War and Memory in Irene Zabytkos Home Soil, Bruce...

Bullets flying through the air right over me, my knees are shaking, and my feet are numb. I see familiar faces all around me dodging the explosives illuminating the air like lightning. Unfortunately, numerous familiar faces seem to disappear into the trenches. I try to run from the noise, but my mind keeps causing me to re-illustrate the painful memories left behind. The three narratives â€Å"Home Soil† by Irene Zabytko, â€Å"Song of Napalm† by Bruce Weigl, and â€Å"Dulce et Decorum Est† by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the†¦show more content†¦The father can only hope and pray that his son will one day regain the emotional stability that he used to have before the affects of Vietnam. In the poem â€Å"Song of Napalm,† it is a straight narrative of what it is like to live with memories from such a horrible war. â€Å"Song of Napalm† follows a Viet Nam soldiers memories of a scene he once saw. His mind tries to distort the image of a girl getting bombed and burning in front of his eyes into a pleasant scene. The effort to make the scene pleasurable is the minds way of trying to protect itself from the horrific incident that actually happened. I was sane enough to pause and breathe Outside my wild plans and after the hard rain I turned my back on the old curses, I believed They swung finally away from me†¦ (17-20 page 1154). Weigl is trying to shelter his mind from the unbearable effects of war. But in the end, he cannot maintain the self-deception, and must face the cold, hard truth. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;The irony in the poem â€Å"Dulce et Decorum Est† is that it is not sweet and fitting to die for one’s country when you have actually experienced war. Owen is describing how psychologically and physically exhausting World War I was for the soldiers that had to tolerate such a cruel suffering and not how patriotic and honorable it was. It shows the true life of a soldier, lying low, ill, endlessly marching through mud with bloody