Loneliness of the Military Historian
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"The Loneliness of the Military Historian" by Margaret Atwood is about a historian going through war. Atwood has to tell the people what they want to hear not what they should know. People think war is a great thing and that everyone should support it, but the speaker's attitude toward the way people die is quite cynical. The historian doesn't think that war is all that complicated; the war is just there because people simply think that they can win. It was pretty much an ironic poem.
In stanza 1, the speaker is very sarcastic about the way people see her, as if she's a medusa that is an allusion to "no prophetess mane of mine/complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters." (5-10). But on the opposing side, she's only there for to inform about the war, where it is, when it is and who is in it. The speaker says that "If my eyes roll and I mutter,/if my arms are gloved in blood right up to the elbow,/If I clutch at my heard and scream in horror/like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene," (10-15) These lines contain simile and also a visual imagery, and they explain what really happens is that there is no aspects of this war, there is blood and violence everywhere. That's why the speaker uses the connotations "third-rate" and "chewing" (12) to emphasize what she was trying to say by making it very dramatic...