Charles Sorley

Charles Hamilton Sorely was born in Scotland and studied in Oxford and Germany. When the war occured he was in Germany, however he made his way to England to join the army and fought in France. He had a short life, but a great collection of poems and one of them is "To Germany". Charles seems to be addressing the lack of drive and finality of the war because it seems they are fighting without reason. He states immediately off the back that Germany is blind like them, being France. The next few lines shows that they're just fighting to fight and they shouldn't be in this gruesome war and how its pointless. All of it is a bunch of hate and setting up lines of trenches to eventually run in the battlefield blind and take fire in attempt to take over more trenches. His next stanza begins to tell the tale of a happy ending and how everything would be more in harmony once the war ends. Those will be sad and grief together, once the peace arises. In conclusion, I ended up liking the poem after a couple of reads because of how Charles depicts the concept of war and the aftermath of it in his eyes. When reading this, his word choices definitely made me feel more attached to reality.

Anti-War Painting

Picasso's work named, Guernica (1937), appears to be one of the most interesting work that I have ever seen. At first glance, I notice all of the images of people or these creatures are in a state of agony and they're positioned in such uncomfortable way that it makes me feel uneasy. All the people or creatures seem distraught or dying, one person even looks dead. In the middle of the work, it is very clustered and a lot is happening, from the people on the right stretching their necks to draw a little more focus towards the action, which seems like murder scene of some sort, with what seems to be a knife on the bottom and a human of some sort that looks dead. It definitely looks like a landscape, but a version with so much more than your typical over the distance sunset and grassy scene. The image has very strong and harsh lines running through image and in the middle there's almost like a diamond like shape surrounding the chaotic center. The harsh line and intense clutter with obscured depiction defines the abstract and unrealism of it. The image was painted in hopes to prevent World War II from happening, showing some death and almost like a battlefied-like scenery. In conclusion, I really enojy this painting due to its complexity and intricacies and I would feel very discouraged to go into a war after seeing this image.