Poetry Analysis

” Memorial Day for the War Dead”

Catch-22 is similar to war novels in many ways but some things to me stand out as very different, the characters themselves talk openly about how people are expendable. Condolence letters tend to take a backseat on the to-do list because, so many have to be sent out but the squadron can’t just stop what its doing to write letters for a family. From my past readings of war books most of them elude to this idea of people being expendable but don’t talk about to directly. The poem “Memorial Day for the War Dead” by Yehuda Amichai talks about everyone is grieving for some one different whether it is a solider who died in combat or civilian casualties.

“Children with a grief not their own march slowly, like stepping over broken glass”(Amicahi lines 16-17). A parade for the war dead is going through town, the children do not know who died or what happened or why they are marching. They just know that they are being told to march so they do. The war killed more than those on the battlefield, it also killed families such as “A man whose son died in the war walks in the street like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb”(Amichai lines 31-31). Since not everyone who died can be honored because most of the people who died were just foot soldiers fighting on the front lines. Most “war heroes” only get remembered if they lead a special mission or obtain a critical victory. Nobody ever remembers the little guys fighting on the front lines physically risking their lives.

Most of the “war heroes” we learn about are generals who didn’t risk their lives to save us. They were the ones in a tent deciding how to attack an enemy squadron. ” and sacrifice and mourning on one day for easy, convenient memory”(Amichai lines 5-6), the government just lumps all the loses into one day to make themselves feel better because this way they honored everyone who died rather than to find a way to help their families deal with their loses. Catch-22 kind of gives this idea of getting to know all the people laying there lives down for their country, we see individual characters and how they play into the story. We get to see the people on the front lines fighting for us rather than the people who tell them what to do and get all the credit for what others are doing and fighting for. Heller gives a look into what it is like fighting on the front lines for your country, you have many different people that he shows us; ones that want to be their fighting, ones that would rather die than fight another day, and ones that are crazy enough to want to fly missions. He shows us that the war is even more cruel than we ever imagined it could be.