Literature

War has always been one of the many harrowing and horrendous experiences of mankind and those soldiers who have underwent the horrors are also known to still have effects on them even after the war has long ended. But even if this is the case, nations still regale their subordinates with tall tales regarding the war and it does not matter if there can sometimes be no known logic behind its cause what matters is who wins and who receives all the wars glorious bounty. As such, different experiences regarding the war have been recorded by historians, written by novelists and imagined by literary figures in trying to put into words a war which has been experienced as most horrible by those who have fought for it.

In the poems of Emerson, Hardy, Owen and Tennyson, the different faces of war has been painted and it all shares the same face that of something which is not liked at all and which is not good at all. Emerson has regaled that soldiers go out to the front to willingly die because it is war Hardy points out that sometimes, men have to do the most atrocious and illogical of things to other men, even those they have never met and kill them because they are enemies and because it is war Owen narrates that men die and suffer horribly and it is accepted and there is nothing to be done about it because it is war and lastly, Tennyson writes that men who are deep in fear march on forward with a brave facade because they have to because it is war. Thus, what the four poets are trying to point out are the various aspects of war and that it is foolish, illogical, horrendous and a farce.

In the end, though the four have presented various depictions of the aspects of war, there is one poet that stands out among the others and this is Thomas Hardy in his poem, The Man He Killed. The persona of Hardys poem is powerful and left an impact since the scene painted before a readers eyes is something which can be a typical and common scene and yet it holds so much truth why should a man kill another man who has not done him any wrong and who he has not even met just for wars sake Though war is supposedly something which a nation seriously engages in when they are already involved, it still does not make sense to have people killed on the pretence of being enemies.