Thee emotion of "The Sandstrom"

The play “The Sandstorm” is a look at the intricate role that emotions play in the mind of a soldier. Each character switch in the play is basically a monologue of a soldier recounting a memory of a skirmish that he encountered. Each soldier either speaks about the emotions that were (or were not) evoked during the experience and the emotion that followed afterwards. The playwright’s purpose in doing this is to get an emotional response of his audience. The play is very successful in doing that, and furthermore, it gives great insight into a soldiers mind.
One emotional response that came out of the play is fear. Fear in the fact that anyone who either knows a soldier or is a soldier may look at the emotional turmoil that all the soldiers seemed to have gone through and feel an apprehension about it. Each soldier lives with some regret or memory that they wish they could rid themselves of, yet it is an irreversible thing. The regret stems from having killed an innocent person that in many ways, they had no control over. Yet mixed with this apprehension that the audience may feel there is hope from one character who speaks of a man who even though the marine had just blown up his family in a car and burned him, the man is thankful that the U.S military had come. The character then explains how that became his anchor in the war. This helps to ease the apprehension, but at the same time it also was only one instance, and so the fear comes back that the audience may have the same haunting experiences as the members in the play did.
This emotion of fear is there so that the audience would understand that war isn’t pretty nor is it glamorous. It has drastic consequences on the emotional state of those involved, especially the ones left to do the “dirty work.” Yet through all the play you get the sense that the playwright is unsure as to whether he thinks that war can be justified but he leaves it up to you to decide if it can, or even if it should be.

http://www.curtainup.com/sandstorm.html

Poem Response

The poem “Rite of Passage” by Sharon Olds is a simple poem that both shocks you and saddens you, all while providing an insight to a common place occurrence. It speaks about her son who is having a birthday party. Her son, who is turning seven, has his friends over whom immediately start sizing each other up by saying who they could beat up. They threaten each other and near the end of the poem: “We could easily kill a two-year-old, he says in his clear voice. The other men agree they clear their throats like Generals, they relax and get down to playing war, celebrating my son’s life” (Olds).This poem shocks you because seven and six year old boys are deciding they could kill a two year old. However this simply comes because men no matter how young they are feel that they have to assert themselves in a physical way and thus say things that sound unreasonable or shocking. This also is insightful for the very same reason and yet it also shows how much a mother takes in and how she feels when she hears her son say things that he doesn’t truly understand.

                The second poem gives off the feel of someone being brutally honest about their feelings. The poem speaks of how his letter home will have the marks of war on it, and how it was only during a lull in the battle that he was able to write part of his letter home. It makes you feel sad to realize that a soldier’s life is really just spaces between battles they are fighting. Yet it also gives you a glimpse into what being in battle is like because he describes the different sensations and things that he is doing. As an example he says: “I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand, that war is just us making little pieces of metal pass through each other” (Powers).This tells us what he is currently hearing and what another soldier thinks. I really liked its simplicity and its brutal honesty about what he was going to write home about.

Olds, Sharon. Rite of Passage. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=176440 September 10, 2010

Powers, Kevin. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182821. September 10, 2010.

The Voice of Poetry

Ever since the invention of the written language, words have been used to convey thoughts and emotions to others, often in unique ways. One of the unique ways that is commonly used is poetry. Poets have used rhyme to protest social injustices, to speak of hardships common to all humanity, and many other such things. One prevalent theme is that of violence, either in war or at home.  In America today, violence in all its forms is still present and a huge issue today.

                In his essay, Hammil speaks about how he believes that poetry is a window and in a sense, a cure, to violence in America. He believes that violence is fueled by three different types of people: victims, beaters, and the silent. These three people are all interwoven with each other. The victims are beaten by the beaters, who often used to be victims. The beaters are allowed to perpetuate the violence by the silence of the victim and by those who do not speak up about the matter and just let it be.  However, poetry can be used to speak up about this. To make his point, Hammil speaks about a woman who took his class and when her husband learned that she was learning to express herself through poetry, he killed her “fearing that she would tell the truth.”  This makes a strong point as to what writing can revel about the situation in the world and how it can be eye opening.

                To this end, there is a genre of poems called “poetry of witness.” Most poems of this nature are spoken from the first person about an event. The poet is trying to convey a scene that they have either witnessed (thus the name) or have personally experienced. One such poem is called “The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window.” This poem speaks about a woman who lives near Lake Michigan. It expresses the woman’s despair about how her life turned out, how she feels lonely despite having kids and parents. She is thinking about jumping from the window to her death, and it also speaks of those watching, how some can relate to what she is going through. The poem is an expression of pain and the way things can be in life.  These poems are a way into the soul of others and should be read more closely. If that is done then perhaps the violence that so invades the world can be a little more easily understood and perhaps even absolved.