Skip to primary content
Skip to secondary content

Literature of the Great War

ENGL 348. Fall 2018. Dr. Scanlon.

Literature of the Great War

Main menu

  • Home
  • About LGW
  • Mission Assignments
  • Special Mission Reports
    • Historical Support
    • Vocab Support
    • Website Reviews
    • Film Reviews
    • Podcast Reviews
  • Syllabus

Tag Archives: I feel like my rants are safe in the tags because only some people read them (hey Dr. Scanlon Kat and Jordan)

Owen, Whitman, and a serious case of déjà vu

Posted on December 6, 2018 by Jordan
195

I’ve read Dulce et Decorum Est several times, but reading it this semester really reminded me of another poem I’ve read in the past year, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Over the summer I read Beat! Beat! Drums! from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and I see some similarities in the pieces (Especially with Owen’s “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” line and the opening line of Beat! Beat! Drums! being “Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!”) but I’m not entirely sure if that’s the piece I’m thinking of.

Does anyone know of a similar piece? I’m wondering if maybe I’m just remembering reading Dulce et Decorum Est in Modern Poetry or if my brain has completely melted to mush and that Whitman piece is the one I’m thinking of.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Dr. Scanlon does not take kindly to slackers, Dulce et Decorum Est, dulce et decorum est comment on your classmates blog posts, I feel like my rants are safe in the tags because only some people read them (hey Dr. Scanlon Kat and Jordan), latin is a dead language-as dead as it can be-it killed the ancient romans- and now it's killing me, lol our essays are due tomorrow night but this is all I can think about, marrying the two classes, Morgan!! Ugh!! Help!, okay so i guess i should get back to writing this paper now, this is like my last chance to exploit this class for information since I know at least half of you will comment trying to raise your blog participation grades, Walt Whitman, what do you mean you haven't posted yet?, wilfred owen i love you but you're bringing me down | 195 Replies

Anyone who tells you they like the blog better because it makes it easier to collect their thoughts is a liar. AKA me. I’m the bold-face liar.

Posted on December 6, 2018 by Jordan
263

First and foremost: I feel like this collection of thoughts is even less put together than what I would’ve said in class today…but it’s the thought that counts so we’ll just run with it here.


I’ve been thinking a lot about the poem “Mental Cases” that we read aloud and discussed in class this morning. Specifically, I’ve been thinking a lot about the half meaning of some of the lines.

Let me enlighten you with my thought process:

I come from a family of scientists (my mom is a computer scientist, my uncle was an aerospace engineer, etc. etc.) so science is often on my mind. So, in class today when someone spoke about how young many of the soldiers were, I started thinking about Paul in All Quiet when he was talking about how he had nothing to go back to since his life hadn’t really started yet. He’d only really lived half of it.

There. There it was. The connector. Paul’s half-life.

I hate when people do this, but I’ll do it just for clarity:

Half–life means the time required for one half the atoms of a given amount of a radioactive substance to disintegrate.

The first part of Paul’s life was the build-up to war. The second part was his part in and his comedown from it. Half-life. Half-life. Half-meaning.

So now we’ve arrived at the real point of this post (it is a very difficult task for me to collect my thoughts apparently): the half meaning of some of the lines in “Mental Cases.”

Owen gives us the following for the first stanza:

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands’ palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

I was really intrigued by the six bolded words. Especially when read together.

Shadows relish wicked? Panic sockets palms? Both really reminded me of the hollowness associated with war.

Like we discussed in class today, shadows are that purgatory state between being tangible and tangible. They’re like the people in charge who send others to war but never fully participate themselves. The shadows, or in this case, those in power relish the wicked because the wicked (essentially war) is a profit machine.

Panic sockets palms? The fear those in power face force them to enlist bodies–tangible bodies–to fight for them.

We see similar half-meanings in stanza 2 with:

–These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men’s extrication.

Murders witnessed wander made me think of the people who just narrowly escaped the tolls of war.

Muscles squander extrication? The powerful effects of the government, propaganda, and the socialization of people at the time denied any real chance for a freedom from the war.


Maybe this is all reading too much into things. Maybe this is all so heavily influenced by the documents we read at the beginning of class where Owen wrote

“On behalf of those suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced upon them.”

But I’d like to think it’s not. I’d like to think these half-lines were intentional. I’d like to think that the meaning I found in them had some value.


UPDATE: lol I’m just now realizing half-meaning is not at all what I’m talking about but…umm…you get the picture.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged @all the science majors: please help, all a poet can do today is warn, are they all just really mentally broken people looking for someone to understand them?, do you ever think about how the military nowadays takes advantage of the poor and underprivileged? capitalism ain't fun folks, half-lines, I feel like my rants are safe in the tags because only some people read them (hey Dr. Scanlon Kat and Jordan), I'm the real mental case seeing how into WWI I am after this class, if you need me I'll be out by the trees crying about not having anymore classes with dr. scanlon, if you need me I'll be out by the trees crying about the cherry tree, Mental Cases, someone help me figure out what I'm trying to say, two particles floating through space slamming into one another, Wilfred Owen, wilfred owen i love you but you're bringing me down | 263 Replies

Craiglockhart War Hospital

Posted on December 6, 2018 by mermaidmorgan
245

With talking about Owen this week, we have heard about Craiglockhart War Hospital often. I was curious as to what Craiglockhart looked like. I found some images and thought I would share them with you all. Also, I found that Craiglockhart is now a part of Edinburg Napier University and is called Craiglockhart Campus.

Craiglockhart then

Nurses and patients at Craiglockhart

More recent image of Craiglockhart

Also, I found that Craiglockhart had a little magazine, Hyrda the Magazine of Craiglockhart War Hospital, which Owen edited at one point and included poems by Sassoon.

Hydra Magazine Cover

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged all a poet can do today is warn, btw Sassoon was a gay man according to the historical brief and him and wilfred owen were friends, craiglockhart, Dr. Scanlon does not take kindly to slackers, I feel like my rants are safe in the tags because only some people read them (hey Dr. Scanlon Kat and Jordan), I know this is not a civil war class but there is an old civil war hospital near where I live and that place is haunted and spooky, If I ever go to a hospital long term I wanna make a literary magazine exclusive to it, Owen, sassoon, the best feeling ever is when Dr. Scanlon uses one of your tags in her blog post. Wow., this is probably just me but the nurses are such a piercing bright white in that picture and goes with the idea of the nurses being an angelic symbol of the time. wow, umm wouldn't it be eerie to have a old war hospital on your campus? I mean ours isn't much better..., what do you mean you haven't posted yet?, wilfred owen i love you but you're bringing me down | 245 Replies

Is Dorothy really the only one PART 2

Posted on November 29, 2018 by mermaidmorgan
207

Okay, if you haven’t yet, read Jordan’s blog post first (right here, click me!) and then come back here!

Now that you have looked at Jordan’s post (thanks Jordan, love ya girl), I wanna leave this here to make you all think about things. Today in class we were talking about the theme of women disguising themselves as men in order to accomplish things (for example, Mulan). This got me thinking, where else have we seen women dressing as men in order to explore the “male sphere”? I found an article listing 11 “badass women” who cross-dressed as men. You can read that here: click me for the badassness! What I guess could have been obvious, but never occurred to me was the fact that maybe Dorothy was not the first woman that thought of dressing as a man in order to be apart of the war effort. This dawned on me when I saw Sarah Edmonds on the list.

So here is the tea on Sarah: she was born in 1841 in Brunswick and due to there not being many opportunities for women to support themselves, Sarah dressed up as a man (Franklin Thompson) and sold some bibles in Canada for a little bit before crossing into the US and selling even more Bibles in Flint, Michigan (this also made me think of everything else that is happening in Flint and makes me sad, NO HUMANS SHOULD GO WITHOUT ACCESS TO  CLEAN DRINKING WATER… but I digress). Back to Sarah. While she was selling the  Bibles and living in Flint, BOOM, the Civil War broke out. Though she was not a US citizen and not obligated to fight in the war. Sarah felt it was her duty and enlisted as Franklin. She served alongside the men, dressed as men, and was just one of the dudes. She suffered from various injuries which she treated herself because she was scared her gender would be discovered while she was being treated, but she ended up deserting due to possibly contracting malaria which could not go untreated and later returned to the war as a female nurse. But, here is where things get cool (I think), while Sarah was serving with the other men as Franklin, she performed duties from that of a male nurse, to a mail carrier, to even arming up and fighting in the Battle of Williamsburg and the Seven Days’ Battles. Sarah is so cool that she even wrote a memoir about her experience and talks about little old Fredericksburg in it, telling about its condition, the cold weather, the mud, the horrible roads, the Rappahannock River and the battle. That’s pretty crazy if you ask me!

So, after learning all of this, plus what Jordan covered in her post, it makes me think that maybe this idea of pretending to be someone else was not all that original. From Shakespeare plays (don’t get me started on cross-dressing in the theater and Shakespeare) to the civil war, to WWI, to even Disney it seems that cross-dressing to obtain something has been pretty common. Think about all these women writers that published under male names due to the restrictions placed on them! Regardless, all these ladies are pretty badass if you ask me.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Anyone else still upset about the whole Flint situation? Because I am but that may be because we are on a do not use order for our water, Anything you can do I can do better ... or should I say anything men can do women can do too, badass women of history, Can you tell it is the end of the semester and my brain is dying?, Cross-dressing is actually pretty interesting to study, Dorothy Lawrence, feminism is great, I feel like my rants are safe in the tags because only some people read them (hey Dr. Scanlon Kat and Jordan), I might have gotten carried away with my tags, My dad works in the water industry so maybe that is why I am enraged but also I am mad at him for our water issue right now because he runs the plant (don't worry I live far away from Fredericksburg), Sapper Dorothy, Who knew war came with so much tea, Why can't we all just do the same thing?, women during the war, Women in history, Would you have dressed up as the opposite gender and fought in a war? | 207 Replies

Recent Posts

  • Deconstructing the relationship between gender and landscape December 8, 2018
  • Owen’s inclusion of famous ‘faces’ December 6, 2018
  • Merry (Early) Christmas (???) December 6, 2018
  • Getting a Bit Personal December 6, 2018
  • Owen, Whitman, and a serious case of déjà vu December 6, 2018
  • Anyone who tells you they like the blog better because it makes it easier to collect their thoughts is a liar. AKA me. I’m the bold-face liar. December 6, 2018

Recent Comments

  • Click Here on Craiglockhart War Hospital
  • Click Here on 9
  • Click Here on Millie’s review of Testament of Youth
  • Click Here on Merry (Early) Christmas (???)
  • Click Here on Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red
  • Click Here on Class discussion

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Blogroll

  • BBC GW Timeline
  • GW Image Archive
  • Imperial War Museum GW
  • Library of Congress GW
  • MLA Citation Guide
  • Natl WWI Museum Timeline
  • The Long, Long Trail
  • US WWI Centennial
  • WP Help
  • YouTube GW playlist

LGW Tags

  • @all the history majors: please help
  • A Farewell to Arms
  • all a poet can do today is warn
  • All Quiet
  • all quiet on the western front
  • are they all just really mentally broken people looking for someone to understand them?
  • are you on my naughty list?
  • armistice
  • because you can't get enough Hemingway
  • Borden
  • bridge to the blog
  • btw Sassoon was a gay man according to the historical brief and him and wilfred owen were friends
  • Dorothy Lawrence
  • do you ever think about how the military nowadays takes advantage of the poor and underprivileged? capitalism ain't fun folks
  • Dr. Scanlon does not take kindly to slackers
  • ernest hemingway
  • extra credit
  • film
  • finally had something interesting to say
  • Freeblogging isnt that hard and can actually be fun and not super deep
  • Hemingway
  • hitler
  • I feel like my rants are safe in the tags because only some people read them (hey Dr. Scanlon Kat and Jordan)
  • if you need me I'll be out by the trees crying about the cherry tree
  • if you need me I'll be out by the trees crying about the old one's tin mug of coffee
  • if you need me I'll be out by the trees crying about the priest's disappointed father
  • Literally Alice in Wonderland is taking over the world
  • madness and sanity
  • Mary Borden
  • My other course is on Alice in Wonderland. Discuss.
  • Not So Quiet
  • Owen
  • Podcast
  • reactions
  • the best feeling ever is when Dr. Scanlon uses one of your tags in her blog post. Wow.
  • The Forbidden Zone
  • The Great War
  • the pity of war the pity war distilled
  • trench warfare
  • varying forms of the feminine
  • website
  • what do you mean you haven't posted yet?
  • who would of thought a story that is almost like an acid trip can connect to the great war
  • wilfred owen i love you but you're bringing me down
  • WWI
Proudly powered by WordPress
css.php