Mark Twain's Essay: The War Prayer

When countries declare war soldiers suit up for war and when they do they tend to pray for their individual safety. What most people do not realize is that when they pray for their security, they are praying for the endangerment of others. Mark Twain proves this through his multiple social criticism's in "The War Prayer". Mark Twain uses metaphors and imagery in "The War Prayer" to demonstrate the effects war has on a community.

Victory for War In The War Prayer by Mark Twain,he talked about soldiers going to war and it relates kind of to all the wars that have happened before. He talks a lot about describing what the soldiers would go through and their families. He explained how soldiers were really patriotic about the war and the families saying a “ long prayer”. Twain uses satire to express what he thinks about war throughout his prompt he's describing about war and all the praying they did towards the soldiers who left to fight.

Literary Analysis The War Prayer was written by Mark Twain in the nineteenth century Imperialism. Twain uses satire to exploit the stupidity of war. In his prose, Twain explains the ghastliness of war and how people are praying to God for safety of their troops but they do not care if the opposing sides troops die. Twain uses satire in The War Prayer to make fun of the people praying for their side to win the war and the glorification of war. “It was a time of great and exalting excitement (Twain).”

“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected,” Paul Fussell wrote in “The Great War and Modern Memory,” his classic study of the English literature of the First World War. “But the Great War was more ironic than any before or since.” The ancient verities of honor and glory were still standing in 1914 when England’s soldier-poets marched off to fight in France. Those young men became modern through the experience of trench warfare, if not in the forms they used to describe it. It was Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Joyce, and Lawrence who invented literary modernism while sitting out the war.

War is about principles. It can be used to end injustice, tyranny, or both. It can band people together to form a bond that is unbreakable, all fighting for the same cause. But that bond can have a high price. War kills soldiers, tearing them from family; it kills innocent people, just trying to survive.

The world has been prospering from war for a long time. But, we do not always see the problems it causes. For instance, it tears families apart, it clashes generations, and finally it shows us principal versus reality. So, if war brings more bad things than good it defeats the purpose of even having a war in the first place. The authors of My Brother Sam is Dead also feels that war is pointless and unnecessary.

The first sentence of The War Prayer causes one to think that there is great and exalting excitement because Mark Twain said, “This was a time of great and exalting excitement.” When we read the next line, Mark Twain says, “The country is up in arms.” In those first two sentences, your mind switches the perspective of what is happening from good to bad. In The War Prayer, there is also a lot of emphasis to exaggerate certain points like the soldiers swung by instead of marched. Other examples of this are cyclones of applause, and the deepest deeps of their hearts. The type of language that Mark Twain uses really puts a clear picture of what is happening and he makes it so that you can imagine what it would look like in the church.

War and its affinities have various emotional effects on different individuals, whether facing adversity within the war or when experiencing the psychological aftermath. Some people cave under the pressure when put in a situation where there is minimal hope or optimism. Two characters that experience

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.” Mark Twain. Do you truly appreciate the country you live in? The fact that you can be proud of saying the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’, can have an easier lifestyle, see amazing attractions, and have rights and freedom.When people show patriotism, this is showing their country love, devotion, and dedication. They show patriotism because they simply love their country. It doesn't matter if you're from a different country, patriotism is a needed quality. Patriotism is everything here.

“It is well that war is so terrible-- otherwise we would grow too fond of it,” were the words once said by the Confederate General, Robert E. Lee. Indeed, even opposing nations can agree that war is full of destruction and devastation. Despite this, there are those who believe that war is glorious. Too often, movies and literature depict war as a virtuous endeavor.

Many people wonder if war is a necessary evil. War can end injustice and brutality. It can lead to freedom and liberty, and ensure the safety of future generations. However, war also costs lives, and it leads to brutality. War can tear apart families, and cause pain and suffering.

Finally war kill lots of people. One example is “I think we ought to bomb the daylights out of them, as long as we don’t hit any women or children or old people, don’t you?… ‘Or hospitals,’ he went on. ’And naturally no schools. Or churches.’ ‘We must also be careful about works of art,’...

This all helps to result in the patriotic theme of the poem by giving us a representation of how unpatriotic the war was. To conclude the poem “War is Kind” By Stephen Crane includes three universal themes commonly seen in many examples of civil war literature. The themes of warfare, war on the home front, and patriotism occur in the poem as well as many other pieces of civil war literature. The overall theme of the poem is how war is cruel and unkind making the poem seem like mockery to those who believe war is

As Herbert Hoover eloquently put it, “Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.” War has no mercy. It takes homes, tears families apart, and steals childhoods from innocent people. Such is the case in A Separate Peace, by John Knowles.

When talking about war, there are many books with few answers to what war truly is. Barbara Ehrenreich brings forth not only the possibilities towards understanding war but also the passion people from history have had towards it. One key issue she brings to light is humanities love for war, so much so that people would use excuses like holy wars to justify their need to fight in a war. She declares that war is as muddled as the issue of diseases and where diseases came from around 200 years ago. More so than that she even goes further on to state that these rituals that date back to prehistoric times are the cause of human nature during times of war rather than human instinct.