Question

Thematic Analysis of small pain in my chest in 750words

Answer 1

‘A Small Pain in my Chest’ is Michael Mack’s lyrical cry over the Vietnam War and the uncountable lives it claimed of innocent young soldiers. This poem does not have any vitriolic hatred spewing on paper, but a silent mourning over the loss of humanity which war entails. The anti-war agenda of the poet has been crafted out with much sympathy and poignancy. He does not directly question the ravaging effects of war, but instead takes us in the middle of a battlefield, next to a dying man who does not even have enough water on him to ease his fatal battle wound. Through the eyes of this war ravaged soldier we are made to question the war and its reductive effect on life. Sudden explosions, dead bodies, open craters – the poem draws a heart-rending picture of the war, all through the words of the soldier and our sympathy is garnered by his plight. We are all in unison against war after reading the poem, as our heart goes out to the soldiers who died and their families who will have to cope with the loss on a personal level. The poem also indicates very subtly that the ones who do manage to keep themselves alive till the end of a war are not exactly in the best of health either. The mental health of such soldiers is severely compromised and they carry deep emotional and mental wound of having had seen their fellow comrades suffer and die.