Importance of “patriotism” during war Essay Example for Free

Importance of â€Å"patriotism† during war Essay Wilfred Owen in his poem â€Å"Asleep† and Andrew Hudgins in his poem â€Å"Listen? The Flies† have analyzed the concepts of death, war and violence. Even though both poets experienced the military actions themselves, they did not describe the life of soldiers and the philosophy of war from the patriotic point of view. On the contrary, in their poems Owen and Hudgins illustrated the most horrible scenes of war that emphasize that war can never be justified because it destroys human life and brings physical and moral sufferings. Both poets portray death as the only way out for soldiers, express compassion towards soldiers as the greatest victims of war and describe low importance of human life as the result of military actions in order to disprove the idea of patriotism that plays upon the mind of soldiers and exploits them for the mercenary interests of their governors. First, Andrew Hudgins and Wilfred Owen justify death to some extent because it rescues soldiers from anger of war and occurs as the natural process unlike war that goes against all moral laws.   When Hudgins talks about war in his poem he describes human life as purity that was shaded by war and turned into putrefaction: â€Å"everything that lives is pitched from purity to putrefaction, back and forth†.   At the same time Wilfred Owen, uses comparison in order to show that death becomes more pleasant than life during war. He compares death to the deep sleep: â€Å"his deeper sleep lies shaded by the shaking of great wings, and the thoughts that hung the stars.† The soldier in the poem has finally got a chance to have some rest after long days of battle. The main characters of both poems are not afraid of death and to some extent they accept it because even death cannot be more frightful than war. Thus, in the poem â€Å"Asleep† Wilfred Owen describes the soldier who does not suffer in his dead sleep because he is â€Å"above these clouds, these rains, these sleets of lead†, above all severe weather conditions, constant attacks and stress from killing and being killed. Moreover, those soldiers who are still alive envy the dead soldier that does not have to wake up in the morning and see the horrors of war again. Similar to Wilfred Owen, Andrew Hudgins refers to Bible to justify death. He uses allusion and gives quotes from the Bible to show that death is more natural for a soldier than war: â€Å"from ash to ash, it says, from dust to dust, with fire and dirty water in between†. Hudgins depicts how soldiers were waiting for death in prison camps praising the flies. The flies are symbols of death that is always near. In the last part of the poem the author killed a fly that got in his room but he knows that there will be more flies in the future. The main character of the poem does not see any point in struggling for life because it’s easier to accept death that is unavoidable during war.   Thus, according to both authors, the horrors of war lead to the condition when death becomes a happy end for a soldier because it sets him free from all the hardships that he has to go through during war and it can be explained by laws of nature. Second, the authors stress the cruelty of military actions by describing the dead soldiers as the greatest victims of war and showing their compassion for them. The length and the concentration of events in both poems are the brightest indication of the authors’ ability to awaken in the mind of readers the same kind of sympathy that both poets have for their characters. The length of the both poems does not let the reader to remain indifferent to the events which take place and arouses the feelings of grief, horror and deep sorrow in the reader’s mind. Thus, the poem of Wilfred Owen is short that enables us to read it at one sitting at the highest degree of excitement. The phrases in the poem â€Å"Asleep† are abrupt that turns the reading into the process when there is a minute to think and move to the next line. The poem by Andrew Hudgins is longer; however, most of the sentences are short and it provokes the reader to pay attention to every detail and not to leave anything without attention. All events which occur in the poem â€Å"Asleep† are concentrated in one place during certain time interval; at the same time in the poem â€Å"Listen? The Flies† the author tells about events which happened in different places during different periods of time. The concentration of time and place in the poem by Wilfred Owen is used because the author wants stay-at-home citizens to be carried to the battle field for a moment, experience what the soldiers experience every day and see the â€Å"backstage† and the reality of war. Lack of focus on time and place in the poem by Andrew Hudgins makes the reader see the war from the different standpoints and contemplate more about the meaning of life. Thus, at the beginning Hudgins describes how he noticed the body of the dead soldier, and then he points out that death took away many people in prison camps, after that he explains death using quotes from Bible and at the end he goes back to the symbolic scene with the flies. Third, both authors illustrate that military victory and destruction of enemies during war have higher importance than life of a person. The soldiers in both poems are described as some human bodies without soul rather than as human beings. In the poem â€Å"Asleep† no one notices the dead soldier; his head â€Å"confuses more and more with the low mould† and his hair becomes of the same color â€Å"with the grey grass of finished fields†.   It seems like the soldier is the machine that is out of order. Andrew Hudgins describes with certain irony the scene when the soldiers â€Å"walked the marsh† and sang the patriotic song; however, their friend was dead. The author portrays how someone’s death can be neglected because patriotic idea supported by political and economic interests plays more important role.   The dead soldiers are heroes because they were killed for their country. However, the question remains whether the interests that they defend are the interests of people or the interests of politicians. Both poems lead us to the conclusion that the consequences of patriotism are death and emotional breakdown. The poets used different techniques to emphasize that the glorious idea of military patriotism is based on political ambitions and soldiers are only instruments. The romantic beliefs about nobility of military actions made both characters of the poems the victims of war whose life lost its value and death became the answer to sufferings and hardships.

Scholarship Essay :: essays research papers

I am here Ever since I was a young kid I have always been interested in movies. My grandma, who was full of the wise the life experience left, always knew about my interest in movies. She feed my vain for the art. Even though her religion, she professed Adventist of seven-day religion, didn’t let her go to the cinema, she always found the way to took me to the cinema. She and I enjoyed watch movies. We used to sit in the darkness room, with our faces illuminated from the reflection of the light which rebooted from the screen, both absorbs in the plot of the movie which made us laughed or cried. After the movie, while we went back to her home, she started to talk about the movie. She had a particular point of view where the main story wasn’t the most important part of the movie, instead she showed me to enjoy the stories behind the main story, the movies’ details. I was fascinated with her stories about other people in the movies, the second character stories. I always, inv olved by the excitement of the moment, started to create my own movies, my own characters, my own stories, and I know now that that part of our secret visited to the cinema, were the part that she most enjoyed. Those days are part of my most values memories. The legacy that she left me is still alive. For many different circumstances I couldn’t study film before now. But I never give up about my dreams of being a film director. At the aged of nineteen I joined a theater company. It was the most near reference that I have to gain experience about how to produce a show. Cinema studies were very expensive at that time. I worked with the theater company for twenty years. During that time I fell in love, I raised my family, I learned a lot about production, acting, directing, lighting and sound. I traveled to many countries and worked and participated in many different theater festivals; Spolleto in Italy, Cadiz and Madrid in Spain, FIT England, Canada, Australia, Mexico, New York, Chicago, German and Colombia. While I was working there my major motivation was gain a lot of experience for the moment when I will make a movie. I never stop thinking about being a film director. All these ele ments have given me a very broad outlook, with varying degrees of knowledge in a range of topics. Scholarship Essay :: essays research papers I am here Ever since I was a young kid I have always been interested in movies. My grandma, who was full of the wise the life experience left, always knew about my interest in movies. She feed my vain for the art. Even though her religion, she professed Adventist of seven-day religion, didn’t let her go to the cinema, she always found the way to took me to the cinema. She and I enjoyed watch movies. We used to sit in the darkness room, with our faces illuminated from the reflection of the light which rebooted from the screen, both absorbs in the plot of the movie which made us laughed or cried. After the movie, while we went back to her home, she started to talk about the movie. She had a particular point of view where the main story wasn’t the most important part of the movie, instead she showed me to enjoy the stories behind the main story, the movies’ details. I was fascinated with her stories about other people in the movies, the second character stories. I always, inv olved by the excitement of the moment, started to create my own movies, my own characters, my own stories, and I know now that that part of our secret visited to the cinema, were the part that she most enjoyed. Those days are part of my most values memories. The legacy that she left me is still alive. For many different circumstances I couldn’t study film before now. But I never give up about my dreams of being a film director. At the aged of nineteen I joined a theater company. It was the most near reference that I have to gain experience about how to produce a show. Cinema studies were very expensive at that time. I worked with the theater company for twenty years. During that time I fell in love, I raised my family, I learned a lot about production, acting, directing, lighting and sound. I traveled to many countries and worked and participated in many different theater festivals; Spolleto in Italy, Cadiz and Madrid in Spain, FIT England, Canada, Australia, Mexico, New York, Chicago, German and Colombia. While I was working there my major motivation was gain a lot of experience for the moment when I will make a movie. I never stop thinking about being a film director. All these ele ments have given me a very broad outlook, with varying degrees of knowledge in a range of topics.

Outline for a mass communication written task Essay

In 2008 an attack ad, titled ‘Vote Different’ appeared on YouTube, persuading voters to vote for Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton in the primary elections. Without a doubt this ad influenced the way many voters voted. By making use of allusion and by borrowing from other texts, it successfully made voters vote differently. As a result Hillary Clinton lost in the primary elections to Barack Obama. The attack ad ‘vote different’ depicts a large group of prisoners, sitting in neat rows, watching a large screen. On the screen one sees Hillary Clinton talking about how she would like to listen to her audience and engage in a dialogue with them. Her words are very ironic, since the audience is not able to participate in the discussion. This is the first indication that we are meant to be critical of her words. Secondly, the camera switches to another woman, an athlete who has broken past the prison guards to enter the theatre where the prisoners sit. She is running with a sledgehammer. While all of the images are dark and grey, she seems to bear the only sign of color with her red shorts. On her shirt is the campaign logo of Barack Obama. She hurls the hammer towards the screen, resulting in a burst of light that seems to awaken the prisoners. Then a text reads, â€Å"On January 14th the Democratic primary will begin. And you’ll see why 2008 won’t be like ‘1984’.† Then the letter ‘O’ appears in the colors of Apple Macintosh’s old logo, along with the web address, BarackObama.com. What does this text mean, and how does it rely on  other texts to construct meaning? There are three layers to this text. The first layer can be understood in the context of 2008 and the primary elections. The text traveled as a viral, meaning it was a commercial that spread like a virus through social networks on the Internet. People who posted this video to their Facebook wall or sent it as a link in an e-mail to friends, all knew who Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were. Her face and his logo needed no introduction. The irony of her words, the dark images of the prisoners and the symbol of the sledgehammer all indicated a sharp criticism of Clinton. One did not have to understand the final text to sense that this was a strong attack ad. It accused Clinton of not listening to her audience, and it praised Obama for helping them see ‘the light’. The second layer of this text can best be understood in the context of the Apple Macintosh ad that ran only once during the Super Bowl in 1984. The attack ad is in fact a ‘mash-up’ of the Macintosh ad, meaning that it is almost identical to the original ad, frame for frame, with a the exception of several manipulated images. Where the Apple logo once appeared on the shirt of the athletic woman, there is the logo of Organizing for America, Obama’s grassroots campaign team. Where a man’s face once appeared on the large screen, there is Hilary’s face. The text at the end of the Macintosh ad originally read, â€Å"On January 24th Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t seem like ‘1984’.† Even if viewers of the Obama ad do not know about the significance of ‘1984’, they might know these references to the Macintosh ad. Since the ad only ran once, it created a great hype and sense of mystery. It promised to change the face of personal computing by literally and figuratively enlightening the masses. Comparing Obama’s campaign to the Apple brand, has an interesting effect on the reader in 2008. It is almost as if Obama is the new iPod: slick, stylish, personal and unique. He breaks with the establishment, Hillary Clinton, who could be compared to Microsoft or IBM, in the context of 1984. The third layer of context is perhaps the most important one to understanding the ads. Both ads allude to a scene from Nineteen Eighty-four, a novel by George Orwell. His novel is commonly understood as a criticism of autocratic government. The autocratic government in Orwell’s novel, Oceana, is ruled by a man whose face appears regularly on a large ‘telescreen’. His name is Big Brother. The Obama ad replaces Big Brother’s image from the Apple ad with Hillary  Clinton’s face, making a comparison and strong suggestion that she stands for autocratic rule, establishment and war. The effects of this on the audience in 2008 are quite persuasive and bold, influencing the way they vote in the primary election. At the time the attack ad ran in January of 2008, Hillary Clinton was ahead in the polls. Almost a week later, thanks to this ad and other influences, she began to lose points to Barack Obama (Pollster.com, 2008). While it is impossible to measure the exact effects of this ad in weakening her position, the ad’s implications are strong and persuasive. This viral video shows the power of mash ups and how the persuasive power of borrowing from other texts. Works cited Apple Computers. â€Å"YouTube – 1984 Apple’s Macintosh Commercial.† YouTube – Broadcast Yourself. Web. 22 Feb. 2011. ParkRidge47. â€Å"YouTube – Vote Different.† YouTube – Broadcast Yourself. Web. 22 Feb. 2011. . â€Å"Pollster.com – Political Surveys and Election Polls, Trends, Charts and Analysis.† Pollster. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.

The Problem Of Racism Is Not Specifically An American Problem

Racism in Sports Luke Hampton Truman State University 7/31/2016 The problem of racism is not specifically an American problem, though Americans have made it into an important political and social issue as they have tried to find a way to eliminate racism from their society. Racism occurs whenever there is a dominant racial group that uses its position to discriminate against a minority racial group on the basis of racial characteristics. Traditionally, discrimination has been seen as a creature of prejudice, and until the late 1960s the dominant perspective among social science analysts of discrimination was that prejudice and intolerance were the causes of discriminatory actions. Other observers have focused on individual racists and have seen the problem as the individual motivated by hatred of a given outgroup. Still others consider the issue in terms of patterns of segregation and community practices (Feagin and Feagin, 1986, 1). Certain areas of American life are seen as transcending racism, and sports has been one of these. While it is true that the admission of blacks to the ranks of college and professional sports was slow in coming, it is also clear from an examination of college and professional teams today that blacks and whites coexist and work together on teams in nearly every sport. Yet, a closer examination shows that racism has not been eliminated from the sports world any more than it has from American life in general, and racist attitudes andShow MoreRelatedThe Controversial Problem Of Racism941 Words   |  4 Pagesdeals with a plethora of controversial problems. Controversial problems we face today include issues that deal with a few of the amendments: freedom of religion, freedom of the press, the right to bear arms, etc. Other issues that we deal with today could be medical, social, or the legalization of certain things. 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