How is John Brown an anti war poem?
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“John Brown” is an anti-war poem. It rejects the idealization of glorifying war by presenting ignorant people who believe fighting in the war to be an act of pride. When John Brown is getting ready to go off to war, his mother feels proud to see him “straight and tall in his uniform and all.” She feels proud that she has a soldier for a son. For her, being a soldier means fighting valiantly and obeying the captain’s orders in order to get medals to put up on the wall. She is ignorant of the mental and physical trauma all soldiers undergo. John Brown realizes while fighting in the war that “I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’.” He tells his mother that she wasn’t there fighting his battles but was at home, acting proud. He has faced the horrors of the war which takes a toll on humanity. War is not the solution to peace. The poem is critiquing the people who glorify war like John Brown’s mother. Usually the people who glorify are the ones who are ignorant and distant from reality.
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