Saturday, October 1, 2011

The War Prayer

This was a really good read. It was about a town celebrating a war and the people being so proud of the young men that were going to fight in it. The next day comes shipping out, but before this everyone is in church the preacher asks God for his help with this upcoming battle. Then a man walks up next to the preacher and starts talking to the church he said that he had a message from God himself! He said that God will grant their prayers if they listen to the message he has from God.  Basically from the pray they uttered just a minute ago, was not one prayer but two, the one a blessing the other a curse. The blessing would be for the troops to do well in the war, kill many people and then come home as heros. But the curse would be the families of those other dead troops from the other army. Those women and children would be grief stricken and wouldn't have a roof over their heads because their husband/ father wasn't there.

We talked in class about how Mark Twain became very cynical in his is old age, and this story is a good example of it. I think the old man in this story could be Mark Twain, he was trying to show people that war is wrong no matter who wins. At the days in there still will be a family that is fatherless and a wife that is made a widow to early in life.

3 comments:

  1. I thought this was a good read too. I think everyone should read this story just to see how hypocritical our actions can be some times. I don't know if Twain meant it this way, but to me it really came off as sarcastic. It is so true how people don't understand the implications of their actions, and Twain really puts that out there with this story. I couldn't help but laugh in the end when they all say that the man was a lunatic, because he wasn't making any sense!

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  2. Serenity i think that Mark Twain did mean to come off as sarcastic. Like what was said in class about the man coming in front of the church saying that he had a message from god. Something at every one at some point or another asks for or hopes to see and we dismiss it because it doesn't go along with the mod mentality. I ask like and again this was stated in class, that this reading could be about any war, it really fits well in anytime period and makes it timeless

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  3. I agree. There is a good deal of sarcasm in this piece.

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