Memory

The subject of war and memory mainly goes hand in hand with the subject of loss of innocence. In these stories, war is never what it seems. The men who go off to war generally go with the false idea that war will be very exciting and patriotic. Patriotic it may be, but it is generally a horror filled experience that haunts some people for the rest of their lives. War isn't pretty; undoubtedly it is one of the ugliest things that people will ever see. Many men lose their lives every day in a war that will take years of suffering and "casualties". The word casualty in and of itself describes what death in war is like, casual.

In the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen, the irony is already in the name. The Latin phrase "Dulce et Decorum Est pro patria mori" means "It is sweet and honorable to die for the fatherland" (Owen 571). This poem is not about anything sweet or honorable, it is about the death and suffering and terror of one man's experience of war. Many people who never experience war do not realize how truly terrifying it is. As the author states, many men lose their lives in the most horrible ways on the battlefield, "And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,/ His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;/ If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs" (Owen 572).

Owen writes about the pity of war. His poems are honest and do not deceive the reader of the real pain and sorrow of war. War is a casual thing to most American people, having grown up in it. It is a normal every day thing to hear of people dying in the war. We as a people have grown so accustomed to hearing of death, destruction and violence that it does not have as much affect on us as it should.

Owen takes his stories and puts emotion into them, emotions that we all feel. It is a shame to think that a person could read his work and not be affected by it. It is hard to imagine a world with peace instead of war. Many people think that this is not possible. War is often over something that could have been avoided, yet it seems unavoidable. War today is almost necessary for survival, but is based on pride.

In Owen's poem, he depicts a scene of death, depression, sorrow and fear, all in a few short words. Many people today can describe a scene much similar from past experience. Well, the one's who lived through it could. Owen's poem describes a chlorine gas attack, which caused many deaths in World War I. Chlorine gas destroys the respiratory organs and causes a very slow and painful death.

A poem similar to Owens would be Bruce Weigl's "Song of Napalm". This poem also depicts the death of war. One difference is that in Weigl's poem the death is not that of a soldier, but of an innocent girl, another "casualty" of war. The girl is covered in Napalm and is running for her soon to end life. A certain quote from the poem shows us some of the horror of an unnecessary death in war: "Running from her village, napalm/ Stuck to her dress like jelly,/ Her hands reaching for the no one/ Who waits in waves of heat before her." (Weigl 833).

Just another death, just another life that would never be fulfilled, war is a tragic thing. Men who get to come home from war are often stuck with the thought "what might have been." He writes to his wife about false contentment, about pretending that he doesn't think of the tragedy that he has seen every day in his mind. It is symbolic in the fact that almost every man who has seen the tragedy of war remembers it for the rest of his life.

The reader knows that Weigl thinks of this event often from a quote in the poem: "And the girl runs only so far/ As the napalm allows/ Until her burning tendons and crackling/ Muscles draw her up/ Into that final position/ Burning bodies so perfectly assume. Nothing/ Can change that; she is burned behind my eyes" (Weigl 833). Not only is the girl burning in his eyes, but her image is permanently implanted in his memory. Memories such as these are haunting because it is human nature to believe that something could have been done, a life that could have been spared.

In Irene Zabytko's "Home Soil", the author gives us many more details than a poem could. In this story, there is a family, broken as though it may be. The family consists of a single father, a son and a daughter. The main focus is on the son and the father. It is a story of a son who has come back from war very changed,