ipl-logo

Conscientious Objector Poem

571 Words3 Pages

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Conscientious Objector” convinces readers that the speaker’s cause is just and heroic by using references to great evils in history to increase the impact of her words on the audience. The poem constantly depicts the speaker’s acceptance of “Death” as an alternative to revealing information that would give away the security of another’s life. In the first stanza, Millay uses the imagery of Death riding a horse to show how her speaker refuses to assist Death in reaching its victims in places such as Cuba and the Balkans as mentioned in lines five and six, which at the time where places where corruption and death ran rampant. The speaker demonstrates their refusal to aid Death in this stanza by rejecting to help “him” mount his horse and leave to wreak his havoc on others. Stanza two switches to a different time period, Antebellum America, with Death pictured as a man hunting down a runaway slave, torturing the speaker in an attempt to extract information regarding the slave’s whereabouts. Like the first stanza, the speaker is resisting Death in order to preserve the lives of others, except stanza two’s imagery is a lot more brutal and far less passive. The third and final stanza is made up of the speaker’s denouncement of Death and proclamation of secrecy. The …show more content…

Unlike “Conscientious Objector”, “Flander’s Fields” is spoken from the point of view of dead soldiers. The soldiers want the people they have left behind to carry on in their absence and continue fighting the good fight. Although the message of this poem may be inspiring, it can be discounted because we have no knowledge of what the afterlife is like or what the dead may think. “Conscientious Objector” is the more inspiring poem because it is the tale of human courage against a seemingly unstoppable force, and sometimes a little courage is all people need in

Show More
Related
565 Words | 3 Pages

I believe that being an American Is the greatest thing that could happen to a person and here is why. In the story "Veterans Day: Never Forget Their Duty" is about veterans who are P.O.W.s in North Vietnam. They were captured and tortured. But even going through all that they are still able to salute the flag of The United States Of America. A man named Mike Christian, he was the man who sewed an American flag on the inside of his shirt.

Read More
1374 Words | 6 Pages

Soldiers typically lacked sympathy for what they went through from society ignoring the trauma they brought back from the Vietnam War. The following quote from the article presents the thought process of most soldiers to us: “By forgetting, he said he could prove that he was strong and could master his anxieties… by remembering, he felt he was admitting that he was weak and no longer in control” (Penk and Robinowitz 3). The previous quote shows how the soldiers felt that forgetting made them appear strong rather than letting their emotions weaken them, and this is why we see a soldier’s inner conflict as they force themselves to remember in the poem. In this quote from the poem the soldier has come to the monument for remembering those who passed in the war and as he looks at those names his first thought is: “No tears.

Read More
844 Words | 4 Pages

This description paints the scenes of the poem as they happen, the powerful connotations of the words battling against each other, and to the grievance of the reader, the negative feelings prevail. This battle illuminates the brutality and fear experienced by soldiers, in WWII, during their final moments on Earth - their fear, sadness, and horrified disgust all hidden between the lines of these two sentences. Foreshadowed by the soldier's machine like tone, the speaker alludes to the fact that he will fight for his life, and

Read More
874 Words | 4 Pages

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” This quote by renowned Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana immaculately encapsulates the core message that is conveyed in both the poems “Grass” and “At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border.” The two poems employ disparate writing styles and divergent methods to describe the atrocities of war and violence, however both poems do ultimately condemn these inexcusable acts. Furthermore, beyond denouncing war, both poems greatly emphasize a part of war that is often neglected; how we choose to remember wars and how we must not allow ourselves to forget these brutal lessons of the past. Carl Sandburg and William E. Stafford both lived through numerous periods of violence, epochs where

Read More
1287 Words | 6 Pages

It illustrates when troops are back from the war their are considering taking their lives because their feel like murders since; they took someone else’s life and all the killing that happens within the war. For example, when one of their comrade’s is killed they feel guilty, and it will lead them to feel like their should have done a better job protecting each other. As a result, what they experience during the war can cause trauma to the brain, trigger the memory system and every man’s life

Read More
527 Words | 3 Pages

The narrator’s changing understanding of the inevitability of death across the two sections of the poem illustrates the dynamic and contrasting nature of the human

Read More
889 Words | 4 Pages

War carries important morals that heighten the perspective of men and women on their nation, but it also entails many acts and experiences that leave lasting effects on their emotional and physical state. Throughout the following texts, Paul Baumer, the dead soldiers, and Kiowa’s comrades all sustain losses that compel them to persevere and fight harder. All Quiet on the Western Front, Poetry of the Lost Generation, and an excerpt from In the Field all connect to the recurring theme, horrors of war, that soldiers face everyday on the front line through the continuous battle. War involves gruesome battles, many of which lead to death, but these events forever affect the soldier’s mind and body. In All Quiet on the Western Front, men experience horrific sights, or horrors of war, through the depiction of the terrain, death, and the

Read More
1398 Words | 6 Pages

Louisa May Alcott’s impassioned essay, “Death of a Soldier,” legitimizes the suffering of a wounded soldier named John, who was shot in the back during the American Civil War. Alcott saw John’s pain first hand as his caregiver in a hospital. His pain is instilled into the audience through Alcott’s evocative language. Through detailing her experience, Alcott wishes to inform her audience of the rewards of selfless action. John did not have to go to war, but he felt it was his duty to do so, just like Alcott did not have to care for the dying soldier, but did so out of compassion.

Read More
1197 Words | 5 Pages

The Grass is Always Greener over the Battlefield: How Carl Sandburg’s use of free verse, anaphora and tone in the poem Grass inform us of how forgetting history dooms us to repeat history. Carl Sandburg’s use of free verse, anaphora and tone transform a simple eleven-lines of verse into a powerful and dynamic poem. One could apologize for the nod to Erma Bombeck’s book The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank a book that uses humor to explain the growing dissatisfaction of suburban housewives in mid-century America, however while Grass is far from being a humorous poem, the image of covering over something foul and fetid with a carpet of green grass is a worthy comparison. This helps us understand Sandburg’s antiwar message is important

Read More
162 Words | 1 Pages

This source argues that Black Death has been falsely attributed to the wrong bacteria and that messes up our understanding of the epidemic and the Renaissance age. It explains why it was falsely attributed and how Black Death was actually cause by many diseases. It goes on into the medical perspective explaining that how not all research shows that everyone suffered from the same Black Death diseases that killed many. There were other plagues as well causing people to suffer and die during those times. This source also argues that there some good that came out of the plague specifically seen in the Renaissance age.

Read More
1108 Words | 5 Pages

The descriptive language in the poem described certain mood for the reader to appeal the reader. The poet start the poem with the phrase ‘Do not go gentle’, it creates a strong emotion from the poet and is repeated throughout the poem. The repetition of the phrase seems to show the poet speaker’s stubbornness towards the subject of giving up and yielding to the impending death. It impose the meaning that the poet speaker does not want people to just give up

Read More
1000 Words | 4 Pages

For the word "Death" also known as in negative term means losses that no one wants to meet with him. He also uses ironic diction. There are three stanzas; six, eight, and ten lines. Including to rhyme scheme throughout each stanza.

Read More
975 Words | 4 Pages

However, the reason this scene is happening is because we have such a fear of death that most of us refuse to stop for it. However, as the courteous gentleman that death is kindly stops for the speaker in the poem to show that death isn’t so bad. Another example is “And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility” (569).

Read More
1040 Words | 5 Pages

This is different to the other poems already mentioned in this essay as it refers to the innocent citizens killed as opposed to the soldiers or upper class ranking officials at the time. A theme throughout the poem is that the first line of each verse contains the person who survives and the second line contains the person of is dead or about to die. “One man shall wake from terror to his bed. Five men shall be dead”

Read More
740 Words | 3 Pages

Many poems about the civil war convey universal themes of the time. Stephen Crane’s poem “War is Kind” is no different. The poem,“War is kind” written by Stephen Crane(1871-1900) has three themes common to civil war literature: Warfare, Home, and Patriotism. This poem’s overall theme is about how war destroys families conversely to the title of “War is Kind” or the many times which Crane says “War is Kind”.

Read More

More about Conscientious Objector Poem

Related Topics

Open Document