#shortessay

The sky was coated with an ashen hue. Soft pillows of clouds started to form. Blocking parts of the golden sun. The puzzle-pieced clouds left the earth with a big shadow. Once the clouds covered the sun it seemed like the shadow had swallowed the earth. A storm was heading this way.

It was dark outside, and the wind whispered something to the trees. Whatever they said had made the trees dance. Each leaf swings from side to side. Some leaves stayed on the branch held by a bond. Wanting to stay secured by a bigger object.  Some of the bonds were broken, and the leaves fell trying to be free. Not wondering where they were going to land, but where they were going to go.

Moisture filled the air. The temperature fluctuates from warm to chilly. The earth not yet making up its mind. The earthy smell arose from the ground. Pitter-patter, Pitter-patter, the beat of the raindrops is growing. The storm is like a song, and the beginning is just the melody. Then the rain is the lyrics that make and complete the song.  

Each drop of rain caresses my window. The image that is created looks distorted and broken. A falsely accused reality. A flash of white, blue, and purple came across my window. It seemed like somebody had just taken a photo.  A slow rumble followed the flash. Like a bowling ball rolling through the slick floor.

Never enter into a conversation with child or adult either friend or stranger on the assumption that you’ve any idea of where it is they are coming from.

If you’re thinking too highly of the other, you may confound them with ignorance in asking them to step upon a pedestal which is far beyond their step or stature. If you’re thinking too lowly of the other, you may insult them in blindly kicking the pedestal out from beneath them. Never assume you know anything of the other until you are sure they have made their case to you, that they feel they have sufficiently conveyed themselves. Whatever it is felt which has not been conveyed is merely an expectation and expectations are not clairvoyance destined to disappoint so much as they are your own desired resolutions to some perceived tension. Presume yourself innocent of the other by asking innocent questions, each one trying to square the other, and you will undoubtedly find the correct frame of interpretation and the truest kind of communication between individuals.

    Crowd is cheering, stands are full, concession stand line is backed up, bright lights light the field, the cheering continues yet its’s getting louder, the announcer comes over the intercom, drums beating a chant, popcorn is thrown up in the air, balloons released, smiles and laughter spreads the stands, horns blaring, our team just got a touchdown. The amount of excitement from that one touchdown will last the whole game. In fact it’ll be the talk of the school the following Monday. Nothing beats a small town football game. There’s so much adrenaline, as the ban marches during halftime, the color-guard girls twirl their flags in the air, then a spirit walk way for the football boys, and the roar of the students and kids cheering on their team to win. Sunflower seed shells spread across the dirt and track, free shirts launched in the stands, everyone’s singing the school’s fight song, with those little boys in the top right of the stands pretending they’re the boys out playing on the field. Football games bring small town communities together, everyone wants that feeling of intense adrenaline where you can hear your own heartbeat and feel like you belong. 

     The morning after a late night of football is usually filled with a rush of excitement, as you remember the big win the night before. Some might not remember the night before and some might not remember the game at all, usually due to illegal activities. There’s really no safe place for teens to hang out after a big game or a late night. Almost anywhere you go with friends will most likely be a party or an act of illegal activities. It’s considered the “cool” thing to do. If you’re not participating the peer pressure will start, and it will usually not end till you finally start participating. Cliques will start talking about you and starting rumors, just so you’ll feel bad and want to do what they do. Reputation is a lie. Some are smart and avoid those people all together and never have to deal with rumors floating around town about themselves. Some hang with bad influences once and get a bad reputation for the rest of high school. Sometimes news floating around town is good, in times of need, when the community needs to come together. If there is a car crash and someone dies, or an accident leaving someone in critical condition, a house fire, or anything that impacts the entire town. Food is made and delivered to specific families in need, clothes and blankets are brought to their needs, money is sent to the family for help with medical bills. But most importantly prayers are always sent. 

     Religion makes up a small town. You’re either Catholic, Christian, Methodist, or Lutheran. There are some other churches in town to give a variety, but you won’t find those parking lots filled on a Sunday morning. Maybe Easter or Christmas services, but rarely every week. Sunday’s are the quietest days of the whole week. You could hear a pen drop on the sidewalk and not stir a single soul. Almost everyone is in church and the streets are dead silent, only the birds are out, and an occasionally a dog barking. The town starts to be more alive shortly after noon. Churches are getting out, some people are just getting up for the day, activities are starting, and there are more vehicles out on the roads. Growing up in a small town you see that almost every house has a truck along the street or driveway. It might be a beat up truck or a brand new truck, as long as you can go mudding and star gaze in the back tailgate your good. The older generation loves to show off their cars form when they were teens. They’ll drive them around town on a bright sunny day, smiling and waving like a king and a queen. The amount of respect the teens/children have for the elder generation is so powerful and huge. You were raised right if you respect and appreciate your elders. It’s not a hard thing to do, and they won’t be around forever. There’s always someone in a small town correcting your manners or making you apologize. Even if it’s not your kid people will correct you and you go with it. It’s because the community cares about you, they want to see you healthy, well mannered, a civilized human being, and making the town proud. Unfortunately there are some not raised right, who are usually outcast/invisible at school or in public, sadly. But people will still wave at you no matter what. 

     A typical driving position is with one hand on the wheel and other on your knee or lower part of the wheel, just hovering. Country music blasting in your speakers, or rap, mostly country, and sunflower seeds and gum in the middle console. Even if you don’t smoke, you could probably find a lighter in almost every vehicle. The wave... one finger or tow, just lifting to the car or person, the whole hand, a hat tip, or a arm out the window wave. Just acknowledging the other person out of respect. It comes almost naturally and once you go to the bigger cities/towns where it’s not so common to wave at every vehicle passing it comes as a shock at first. You suppress the statement “how rude” when it’s not a big deal at all. 

   Rain is a good thing. The whole town is surrounded by wheat fields, soybeans, corn, cattle, horses, milo, or anything farming wise. Sunsets can be seen from every direction in town, you only have to drive about three minutes to get to the country, where the best views are. Just go to snapchat for a look at the sunset when you can’t see it, it’ll be all over snapchat stories. When there’s a full moon it lights the whole town, owls and bats rule the night sky, and every so often a vehicle drives by with blasting music, breaking the silence. It’s impossible to get lost, it’s more fun to take the back roads all the way to the next town, you know every back road from cruising late at night to the early mornings. You’re friends with all the cops in town, they’ve pulled everyone over at some point and you usually see each other in church. Those trucks that speed down the main roads late at night, drag racing for bragging rights, showing off their trucks who are their pride and joy, trying to get a hot date for a movie the coming weekend. Staying out late on a school night, waking up early and rushing to the nearest gas station for coffee. All four gas stations are full, being late to class because the parking lot ran out of spots, so you made a new spot. 

Many British poets chose to write about World War I to portray the damaging impact it had on society. Three of these poets included Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918), and T.S. Eliot (1888-1965). Owen, Rosenberg, and Eliot each have their own way of portraying the violence and trauma of war. Compared to Rosenberg and Owen who write in the present tense enabling them to share their personal emotions and interpretations of war with their readers. Eliot writes of war in the past tense demonstrating his understanding of the progressive aftermath of the war and capturing the reality that was created from the downfall of society including the psychological effects the war had on individuals and on all of society.

Owen, while successfully able to capture his reader's attention by creating compassionate depictions of the suffering that war engendered and combining it with a blunt critique of nationalism, he is focused more on depicting the difficulties experienced by soldiers on the front line rather than the war’s impact on society. Rosenberg utilizes his own experience combined with analysis and specific details of the conflict to capture his audience but does not touch on how it affects society at large. It is because Eliot wrote his poetry after the war that he was able to capture the experience and devastation of society from a retrospective vantage point.

On reading Owen’s poetry, he presents a very empathetic experience for his reader by using imagery, diction, and his own style of creating compassionate depictions of the suffering men endured on the battlefield combined with a blunt critique of nationalism (Anthology 111). His ability to have his readers see the reason in his poetry is what causes him to be seen and viewed as a political danger by the European empire. In his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” he captures the evident despair in a dying man’s eyes who is suffocating on gas-shells and relates the entire experience to the Latin phrase: “dulce et decorum est,” which translated into English states: how “[s]weet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.” The way in which he describes this ghastly scene with such a calm and measured rhythm strongly persuades his reader to understand that death on the battlefield is not all glory and pride for these men. It becomes a battle to stay alive and Owen is trying to capture that the death of these men is the fault of the European empire who claim that it is a great honour for a man to die for his country.

Owen wrote this poem referring to his experience fighting on the Somme and the reason he wrote it in the present tense is because that is the perfect way to depict the emotional turmoil and despair he felt on the battlefield and believed the other soldiers felt. As a soldier he was living the war and did not have the ability to step back, reflect, and analyze the bigger picture as Eliot does. He could only look back on his experiences during the war and portray his emotional turmoil and strong dislike for nationalism. Comparing Owen’s poetry to Rosenberg’s there is only two similarities; one being that both poets were writing about their experiences as soldiers of the war and the other being that they both wrote their poetry in the present tense. Both poets have their own style in writing war poetry but while Rosenberg’s style is frequently considered as “raw” (Anthology 107) Owen’s style is seen as compassionate, empathetic, and convincing. Owen’s choice to write in the present tense enhance the poetic beauty of his poetry and provide a vivid experience for his reader as to what it was like to be on the battlefield and experiencing the despair of his comrades. Unlike Rosenberg who focuses primarily on capturing the image of war with raw imagery that leaves nothing to the reader’s imagination.

Rosenberg’s poetry is far blunter in character than Owen’s particularly since he does not provide an empathetic experience for the reader. In his poetry he is overly factual about his experiences and portrays them as raw detailed moments that propel the reader into an intense scene that does not seem to end. In the second stanza of his poem “Dead Man’s Dump” he vividly recreates a scene of a wagon riding over the remains of men and women who have been killed during the war. His description leaving nothing to the imagination: “[t]he wheels lurched over sprawled dead / [b]ut pained them not, though their bones crunched / [t]heir shut mouths made no moan” (Anthology 108). By using diction that is disturbing to his readers like his use of the verb crunched it becomes extremely visceral for the reader, placing them directly in the wagon with Rosenberg and the other soldiers. His use of diction creates a horrifying dystopia of what war is using raw direct material and being systematic about how he describes his own experience during the war. His analysis and use of specific details are very disturbing and visceral in nature although it neither touches on his own personal critique of society nor even discusses the effects the war has on society at large. Instead, he focuses on the deceased return to the Earth and to Mother Nature which is made clear when he states how the Earth has waited for them as they aged and worried over their inevitable decay only to realize “[n]ow she has them at last!” (Anthology 108) He goes on to describe their return to the Earth itself and once again becoming one with nature.

His lack of reference to society and how the war has affected it is not purposeful because he wrote his poetry from a specific mental state. He had enlisted in the army because he knew no other means to provide financially for his family and was later killed in 1918 by a German offensive. Identical to Owen’s poetry, Rosenberg experienced the war as a young adult and spent the last few years of his life fighting in the war as Owen had. The success of both Owen and Rosenberg’s poetry was primarily because they were writing from their experience living during a war and being a part of the war as a soldier. Unlike Rosenberg, Owen incorporated his dislike for nationalism in his poetry because he disagreed with the role the church played in the war. He believed it was unfair to describe the act of going to war as an honourable decision and thus shed a disturbing truth behind war itself. Rosenberg did the same, though his style was not compassionate or emotional but raw, disturbing, and logically based on his own experiences. He also captures a disturbing truth of war being that men and women are not meant to die and not be given a proper burial, the point of death is not to be driven over by an army vehicle on its way to cause more death. He describes Mother Nature as a being that has finally captured what she has been waiting for, the sudden death of innocent people who are now “[s]uspended—stopped and held” (Anthology 108). Unlike these two poets Eliot wrote the poem “The Waste Land” as a reference to the destructive aftermath of the war and is thus able to provide a much more complex analysis of the effects the war had on society.

In comparison with Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” Eliot also incorporates intense scenes that invoke an empathetic response in his readers although his poem “The Waste Land” takes on a much more bleak and subjective interpretation of the war. He captures the reality of life after the war and the societal downfall it creates (Anthology 450) by complexly incorporating poetic fragments together to describe a desolate aftermath. A relatable fragment for people of this era starts in the section called “The Fire Sermon” on line 227; a scene that encompasses the depressing mundane activities of a young woman who does not have the strength to protest a sexual assault. In this section Eliot is writing from the perspective of Tiresias who is witnessing the scene and relates to the women admitting that he has “foresuffered all / [e]nacted on this same divan or bed” (Anthology 456) as he is half female half male. By having Tiresias admit that he was once in the very position of the woman it portrays to the reader Eliot’s understanding of the psychological effects the war has had on individuals. This scene, along with the scene described in the section called “The Game of Chess” captures how individuals of society are starting to experience negative psychological effects due to living during the downfall of society. Eliot’s readers can relate to this poem and these fragments because they recognize these negative emotional experiences that have become a normalcy for them. They are living dull dreary lives and Eliot describes them as the undead; sighing in despair and staring aimlessly at their feet as they make their way through the London streets (Anthology 453). Relating his readers to the undead allows Eliot to relate to his readers on a deep intellectual level because he is describing how they don’t seem to be alive like they once were. This scene and the scene in Owen’s poem create an empathetic experience for the reader, but while Owen wrote his poem in the present tense, Eliot wrote his poem in the past tense allowing him to capture the downfall of society. He looks at the idea of the war from a third person perspective rather than a first-person perspective to propel his readers into an intense and complex experience of this world that is a created out of the aftermath of the war as well as the downfall of society. Whereas Eliot and Owen are similar in that they create an empathetic and emotional experience for their readers, Rosenberg and Eliot are alike in the sense that the examples they choose to describe are raw and visceral in nature.

Eliot chooses to incorporate fragments that are relatable and disturbing for his readers, he describes a woman being sexually assaulted by an unattractive man and then continuing with her evening routine as though she was not just raped. This can be related to how Rosenberg vividly describes an army wagon driving over the bones of those who were killed during the war. Although the difference between these two poems is that Eliot’s poem focuses on using multiple visceral examples throughout the poem while Rosenberg focuses on using visceral diction of only one example. Both poems are successful in what they want their reader to experience but Eliot can relate to his reader on a deeper emotional level because he’s references all of society. While Rosenberg is providing a disturbing and visceral experience of what being a soldier during the war was like, having to drive over bodies of the undead. Writing in the present tense allows Rosenberg to create this experience for his readers and provide a raw portrayal of the reality that war was as well as the reality of being a part of the war. By writing in the past tense Eliot was able to reference all of society in the aftermath of the war and the downfall of society. His poem displays how the negative effects of war continue through psychological effects experienced by individuals and the destructive state of the world. The first stanza in the fifth section called “What the Thunder Said” is a good representation of what these psychological effects have done to the individuals of society and the stanza that follows is a good representation of the destruction that was left after the war.

All three of these poets wrote about the war with their own style in mind and while Rosenberg and Owen wrote their poems in the present tense because they have experienced most of their life during the war. Eliot chose to write about the war in the past tense because he wanted to capture the progressive aftermath of the war and capture the reality that was created from the downfall of society. He had a greater interest in the psychological effects the war had on individuals and on all of society, unlike Rosenberg and Owen, he wanted to view the effects of the war from a third person perspective. The difference between these poet’s choices does not make one poet better than the other but portrays how one’s life can greatly influence the choices they make in their poetry. Rosenberg and Owen wanted to portray the violence and trauma of the war by reflecting on their experience living through it, they can share their personal emotions and interpretations of the war with their readers and allow them to experience the emotional turmoil they experienced. This contrast in war poetry is what makes it an interesting experience because you can either read poetry that is a complex representation of the psychological effects war can have on society and on the individuals in that society. Or you can read poetry that propels you directly into no-mans-land where death has become a normalcy for soldiers of the war. Either way, war poetry is a great way to understand what it was like for society and their recovery or for the soldiers who had to live the reality of death and violence for years.

 Bibliography

 “T.S. Eliot.” The Twentieth Century and Beyond, by Andrew Bailey, vol. 6A, Broadview Press, 2008, pp. 442–461.

“Isaac Rosenberg.” The Twentieth Century and Beyond, by Andrew Bailey, vol. 6A, Broadview Press, 2008, pp. 107–110.

I used to enjoy disastrous and pandemic movies like Zombieland and Maze Runner. Being inside to save your life from flesh-eating, bloody zombies and shooting or punching at their faces and running like in hell with your friends. It’s so entertaining! Anyhow using the "entertainment" word with a REAL PANDEMIC, all I can say that “#sarcasm”. I never knew that I could experience such a time like this. How can people fight with an invisible and deadly thing called a virus? This is more frightening than being chased by a super-furious zombie. 

 “Corona, Covid, Masks, Sanitizers, Washing hands, Vaccinations and Quarantines”  

 Sounds familiar? I think I’m tired of those words. All youth dreams have turned into fantasies right now. Nothing seems to be going well. Everybody is not sure about the safety of their lives. Every father and mother in the world is struggling to prevent their families from starving and they are worried about their children’s education and their future. At this point all I can do and I did was hating and cursing at this virus.

I really miss those days I spent outside with my friends and loved ones. I never knew that being away from ones we love, can affect us this much. During this pandemic, people have changed a lot, including me. It’s not only physically, mentally too. Those changes can be advantages or may be disadvantages. For example, people who rarely spent their time with their family could spend for at least two months together. Some people got annoyed and some had the chance to improve their relationships.

During those past months, I’ve learnt so many things about this life. Life is not romantic at all. It’s full of unexpected things. Both joy and grieve. I got to know about people around me more and my vision of life got matured more. Like Columbus in Zombieland and like Thomas in Maze Runner, I do want to be a hero during this time, too.