War Poetry: R and R exercise

1. Cannon

2. "Jackies" refer to the sailors and they are singing "war chanties" because it can increase their morale and spirit so that their chances winning the war is higher.

3. A "shovel" is "brother to a gun" as they are both made of iron. In time of war, plowshares are hammered into guns, and in times of peace, guns are hammered into plowshares, hence they are brothers...and when you involve yourself with the gun, there is usually a shovel going to be involved at some point down the road.

4. The poem is talking enemy's taking over a city and all the citizens living in there will become slaves of the enemy now. Slaves are always supposed to obey their master, so the title "And They Obey" should be standing from the enemy's point of view and illustrating the entire poem.

5. This is an anti-war poem. It shows that war is terrible when citizen needs to rebuilt all the destroyed properties. The first part of the poem is describing the destruction of war from the citizens’ point of view and how the soldiers are destroying the place where they live or their city to be more specific. They also describe that because of the war they must follow the orders of the soldiers. The second part of the poem seems to be the soldiers’ point of view and how the city is being rebuilt what seems to be not the first time. Thus, the persona's attitude to the soldiers are filled with seriousness while his attitudes towards the citizens are just hopefulness.

6. I feel that building back up a society is much more difficult than tearing it down. Just like World War 2, Singapore was invaded by the Japanese and it took them less than a day to conquer Singapore, removing the British army from Singapore due to their intelligence. Look at how easy it is taking down a country, the Japanese just walked into Singapore! But after 2 years of conquering by the Japanese, the British won back Singapore and they have to build the city back. All the poor sanitation, lack of housing, currency and everything has worsened. It would take them a long time to build back Singapore but they were chased out even before they can build back Singapore. And Singapore then took around the first 10 years to build back Singapore. Such a tremendous difference! It takes a day to take down a country but takes 10 years to build back the same country.

7. For the first sentence of the first stanza, it shows that the people in the old wars were just using horses and humans to attack each other, while the second sentence shows that the new wars were no longer using horses but cars, trucks and tanks to attack each other, which is much quieter. Lastly, the last sentence in the stanza shows that in the future, nobody has thought of what kind of attack to use against other country, represented by silence. I feel that it would be a silent attack or an ambush against that country.

8. One "king" that was "kicked under the dust" would be Egypt's former president. The people in Egypt rebelled against him and his dictatorship. He was forced to step down by the public. Egyptians protested on streets and bring about many riots, which pressurized and forced him to step down.