Two Modern Wars

20th Century civilization was torn apart repeatedly by ferocious wars which were fought with dangerous new weapons and ideologies. When Stephen Crane live through and reported on the Spanish American War, fought- among other things- to build up the nation's masculinity, he saw a war frenzied nation ready to prove itself with a complete disregard for the human cost. While during World War 2 there was a stronger case to be made for a clear and present danger, proponents of war still ignored the cost and destruction of war while fixating on the profit and power that war can bring. By comparing Stephen Crane's "War Is Kind" to George Oppen's "Survival: Infantry" it is possible to look at two very different wars and the difficulty which two poets had viewing a world of carnage and bloodshed.

Stephen Crane begins his poem "War Is Kind" with his usual biting irony and general cynicism for the world around him. When he writes, "Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. / Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky / And the affrighted steed ran on alone, / Do not weep. / War is kind" (Crane ln 1-5) he is reacting against the contemporary political dialogue praising war as a masculine activity which would keep the men of the country in shape. While women were taught to be proud of their husbands' noble struggle, this sought to remove women's fears about their husbands safety. While people in high positions in the government and media were able to discuss abstract values of war, the rank and file of the country were forced into a meaningless conflict over colonial possessions.

Crane continues his cynicism by demonstrating the regard soldiers were actually held in. He writes, "These men were born to drill and die. / The unexplained glory flies above them, / Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom -- / A field where a thousand corpses lie" (Crane ln 8-11). To Crane, instead of these men moving to a place of glory through their time in combat, they are simply pawns to powerful men who see them as useful for no more than to "drill and die." While the casualty rate in the Spanish-American war was nowhere near as great as wars which would soon follow, soldiers were still being sent to their doom for dubious imperial gains while being told they would receive glory.

The poet George Oppen personally served in combat in World War 2, giving him the ability to accurately position his poetry within the trauma of the war. He opens his poem "Survival: Infantry" with the lines, "And the world changed. / There had been trees and people, / sidewalks and roads" (Oppen ln 1-3). Oppen is viewing the world as having been destroyed by the Second World War, and he would have seen all too much of this carnage up close in the 1940s. After this line there are many about how the world has been destroyed, and then he ends with a poignant call to those who lost loved ones, "And the letters came. People who addressed us thru our lives / They left us gasping. And in tears / In the same mud in the terrible ground" (Opper 10-12). By using the title "Survival: Infantry" but not using specific language relating to combat, Opper is able to bring out the readers existing ideas about the glory of combat and the excitement of survival, only to surprise the reader when there is no glory and nothing survives. This technique allows him to frame his poem without using language which explicitly shows (and thus would have a tendency to accidentally glorify) war.

While Stephen Crane and George Oppen may seem like somewhat strange poems to compare, their cynical take on two different wars lets the reader know something about portrayals of war in the 20th Century. While Crane uses relatively explicit irony within the words of his poem (which formally lacks a title) Oppen takes a different course and uses the irony to attach negative thoughts relating to war to a title which one would imagine glorified martial activities. Both of these men saw the world falling to pieces within a country that was enthusiastically endorsing the move into carnage and mayhem. Both men understood what so many are yet to learn: war is never kind.


Crane, Stephen. "War Is Kind." Poet's Corner. Web. 31 Mar. 2010.
Oppen, George. "Survival: IInfantry." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O'Clair. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. 835. Print.