Daly’s Not Only War inspired me to analyze more pieces of World War I literature from the perspective of race. While we were discussing the short stories, as well as Daly’s novel, I was interested in how war, patriotism, and the war effort was constructed entirely from whiteness. Men are encouraged to go to battle not because they are willing, or appropriate for the role, but because they are white. They are patriots and expected to uphold patriotism and circulate this kind of respect because they, as white soldiers, live to further construct the country by participating in war.

Clifford’s poem speaks directly to this problem of race–she constructs the “ideal” patriot from the south, his unyielding loyalty, bravery, and poise, before revealing the man to having been Black, and for that crime, he is murdered upon coming back to his country. The way Clifford states the soldier’s death in the last word of the last stanza connects the cruel, blunt injustice of his death to the blunt injustices of war without the “respect” afforded to him from his fellow soldiers and country.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12eu1oGJKWscRktxAB8LEfpkPbcBCTsya/view?usp=drive_link

I chose this poem because of its title; I felt that if I were to interpretively read anything, it being from the perspective of a Black mother would bring more passion from me to the piece. I was very intrigued, and as I read and reread the poem, I was overwhelmed by the grief of this seemingly sacrificial loss for freedom. The life of a mother whose husband has now become a martyr. Once I finished reading, it gave me the same rush of feelings I experienced while reading Victor Daly’s Not Only War. I found that this piece truly resonated with me, especially in its reflection on the lives of Black people lost and the erasure of Black heroism. In the end, the poem becomes a powerful reckoning with the fight for social justice. It transcends an individual mother’s grief and becomes a collective call for freedom. Amidst these paradoxical lives Black soldiers were forced to live, this poem has a profound tone of hope in the end that felt cathartic.

https://youtube.com/shorts/tKfFg9UwDXs?si=HzX32_UJPtYMLZr3

I really like the story of Abraham in the bible; I find it’s contradictions and themes very rich for analysis. I read it first in an Existentialism class, when I had to read it before reading Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling which I really enjoyed reading. I think it was appropriate for me to end the semester with this because I plan to graduate after this semester and ending with the same story that really got me into one of my majors felt a little full circle. When it comes to this class, I like this poem for its hopelessness. While there were of course sad endings in nearly all of our novels, this one seems slow and perpetual. “One by one.” As I go out into the world, I think I feel like Isaac sort of. Innocent and unprepared as the world feels further divided. I know that I’m not, I like and appreciate the education I got here but I can’t help but feel like something unexpected will just pop up.

I chose this poem, as short as it is, because I believe it said a lot about a topic I found interesting in our class discussions, that being the dependancy that soldiers feel towards their weapons, machinery and bullets. Rightfully so, soldiers on either side of the war, and in all wars, depend on their weaponry in any form it takes, but with the Great War we obtained a viewpoint on the advanced weaponry used combined with the isolation that soldiers on the front experiences, relying on a personal connection to their weaponry to imbue their trust.

Personally, this piece spoke to me simply because of the idea and emphasis of devotion and connection in such a small piece of writing was moving. It personifies guns and the accompanying bullets, highlights the prayer and dedication to the maintenance of their lifeline, and the dependancy within a sort of wish.

Through all our readings and discussions this semester of the war as a whole, the people struggling back home, the racial and gender-based diparities, and the grey lives of the soldiers stuck at the front, we spoke and read very little about the aforementioned dependancy on their weapons. We have spoken about production back home, and about soldiers strategies both big and small, but when it comes to the connection a soldier makes with their own rifle, how they put their lives and the lives of their comrades in this weapon of destruction, we have covered very little. I believe it prudent to see how hopeless the war was for these soldiers, how low they must have become to find companionship in a piece of metal, a metal used to take the lives of men they don’t even know.