Question

small pain in my chest is anti war poem. justify it by giving illustration from poem

Answer 1

The poem ‘Small Pain in my Chest’ by Michael Mack is a strong anti-war poem. The poet makes extensive use of imagery and irony to convey the futility of war.

 

The poem opens with a young soldier ‘sitting calmly’ under a tree. However, the next few lines take the reader by surprise when the poet goes on to describe the scene around the soldier. There are bodies strewn all around him. Despite this, the soldier boy is calm. Such contrasting behaviour hits the reader hard and makes one think about the reality of war.

 

Though it is the duty of the army to safeguard the citizens of a nation, ironically the soldier cannot take anything for granted. Instead of commanding the narrator to help him, he gently and politely asks the narrator if he would help the soldier. Soldiers thus sacrifice their lives without expecting anything in return from the very people they protect. This greatly undermines the value of a soldier’s life, multitudes of which are unnecessarily lost waging avoidable wars.

 

Yet another contrast is the manner in which the soldier talks about his small pain, while the narrator can see a ‘large stain’ on his shirt. He also talks about how he feels he is ‘lucky’ to have survived longer than the rest, though the truth is that he is not going to make it. He knows he is dying, for he can feel himself being ‘defeated’ by the same pain. He probably feels lucky because he has been able to talk to the narrator and convey his thoughts about war and its ravages to someone who might spread the word around and maybe trigger an ideological change.

 

Also, while the narrator calls him a ‘soldier boy’, suggesting that he is young, the dying soldier feels that he ‘must be getting old’. His life has been tragically cut short by war. The time that he could have spent with his mother and his wife has been lost forever, a family has been touched by tragedy and there would be so many more such bereaved families. War thus does not improve life. Instead, it causes pain and grief.

 

The soldier dies ‘quietly’, meaning that no one really takes note of a life lost. Life goes on as normal for everyone except his family. Wars start in political meetings and end in tremendous blood bath on battlefields that are miles away from the ones who actually started it. Sadly, those who die have nothing personal to do with war and those who give the orders to go to war are never the ones on the battlefront.

 

In the last line of the poem, the poet throws up a touching image, of the narrator hugging the soldier and of their wounds pressing against each other. The soldier died of the ‘small pain’, while the narrator must continue to carry the 'large' guilt of having been a mute spectator to the happenings that finally led to the war. Had the narrator and the public in general opposed the war, the government would have been pressurized to avoid such large scale destruction. However, it was not the case. The poet urges the readers to take a stand and raise a voice against war, or be prepared to spend the rest of their lives, struggling with guilt.

 

All these instances suggest that the poem is indeed an anti-war poem, with some direct references to war and some subtle yet potent indirect references as well.

Answer 2

'Small Pain in My Chest' is an anti-war poem in which Michael Mach brings out the futility of war as war brings devastation and doom. "War does not determine who is right - only who is left" by Bertrand Russel very well relates to the theme of the poem wherein a soldier boy sat under a tree with a wound in his chest. The soldier fought all day and night and survived the explosion while all his fellow soldiers lay dead. As the narrator approaches him, he asks for some help, i.e. some water to drink as he was fatigued and thought was would surely do him good. 

'Small pain in my chest' has been used not only as the title of the poem but also as a refrain which has been repeated a number of times in the poem to highlight the plight of the soldier. He has a wound in his chest, but he calls it a small pain in his chest because he feels that he is fortunate to be alive while all his fellow soldiers succumb to the destruction of war. Scores of dead soldiers lay around him and in comparison to their loss of life, the soldier considers his wound as a small pain only. The wound is fatal and hence, the statement stands out as an irony.

The soldier feels bad recalling his wife and mother as to what they would think when they see him sitting there feeling so weak and devoid of any strength. This instance shakes the reader with the thought that the dying soldiers leave behind their young wives, mothers closing on the fond memories and life ahead.

Lastly, when the soldier finally dies, the narrator put his arms around him and when he held him close their wounds pressed against each others'.  Soldier, though had a small pain in his chest the narrator felt an immense pain at the loss. The poet, hence, bemoans the death of soldiers who fall a prey to the brutality of war.

The phrase 'Asian dirt' might refer to the incident of Vietnam war, but the poem was published in both pro-military and anti-military magazines. It was read at the funeral of the pilot of the first Blackhawk helicopter shot down in Iraq. Thus, the main significance of the poem is to draw a pen-portrait of the gory wars and the pathetic plight of soldiers involved in the war.