What Every Soldier Should Know Literary Analysis

Being away at war is something you can not truly understand unless you have experienced it first hand. But through the excellence of war stories, a common-day person can not only learn about war, but also tune into the feelings that affect so many lives in our world today. The stories brought back to our homeland allow Americans to inhibit a sense of patriotism for our country and those who serve in it. But, not every story that is written about war is effective, there are many qualities that go into these stories that make them leave a mark on the reader. For example, In The Things They Carried, O’Brien reveals to the reader important qualities that make a war story genuine. He says, “In many cases, a true war story cannot be believed…often
O’Brien makes the argument that if the story tells of a person's honor, or lifts the reader up, it is not true. The poem “What Every Soldier Should Know” by U.S. Army Sergeant Brian Turner speaks for not only the American soldier’s behaviors but also the shock of their arduous culture change. While What Every Soldier Should Know allows Turner to cope, it also enlightens the reader with a poem that is authentic, revealing, and emotional.
To be authentic, one must too be able to recognize their faults. The poem begins with a quote that reads, “To yield force to is an act of necessity, not of will;it is at best an act of prudence. —Jean-Jacques Rousseau” (Turner). Turner introduces the poem with this quote because it is fitting when discussing the Middle East. Often normal people who fight for their land, country and people are considered “terrorists,” and often it is more developed nations like the United States who are
But, his poem is loaded with emotional content. The speaker’s juxtaposition between his everyday life and shocking events he experienced speaks of the horrors of his life at war. Turner represents himself with self-restraint. The “Thursday Afternoon” and clothes piled in shopping cart are disrupted by imagery of violence. The images Turner explains disrupts images of unpredictable violence. The images in the poem entangle death with life, and defy the desire to separate them. The horrors like guns are associated with both celebratory “spirit of weddings” and horrors like a bullet aimed at the soldiers. The animals on the farm are life-giving and harbor agents of death within their carcasses. The graffiti written “I will kell you, American” becomes a political death threat and may even be mistaken for a child's misspelling. Although Turner describes his personal experiences in the Middle East, he speaks with second person pronouns which remove him from the poem. Because he distances himself from the poem, he puts the reader in it. Because he detaches himself from the poem, he compromises his own subjectivity without compromising the emotional intensity of the