Literary Devices

While attending my course on “War and Literature”, and listening to the conversation, I found myself struck by an intellectual question presented by another student. This student asked, “When does paradox become hypocrisy?” Immediately afterwards I wrote the response, “A good war is a war that teaches it’s mistakes without one having to live with them.” At first I didn’t know if I had truly responded to the question. I analyzed both the question and response carefully through the literary devices and found myself satisfied with the responses standing. When analyzing the response I first had to return to the question. “When does paradox become hypocrisy?” Referring to this question I had to ask if my response held a paradox. “A good war is a war that teaches it’s mistakes without one having to live with them.” Considering that a paradox is a statement that seems self-contradictory, and that “a good war” is the introduction to the response, suggested that “a good war” is a paradox.
However, why is it that “a good war” is a paradox? War can best be defined as active hostility. Good can also be best defined as being well behaved. Considering these definitions and the response, “a good war” would certainly be a paradox because active hostility is contradictory to being well behaved. However, most would assume that “a good war” was the responses paradox, and to assume otherwise would be insulting to someone’s intellect. So then one has to ask how it is so commonly understood that “a good war” is a paradox? To conclude this question, one must consider that most of everyone was raised with the developmental understanding of good and bad. Most of everyone also would commonly agree that war is not good. So why do people still go, and why do we not learn from “it’s mistakes without someone having to live with them”?
From statistics taken in the year two thousand fourteen, seven percent of America’s society is a veteran, and in that year there were near three hundred