Metaphors as the critical element in war and poetry relationship
Metaphors as the critical element in war and poetry relationship
Since the Greek time, Paul O’Prey poets have written about the war experience. This is where the relationship between war and poetry began. Later, the young soldiers established poems about war as a literary genre known as war poetry. For a long time now, the theme of war has dominated most poems. Most of the past surviving poems are about great
armies and soldiers and the victorious wars in the past. Genera Illy, war as a theme takes the most significant part of poetry.
There are only a few cases where the theme of war is presented directly. In most poems, the theme of war is presented indirectly. One of the reasons why the theme of war is never presented directly is for the poem not to be a reflection and representation of war but to be about the war; that is, it engages in war (Hayrutdinova, 2021). The lack of direct expression of war themes in poems also develops critical thinking in learners. Learners are required to deeply analyze the poem and come up with the deeper meaning of the poem, which is the information that the poet is trying to put across. There are different essential aspects of the relationship between poetry. In my opinion, the critical element between poetry and war relationship is the use of metaphor. This is the dominating aspect of war poetry and the most used. A metaphor refers to a thing regarded as representative of something else. As discussed earlier, war poems do not bring out the meaning directly. The quality of indirect description of meaning is called metaphor. This paper will focus on why the use of metaphor is a critical aspect of the relationship between war and poetry.
A metaphor has the power to call up visual images. With the metaphors in war poetry, the reader can create mental pictures of what is described in the poem’s lines.
Unlike describing directly to the reader, the metaphors help the readers create their scenes of the events from what they know and what they have ever experienced that took place more so i11 war scenes. An example of this is in the poem Gratitude by Elyse Fenton. In the third paragraph, in the second line, he says, ‘ the glistening skull and no skin. The illustration above
creates the mental picture of how thin and deteriorated the health of the person described in the poem was.
A metaphor has the power to stir feelings. Metaphors tend to engage our emotions more so during the creation of mental pictures from the metaphors in war poetry. The war poems engage our emotions through the intense description of war scenes and their effects which seem to trigger us emotionally. An example of a metaphor that stirs feelings in war poetry is in the poem’s letter composed during a lull in the fighting; Kevin Power uses the emotionally drained voice familiar in war poetry to stir our emotions to be piteous. The following lines illustrate the wearied voice. ‘ When the tremor in your right leg becomes a
shake, you cannot stop.’ With the emotions triggered using metaphor, the poem’s mood is set. The war poems mostly set a sad mood because of war.
A metaphor acts as a link. Metaphors refer to a thing acting as a representation of something else. So, the two are compared. The metaphor reveals how the two things link and the likening features that made them get linked. In war poetry, war and poetry have been linked. Poetry has been used to describe the theme of war. An example of how metaphors act as a link is in the poem ‘The war works hard, the speaker in the poem says, ‘I am a new rose.’
The speaker links himself to a rose due to the emotional change that war has caused in him. From the redness of a rose flower which might signify the blood shade, the speaker symbolizes that he is now challenged.
Metaphors aid memorability. In most war poetry cases; metaphors are a crucial element and aid the memorability of the poem. The metaphors in the war poems are usually absurd, which makes the poem hard to forget. In addition, they are also humorous. An illustration of this is in the poem Gratitude by Elyse Fenton, which says, ‘…. the glistening skull and no skin’. This is absurd because there is no human being that does not have skin. It has just been used to describe how thin and pale the person was. This is easy to recall as it is not common, and it is interesting for one not to remember.
Metaphors enhance meaning. War poetic language may be complex to understand, but with the application of metaphors, the language is made more straightforward for the reader to understand. 111 additions and metaphors also make the language appealing to the imagination and enjoyable to read between the lines enhancing the understanding of the poem by the reader. An example of this is in the poem Katyusha Rockets, the writer says’ into the seat of memory which is a
metaphor. The metaphor has enriched the war poem and has made it more appealing for a better understanding of the speaker’s memory in the poem. Unlike if the writer had just written ‘into the memory, which is boring and does not describe the memory which might be used in the interpretation of the poem.
Metaphors are for ambiguity. The true meaning of war poems may be hidden using metaphors. The writer might not want some audience not to understand the intended. Meaning of the poem so the speaker can use metaphors (Modell, 2021). On the other hand, the speaker may want a specific audience to understand and hence can use a subject known to the audience for them to interpret accurately. The illustration for the creation of ambiguity in a war poem is in the poem discussed earlier, ‘War works hard,’ where the speaker says, ‘I am a new rose.’ The above illustration is an example of ambiguity in war poems. An audience of lady’s audience can interpret the phrase to change the speaker into a better perso11 physically or emotionally because a rose is a flower and is beautiful (Race C, 2020). On the other hand, soldiers, armies, or victims of war may relate it to the shed of blood due to its redness. Therefore, interpreting the line, ‘I am an 11ew Rose’ to them will be the emotional charge of being tough.
In conclusion, metaphors go a long way in helping deliver the poet’s intended meaning to the audience. The metaphors have worked perfectly in war poetry because the war poems do not describe the meaning directly. Therefore, any good war poem must, if not should, apply the use of metaphors for the various reasons described above.
References
Hayrutdinova, G. A., Wang, X., & Zhang, X. (2021). The conceptual metaphors formed by culture in the functioning of the autumn word in the works of Russian poetry. International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 9(3), 91-100.
Rasse, C., Onysko, A., & Citron, F. M. (2020). Conceptual metaphors in poetry interpretation: A psycholinguistic approach. Language and cognition, 12(2), 310-342.
Medell, A. H. (2021). Reflections on Metaphor and Affects 1. In The Annual of Psychoanalysis (pp. 219- 234). Routledge.
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