Today, I am reminded of a poem by Stephen Crane titled " War is Kind ." This is a pretty tricky poem to understand, because the narrator keeps repeating the phrase "war is kind" throughout the poem. But at the same time, you sort of get the feeling that war, in fact, is not kind at all. When something is so contradictory, it's easy to get lost in the weeds; one might simply assume that this Stephen Crane guy, whoever he is, does not really have a mastery of the English language. That, or maybe he wrote the poem on opposite day. I'd like to proffer another possible solution to this issue. Maybe Stephen Crane was being ironic! If you think about it, 'kind' is probably one of the last words anyone would use to describe war. Even people who think war is good probably would not call it 'kind'—killing people is not really a 'kind' activity, any more than being killed is 'nice' or 'fun.' The Thin Red Line , a movie which is n...
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