Question

john brown is an antiwar poem .....long answer of 4 pages

Answer 1

In the song ‘John Brown’, Bob Dylan has expressed his thoughts about war, and its effects on the soldiers.Though he has defended himself by saying that he is not a pacifist and that he has never been one, the song John Brown clearly expresses his disapproval of the same.

The poem focuses on the young man ‘John Brown’ who proudly goes off to war to fulfill his mother’s wishes. John Brown fights the war and meanwhile his mother brags about him to the whole neighbourhood. She receives letters from her son in the beginning and after a while the letters stop. After a gap, she receives a letter asking her to meet her son who is coming home from the war.

The mood of the poem changes when the mother sees her son. She is unable to recognize him at first. His eyes are blown up and he has lost a hand. He is able to stand up because of a metal brace that he wears. He is not able to open his mouth and speak clearly. He breaks his mother’s illusion of war being something glorious when he tells her about her experience. Regardless of what Dylan has said about the poem, this part of the poem paints a rather gruesome picture of war and expresses disapproval of wars in general. John Brown tells his mother that she was acting proud while he was fighting the war because she wasn’t in his shoes.

He tells her that when he got there, he no longer knew what he was doing there. He didn’t understand what purpose he was serving by killing someone. Seeing the enemy at close proximity was the turning point for him. John Brown was shocked to discover that the enemy looked just like him and this shock led to a realization that he was just a pawn fighting a pointless war meant to satisfy somebody’s ego. He felt like a puppet in a play. By the time this realization struck him, a cannonball blew his eyes away. The poet shows us the reality of a battleground and the truth about the condition of the soldiers who do fight a war. The poet seems to be critical of those people who glorify war. Therefore, the poem is predominantly anti-war.

Answer 2

The Answer is:

The poem "John Brown" is anti-war poem. It opposes the idealisation of celebrating war by depicting uninformed people who regard fighting in the war as a gesture of pride.

• When John Brown is about to leave for war, his mother is pleased to see him "straight and tall in his uniform and all." She is happy to have a soldier for a son.
• For her, being a soldier entails fighting bravely and following the captain's commands in order to earn medals to display on the wall.
• She is unaware of the mental and physical anguish that all soldiers experience. While battling in the war, John Brown recognises, "I'm a-tryin' to kill somebody or die tryin'."
• He informs his mother that she was at home, acting proud, while he was battling his battles.
• He has witnessed the horrors of war, which take their toll on humanity.
• War is not the answer to world peace.
• The poem criticises those who love war, such as John Brown's mother.
• People who glorify are usually uneducated and disconnected from reality.
• The author uses this poem to demonstrate how terrible conflicts can be and how uninformed the general public is about their destructiveness.
• War is not the solution to peace, and people who celebrate war and think only of medals are dumb and idiotic.
• Soldiers like John Brown suffer from great emotional and physical exhaustion while on the battlefield, and his mother is obsessed with materialistic medals.

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