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Assignment of Socioligy of Literature Word

The document provides analysis of the poem "God Bless America" by Harold Pinter. Pinter published the poem in 2003 as part of a collection called "War" to express his opposition to the Iraq war. The poem depicts American soldiers marching across the world while the gutters are filled with dead bodies. It uses gruesome imagery of heads rolling in the sand and eyes and noses of the dead to portray the smell of death. The analysis explains that Pinter was a political activist who used his poetry to denounce American foreign policy and the brutality of war.

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Venny Grace Verlita Agustin
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58 views

Assignment of Socioligy of Literature Word

The document provides analysis of the poem "God Bless America" by Harold Pinter. Pinter published the poem in 2003 as part of a collection called "War" to express his opposition to the Iraq war. The poem depicts American soldiers marching across the world while the gutters are filled with dead bodies. It uses gruesome imagery of heads rolling in the sand and eyes and noses of the dead to portray the smell of death. The analysis explains that Pinter was a political activist who used his poetry to denounce American foreign policy and the brutality of war.

Uploaded by

Venny Grace Verlita Agustin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Assignment Of Sociology Of Literature

Venny Grace Verlita Agustin


N1D217157

God bless America (22 January, 2003)


By Harold Pinter

Here they go again,


The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.
The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.
The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

Harold Pinter, Harold Pinter Ch, CBE (born in Hackney, London, October 10, 1930 - died in West
London, England, December 24, 2008 at the age of 78) In the early 1960s, Pinter began a career as a
screenwriter in collaboration with Joseph Losey in The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967). His next works
are The Go-Between (1970). He was twice nominated for an Academy Award for his work in the film
adaptation of the novel The French Lieutenant's Woman "(1981) and Betrayal (1983). In early 2005, Pinter
stated in a radio interview he announced publicly the he would stop writing plays to dedicate himself to
his political activism and writing poetry.

Pinter publishing a collection, entitled War, in 2003 which expresses his passionate opposition to
the Iraq conflict. Pinter’s collection titled ‘War’ contains eight poems which is nothing but Pinter’s reaction
to the war activities executed by US and Britain’s foreign policies especially against Iraq, Afghanistan and
Serbia. One of the famous poetry Harold Pinter poems in the title war is “God bless America”.

This poem writer by Herold Pinter because he is a human rights and political activist Pinter’s anti-
war poetry is marked with brutal images of War. War is decided by those who is least inflicted by it.
Knudson argues,Human nature is fundamentally a capacity for action, not a fixed mode of conduct. It may
lead to peace or to war as the human will dictates…war is an ineradicable phase of human

life is derived from what may be called the dynamic theory of the state. According to this theory
the state in its essential nature is might or power. It recognizes no authority, moral or otherwise, above itself.
Its own might makes right (2011, 27-28) The above extract gets fit into American war policy which led to
invasion in Iraq. Pinter’s poem ‘God Bless America’ gives an idea about it.
Pinter denounces American foreign policy in God Bless America (2003) – a poem which describes
the joyful ‘Yanks in their armoured parade’, galloping across the world in streets where the gutters are
clogged with the dead. Pinter portrays the heads rolling onto the sand with horrid images of eyes that have
gone out and the nose that only sniffs the odour of the dead while ‘all the dead air is alive with the smell of
America's God’ (Dilek, 130). The direct use of language in the poem gives an idea about Pinter’s anger
towards brutality of war and despair of modern imperialism.

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