World War Poets

Georg Trakl, Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg are all World war 1 poets. They all three also took part in the war. They all three died during the war as well. Owen and Rosenberg were both English as well while Trakl is Austrian. They all wrote of people dead or dying but they all did that in different ways.

Georg Trakl was an Austrian that served as a pharmacist on the eastern front. He did not die in battle like the other two did but killed himself during the war and four years earlier than the other two. Trakl wrote "Eastern Front" and "Grodek". His poems were darker than the other two writers. He focused more about the battles than about the people in the battles.

Wilfred Owen was an Englishman that served and died on the battlefield. His poems "Dulce et Decorum Est", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", and "Strange Meeting" were about the war. His poems were more about the people in the war, the ones seeing the devastation and the ones that died during the war.

Isaac Rosenberg was an English writer that was against the army from the start but enlisted anyway. He died the same year as Wilfred Owen fighting for the same country. His poems "Returning, We Hear the Larks" and "Dead Man's Dump" are his poems about the war. His poems are harder to understand than the others. His poems are about death in the war, the spirits of the dead, and the land the war was fought on.

2

"The Man I Killed" is the first story I am going to talk about. The Story written by Tim O'Brien takes place in the Vietnam War. The story is of an American Man who has just killed a Vietnam boy and is sitting and contemplating about what he had just done. He thinks about the soldier's life and looks over the body and wounds over and over again. I found that the author did a great job describing the injuries the boy had.

The story starts by him examining all the wounds on the soldier's body. He explains them with good detail and even had me trying to think about what the boy looked like even though I know I wouldn't want to see that. While the killer is looking at the boy he sees things about him that makes the killer think about what the man did when he was not a soldier. It begins to make the American feel bad for killing such an innocent and helpless looking man.

When the American sees how skinny and dainty the boy is he thinks to himself that he must have been a scholar and not a soldier. He starts thinking about the boy's life and starts imagining what the boy was doing with his life before the war. He sees him being picked on in school and with a girl who liked the way he was. How that he had studied hard in the university and had just married when he enlisted. The whole time he is imagining this he keeps looking back and examining the wounds.

"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" is the second story I will be discussing. This story is about an angel that is brought down in a storm and is kept in a town. The family keeps him in a chicken coop for a while and then he eventually stays in the shed. Everyone in the town is curious as to what he is because he is a man with wings but other than that doesn't look like an angel. It seems in the story that people are afraid of things that are different.

The people do not know what to do with the angel so they stick him in with the chickens. While they are trying to figure out what to do with him the other townsfolk were teasing it and throwing things at it. Finally Father Gonzaga arrives and examines the Angel and sees that it is losing feathers and is old and has parasites on its wings. He doesn't know whether it is an angel or not as well so sends word to Rome. The church is in no hurry to go out and decide whether it is an angel or not.

The angel soon has lost almost all its feathers and everyone expected it to die. When the chicken coop was destroyed they allowed him to sleep in a shed. When he lives through a horrible winter they see that during the summer he starts growing back feathers but that like of a scarecrow. One morning the woman sees the angel trying to take flight pitifully. Finally he does gain altitude and fly away and finally the family is at peace.

3.B.

I have learned from my research writing that to some people the reading value does not matter compared to moral beliefs. People do not just read to be entertained and that is not what