Let’s Portray War How It Really Is
February 6, 2008 by alpersa
Many individuals will state that they signed up for the army, marines, navy, etc., under false assumptions. The advertisements and the brochures all looked one hundred percent like it was the best opportunity of their life. However, when signing up no one every told them how bloody and gory a war could actually be.
The one poet who was not afraid to express the true reality of war was Wilfred Owen in his famous Dulce Et Decorum Est. In this poem he ruthlessly describes a man’s death. After reading this poem one would come to the assumption of why would anybody sign up for war. However, during this time period you did not necessarily have a choice.
Another poem we discussed in class was The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner written by Randall Jarrell:
“From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”
The reason I have so much respect for this poem is it does not try and convince people to join the war effort like all of Rupert Brooke’s poems did. Instead, it tells you exactly what someone does not want to know about war. Even though in the back of all our minds we know there is a possibility of death the act of fighting for our country seems a greater deed. I feel this is because the reality of death is generally not portrayed in most war books, movies, pamphlets, poems, or articles. War does need to be fought in most cases and individuals need to be willing to sign up, however, as an individual if I were to sign up I would rather know what I was getting myself into than find out later.
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I think you are on to something when you say that war is not always portrayed in a completely honest way. However there is no hiding the fact that a soldier has one job that is to fight if there is a war. So the requiting methods may hit on gung ho heroic values, and blur the lines of truth. But history shows that when war comes soldiers die it is the sad fact that war has become part of policy or culture and until we find a way to solve difference without it the idea of dieing for he greater good will always be part of the portrayed glory of war
Well, the brochures and ads on TV for the marines and the army and the navy don’t show you the evil of what because they are simply trying to advertise and convince people to join. It’s just another advertisement just like someone would advertise their product in any one of the other commercials on TV. The company isn’t about to show the product breaking on camera or something because that would make people not want to buy their product. In the same way, the public would never look kindly on a military ad if it showed killing and other horrors of war. Granted, the real question is: is it right to practically trick the US public into thinking that joining the army or navy or the marines will just be a piece of cake and all that. Or would it be better to show the truth and simply take those who are truly destined to serve in the armed forces. This however, might not bring enough soldiers into the US forces and therefore the Iraq war may not be going as well as it is.