An analysis of M.J. Hardman’s “Language and War”
Cowboys killing Indians, G.I. Joes killing Nazis, bloods killing crips, generation after generation of Americans have grown up to see violent as a last resort to resolve ones problems. Unfortunately this widely dispersed ideal is not the reality. Being the top country in the possession and purchasing of fire arms gives one the feeling that the United States is not necessarily a pacifist country, but how many Americans ever take a moment to evaluate their society? In the article “Language and War” by professor at the university of Florida, and humanist M.J. Hardman, claims that the language used in everyday life glorifies war and violence, thus making both appear …show more content…
First individuals must “stop metaphorizing the non-violent as war” (Hardman 34) in other words individuals must stop fighting when they are no longer fighting. A perfect example of this would be when a soldier returns from war and begins to carry a gun everywhere because he is still in battle mode, the soldier expects to be ambushed or killed at a moment’s notice even though he is home in a safe environment. Like the soldier an individual must learn to stop using violent language in order to describe a peaceful event. Hardman argues that by constructing peaceful metaphors, and observing one’s own language, an individual can cause aggressive vocabulary to become more visible instead of helping it stay …show more content…
Whether it be a prospering or decaying civilization, poetry can capture, and reveal to current or future audiences what the feeling of a certain time was. Poetry uses extremely complex language that at times cannot be taken too literal otherwise it would not make sense. Events can be related to poems simply by the feelings they express to the reader. A prime example of this would be the poem “Price of Entrapment” in which the author Martha Kinkade describes how hopeless, weak, and entrapped she feels through the use of zoo animals. Not only can this poem capture the hopelessness and weakness of one individual, but can also capture the pain and devastation of an entire nation. When one compares this poem to the feeling of the nation after the attacks of 9/11 it can be said that Kinkade captures the feeling of an American nation after a devastating blow. Through her poem Kinkade is able to illustrate the type of atmosphere and depressed mood that many Americans felt in the years following the terrorist attacks. Kinkade does this when she describes seeing huge powerful animals with “paws larger than a calf’s hoof” and jaws that could “rip my guts” being trapped in a zoo enclosure where the cement is “stained with urine” (Kinkade 55). Kinkade describes how these proud, big, powerful animals are trapped in an enclosure that cannot be escaped from or torn