Literature and Peace

D’Aronco Lorenzo 4D

AIM

• Finding out how literary texts may promote peace

MATERIALS

• W. Shakespeare, Macbeth (Mondadori 1983) English and Italian parallel text

• W. Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act III Scene 1 “To Be or not to Be”

• S. Sassoon, They• S. Sassoon, Glory of Women• W. Owen, Futility

Working Method

• Textual Analysis

• Finding relationships between texts and peace

• Class discussion

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

• Shakespeare was the most extraordinary and prolific playwright of the Renaissance.

• He wrote 23 plays that can be classified as histories, comedies and tragedies.

Peace in Macbeth

Peace in Macbeth

• Macbeth is a tragedy

• The title refers to the tragic hero.

Peace in Macbeth

• In Macbeth the natural order (symbol for peace) of Duncan’s Kingdom is broken by the King’s murder.

• Such event creates new wars and contributes to break Macbeth’s and his wife’s inner peace.

Peace in Macbeth

• The loss of inner peace drives Macbeth and his wife crazy.

• In the play the obsessive search for power persuades Macbeth to change the natural order of things (symbol for peace)

Peace in Macbeth

• Peace (natural order) can only return with Macbeth’s death because balance must be established again.

Peace in Shakespearean Macbeth

• The word “peace” occurs very frequently in the play (11 times).

• It is often compared to silence; when a character says “peace!” he means “shut up”.

• The comparison can be drawn because peace is also symbol for the quietness Macbeth is unable to obtain.

Peace in Macbeth

Peace in Hamlet

“TO BE OR NOT TO BETO BE OR NOT TO BE””

A monologue speech where a character expresses his or he most inner feelings.

Peace in Hamlet

• The first line expresses the question: Hamlet's mind is busy deciding "Whether to be or not to be".

• "To be" is compared to "to live" but here connotation is wider.

• "Not to be" is compared to "to sleep no more".

Peace in Hamlet

• Hamlet’s question : is it nobler in the mind suffer and fight against the problems of life?

• Shakespeare speaks about the problems of life using an hyperbole: "a sea of troubles".

Peace in Hamlet

• Shakespeare's answer is: the human being prefers suffering because he does not know what happens after death.

• The metaphor "the undiscovered country" refers to what the human being does not know about life know after death.

Peace in S. Sassoon’s and W. Owen’s Poems

Peace in Sassoon’s and Owen’s Poems:

• S. Sassoon and W. Owen are “war poets”.

• Their poems are about war, the pity of war especially.

• Their poems convey an implicit message of peace

Peace in Sassoon’s PoemsThey

• Title = poem about people different from the speaking voice

• The word “They” conveys the idea of distance.

• A bishop tells some boys that when men come back from a war they change because “they fought in a just causethey fought in a just cause”.

Peace in Sassoon’s Poems: They

• Bishop: men had the courage to fight against Death.

• The boys tell the bishop they have surely changed because war has mutilated their body.

• Very important line: the bishop tells the boys that the decisions of God are very strange.

Peace in Sassoon’s Poems: They

Words= from the semantic field of war: “fought”, “attack”, “comrades”…

Two points of view : the Bishop's and the soldiers'.

Peace in Sassoon’s Poems: They

• The bishop justifies war using some abstract words like “Anti-Christ”, “honour”, “just cause” and “God”.

• Positive consideration of war: it can change everybody if it is fought for a just cause (in this poem the war is against Anti-Christ).

Peace in Sassoon’s Poems: They

The soldiers’ point-of-view = negative consideration about war.

Phrases like = “lost both his legslost both his legs”, “Bill’s Bill’s stone blindstone blind”, “Bert’s gone syphiliticBert’s gone syphilitic” underline the negative aspects of war.negative aspects of war.

Peace in Sassoon’s Poems: They

Last line of the poem includes the message

nobody can understand the ways of God which appear very strange.

Peace in Sassoon’s PoemsGlory of Women

Expectations= poem about some happy women

Title = made up of 2 words

(glory and women)

Peace in Sassoon’s PoemsGlory of Women”

Soldiers criticize women’s point of view about war

women love soldiers when they come back

like heroes from the war’s disgrace.

Women do not know the real face of war: they believe

War can change men into heroes

Peace in Sassoon’s PoemsGlory of Women

Words come from the

semantic field of war

The poem underlines the different points of view: the soldiers’ and the women’s

Peace in Sassoon’s PoemsGlory of Women

• Women can’t really understand war because they are too distant from it so they can only mourn their soldiers and pray.

• They also hope that their men will return as heroes so they will carry on loving them.

Peace in Sassoon’s PoemsGlory of Women

The soldiers’ point of view : they know what war really is

they can’t convey a positive idea of war.

Peace in Sassoon’s PoemsGlory of Women

• Considering all that said, you can understand that in this poem the poet wants to underline that war is unimaginable and only soldiers know it for certain.

Peace in W. Owen’s PoemFutility

Title = an uncountable noun, similar to the Italian adjective "futile".

Did the poet want to illustrate what is Did the poet want to illustrate what is useless in men's life?useless in men's life?

Peace in Owen’s PoemFutility

Words from the semantic field of nature: "sunsun", "fieldfield", " morningmorning", "snowsnow", "seedsseeds",

"clayclay", "starstar" and "earthearth“

the cycle of nature that never stops the cycle of nature that never stops

Peace in W. Owen’s Poem Futility

Important repetitions

"move", "awake", "rouse", "know", "wakes" and "think" underline

the sense of men’s life futilitythe sense of men’s life futility

Peace in W. Owen’s PoemFutility

The metaphormetaphor of the second stanzasecond stanza

“Woke, once, the clays of a cold starWoke, once, the clays of a cold star.”

star compared to a dead men

star is cold as a dead man

Peace in W. Owen’s Futility

The poem tries to ask a question about men’s futile life

“O what made fatuous sunbeams toil”.

Men’s life is futile as he has seen Men’s life is futile as he has seen

war’s atrocities. war’s atrocities.

Discussion on PeacePeace is very important for everybody

It allows to live a very good lifeto live a very good life

It creates the conditions to improvecreates the conditions to improve our culture culture and societyand society

Discussion on PeaceDiscussion on Peace

• The loss of peace is now frequent because war is very important for the economy of some countries.

• There are a lot of wars all around the world: consider the case of Israel and Palestine, the conflicts in Africa, the situation in Afghanistan and in Iraq …

Discussion on Peace:

• But war isn’t the only form of the lack of peace: the obsessive search of power makes men crazy.

• In fact they always want to become rich and they commit crimes and other delinquencies to reach their intent

Discussion on Peace:

• In peace human rights are respected.

• To safeguard this balance we must must avoid new wars.avoid new wars.

• The global community have to understand that keeping a global balance is an keeping a global balance is an urgent responsibility for everybodyurgent responsibility for everybody.

PEACE!PEACE!