Irony In War

War has affected each generation in its own way. It has brought about gruesome deaths and sadness across nations. However, it has also been the reason for positive things such as beautiful war writings. Writers possess the skill to not only share stories from previous battles or personal memories they might have, but they also, in their own way, can protest war. They do this by simply using imagery, irony, and structure. These three things have enabled authors to help readers who did not go through war or experience loss from one understand exactly how terrible it is. No one will ever truly know the pain of war until they go through it, but they can get close by reading the protesting works of writers who have. Writers use imagery to portray horrific scenes they may have experienced in war, making it seem all the more realistic. For
Both of these things can be used in writings to protest the idea of war. For example, Stephen Crane writes in his poem, “War Is Kind”, that men experienced “the virtue of slaughter”(Crane, 20). This is ironic because there is nothing virtuous about killing another human being. This is to catch the reader’s attention by loosely throwing around the term slaughter. Another example of using irony is shown in “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen. The author describes “his hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin”(Owen, 20). This is an example of irony because the devil is not known to get sick of sin. Owen is exaggerating in this statement to draw attention to the idea that even the devil can get sick of all the dying the war is causing. The last example of irony is seen again in “War is Kind”. The writer explains that soldiers live for “the excellence of killing”. This excerpt contains irony because killing is not excellent in any way. All the examples from the writings use irony by exaggerating statements to reiterate their message to the