Summary Of Jack Crawford's Poem I Stand As On A Battleground

Jack Crawford, Jr.’s poem “I Stand as on a Battleground” portrays the disinterest of war. Lines such as “Whose is the blood that springs in flower?” demonstrates how warfare kills indiscriminately (Crawford 11). As seen in the example above, the use of the word “whose” exhibits how Crawford attempts to show war’s neutrality, implying that the dead could be of any faction or ideology. This is also seen in the line “Whose flower won?”, which expresses how war does not care which side has won, but only that it has caused strife and terror among both (Crawford 12). As a whole, the poem depicts the disillusionment of the speaker through the litany of questions within the poem, placing ambiguity in the outcome of the war and further reinforcing how war has no true winner. This view aligns with Tim O’Brien’s novel “The Things They Carried”, in which the protagonist describes war as “just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost” (O’Brien 14).

The phrase “A few names tell it all, the whole incredible history of one generation, mine; names that we cannot manage with a drum-roll”, shows how war has caused nothing but pain and suffering for all sides involved, as it implies that there is nothing to trumpet – to boast – about war (Mueller 1-3). The poem also forms an antecedent-consequent relation between war and its effects, as seen in the lines “who says Vietnam burns his tongue”, further emphasizing how war’s effects on everyone and everything has rarely had any positive ramifications (Mueller 11-12). The poem therefore demonstrates how war is not something to be proud of, but something to be ashamed of. This is especially pertinent when considering the Vietnam War and how “some people wanted other thing [and] other people wanted another thing”, leading to indecisiveness that caused a disastrous campaign with no meaningful result to show for it (O’Brien