Stephen Crane's 'War Is Kind'

“My personal opinion is that if someone writes honestly about war, it will inherently be anti-war” (Powers). Writing was, and still is, a form of expression used by some soldiers. Some wrote to pass the time of war by writing what they saw, while some wrote to describe the negative effects of war; however, some used writing as a powerful protest of war by describing their own stories. Stephen Crane, a war journalist, wrote to protest war and was a war correspondent who reported on the Spanish American War. Wilfred Owen was a World War one poet whose family used his poetry to protest the war after he himself died in war. Author Tim O’Brien wrote a book,The Things They Carried, protesting the war after serving in the Vietnam, luckily surviving

In the poem “War is Kind” by Stephen Crane, stanza 3 reads “Do not weep, babe, for war is kind. Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches, Raged at his breast, gulped and died, Do not weep. War is kind” (Crane). Crane is protesting war ironically by speaking to the family of the soldiers. He is ironically saying in this excerpt “Do not weep” and “War is kind” to a small child that learning they just lost his/her father to the war. What else would a small child do? Weeping or crying is exactly what they would do as a natural response. What is kind about a war that rips a child from their father? Nothing, in fact it is the exact opposite of kind, it is cruel and evil. By using such irony it makes the reader think how awful the war really is. Another example of such irony is a section from the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen found in stanza three, lines one through four “If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace behind the wagon that we flung him in, and watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; “(Owen). Owen is protesting war using irony by showing the desensitivity of death during the war by describing the way they treated their dead comrade. This man died fighting beside them for the same cause and with the same fears and triumphs. Tossing him in the back of a body wagon like yesterday’s garbage with no feelings or remorse creates the pictures of how often they deal with death. The reader knows that this should be hard task for the soldiers to complete but instead they are seeing the way the soldiers have turned off their emotions to deal with the numerous lives lost. Now the reader knows the other soldiers are wondering when they will be the one being flung into the body wagon. Being part of a civilized nation that buries and mourns the loss of the dead this desensitivity of death is a harsh reality and the writer