The Campus in Wartime

I chose the line "the young seek books or booze to soften the ache". This part of the poem reminds me that people go to other physical things to ease the pain of heartaches. Some younger adults choose to drink alcohol and do drugs rather than coming to reality that these things will not change what happened. They feel that since the drugs or alcohol makes them feel good at that moment, then if they do it every time something goes wrong, their lives would be a lot better.

The people that think that drugs and alcohol can make things better are very wrong. Drugs and alcohol only ease the pain for that moment, but the effects are still present no matter what you do. The only way that you can confront pain is to deal with it and maybe talk things out. The men in this poem resort to "booze" to ease the pain of seeing the dead bodies, but when the effects of the alcohol wear off, the bodies will still be there. Getting drunk will not change the fact that there are still many people dying every second. These people are just avoiding the realities of life.

I also did the line "three thousand of ours and thousands of theirs are too many body bags to bury in the mind". I think that this line is showing you how war can affect your life. There are thousands of people that die. Not only are there thousands of their people, but there are also thousands of our people that die everyday that there is a war. Even though you do not know the "enemy" people that you are fighting against, you are taking a human life away. Once you see a dead body, I don't think that the image can disappear very easily. I just believe that this poem explains what can happen during a wartime and what people try to do to get things that they've seen out of their minds.