think!

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