Wallace Stevens Death of Soldier & EE Cummings Sweet Old Etceter - Essay Example

Analysis of Poems by Wallace Stevens and E.E. Cummings in Comparison to Faulkner’s ‘Two Soldiers’ In William Faulkner’s ‘Two Soldiers’, the concept of war functions only to aggravate the conflict in the central theme which is in reference mainly to the separation between the two brothers shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor incident. It is the excruciating pain and yearning for the presence of a loved one who responds to an untimely call of duty that seems poignant all throughout the story particularly as the sacrificial brother Pete Grierson leaves his family behind for the nation’s sake.

On the other hand, Wallace Stevens’ ‘The Death of a Soldier’ is perceived through a modernist view in a dimension of realism that treats acceptance of fate as mundane. On claiming ‘Life contracts and death is expected, As in a season of autumn’, W. Stevens takes on a perspective that embraces practicality where no point of despair becomes necessary. Time instead serves as an indispensable element in the poem and even ‘death’ which is said to be ‘absolute’ and ‘without memorial’ is subject to the constant changing of season.

Unlike with Faulkner’s narrative which appears to celebrate sensible aspects of living through remarkable human traits, Stevens’ brief work can be felt to assume rigidity, perhaps to drive any huge amount of agony over death. As if to deprive the poem of components that lead to sentimentality, Stevens occurs to have been more inclined to render the piece as a detail of fact. By the repetition of simile with ‘As in a season of autumn’, there emerges an attempt to signify the physical rather than the emotional state of nature with respect to the perspective of a third person in view of war.

While this is similarly applied in ‘Two Soldiers’, the latter expresses an appreciable degree of emotional attachment especially with the narrative of the younger brother who, by metaphor, comes to be the other soldier for bravely travelling alone at his expense out of their rural residence and into a distant city in search of Pete. Ultimately, it is the essence of intimate and fond brotherhood and bravery to keep it that rules out the power of war and the fear and death that it entails. With ‘my sweet old etcetera’, E..E.

Cummings brings across some mild stance on war through his unique enjambment-filled style. Like Faulkner, he adopts the truthful nature of staying in touch with the warmth of life. Fairly evident along the lines ‘isabel created hundreds (and hundreds) of socks not to mention skirts fleaproof earwarmers’ that go with humorous exaggeration, Cummings might have tried engaging the reader to examine the combined notions of ‘war’ and ‘death’ as conservative features of normal living which at the time widely takes place.

Though the speaker in the first person mode utilizes a seeming sound of boredom or impatience on uttering ‘etcetera’, the monotonous effort delivers the idea of conquest through war as ineffective. Exhibiting a lethargic attitude in preparing to get into battle, the poet likely points out that war has been a common affair to feel lazy and not scared about. Moreover, contrary to Faulkner’s character in Pete under hardships, that of Cummings demonstrates one od subtle indolence as conveyed in the term ‘sweet’ and ‘meanwhile my-self etcetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera)’.