Task: Compare and contrast Colin Rowbotham's Relative Sadness and Peter Appleton's Responsibility, paying close attention to form and content.
From: http://www.cartoonmovement.com/cartoon/6128
Critical Commentary
“Relative Sadness” by Colin Rowbotham and “The Responsibility” by Peter Appleton
By
Matilde My Kristensen
“Relative Sadness” by Colin Rowbotham and “The Responsibility” by Peter Appleton are both poems written after the end of the Second World War and convey a strong anti-war attitude through the accusatory and sensationalist content, and various literary devices. Their format, style, and choice of literary devices contrast greatly. This is to say that they ultimately produce different effects on the reader. While they both condemn the war and the violence it entails, the messages communicated by the poems have differing nuances: Whereas “Relative Sadness” highlights the irony in the grief felt by those who participated in starting, waging or exacerbating the war, “The Responsibility” reveals the irony in the casting of blames on those very people. Thus, the two poems – having different meanings, using different literary devices and producing different effects on the reader – are both just as effective in expressing a clear anti-war sentiment.
The messages transmitted by the poems to the reader are not the same. “Relative Sadness” is a short poem of five lines, so the message is expressed in a succinct manner. The underlying idea in the poem is that the American people may cry as much as they want about the atrocities of World War II, and about the Hiroshima atomic bombing in particular – ultimately, though, it is undeniable that the only people who may justifiably be called victims in the bombing are the Japanese, represented in the poem by Mr. Tamihi. It can be argued, then, that the narrator of the poem takes the side of the Japanese, by portraying the Americans, represented by Einstein, as undeserving of the right to feel like victims in any way, and by creating powerful imagery surrounding the Japanese “having now eyes left”, triggering, perhaps, a confusing combination of the senses of shame and pity in the Americans or any other Westerners reading the poem.
Appleton's “The Responsibility” completely contrasts to “Relative Sadness” in its structure: It is long, composed of 28 lines divided unevenly into eight stanzas. The global idea behind the poem is that every single person is completely focused on blaming everyone else but themselves, for the war – at the essence, it is the man “Who pays the tax” who is to blame, and the man who pays the tax is the average every-man. The poem uses the structure used in a famous British nursery rhyme called “This Is The House That Jack Built”: the structure of a cumulative tale. Using the structure of a nursery rhyme for the purpose of expressing a message about war ensures that the content of the poem is, perhaps, simpler to comprehend, which is a benefit if the poem is to be read and internalized by many people. It also appeals to the latent innocence in every human being, existing even in times of war and mass destruction: Appleton doubtlessly hopes that the reader might, in absorbing a theme as serious as nuclear war in the tone of a nursery rhyme, remember their own childhood and innocence and subsequently feel regret and remorse for the lost innocence. The juxtaposition of two elements so contrary to each other – innocence and war – also has an effect on the meaning and message of the poem: the illogical juxtaposition symbolizes the absurdity of war. Indeed, when nursery rhyme tunes serve to express thoughts on war, the human species has lost their values, their logic, their understanding of the world they live in, and perhaps even their humanity. The poem “The Responsibility” may in fact belong to the post-World War II literary movement of Absurdism, in which authors expressed the absurdity of life and of the human condition through absurd novels, plays and poems.
The language in the two poems in question, too, varies considerably. “Relative Sadness”, firstly, uses two human names: Einstein and Mr. Tamihi. Using the names of people is a powerful tool in its ability to make the reader relate to the poem and its characters: It gives the poem a sense of reality, and gives the reader the opportunity to realize that the events described were real events which affected countless real people, and thus triggers a more legitimate feeling of sadness and compassion in the reader.
In the third line, the word “Hiroshima” refers, quite obviously, to the bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945. The fact that this was not specified, however, is indicative of the fact that at the time at which the poem was published (and still today), almost everyone instantly knows that it is, indeed, the bombing that is referred to. This element gives the reader a sense that there is a collective awareness of the violent events of the Second World War, and that the impact on the world was so great that “Hiroshima” need not be specified in order that the reader may understand what it symbolizes.
Two instances of sound repetitions can also be identified in the poem. “Einstein's eyes” is an example of alliteration, and can be interpreted to emulate the shrieking sound of cries or screams, which subliminally provokes the formation of the disturbing images and sounds of war in the mind of the reader. In lines “were filled with tears/when he heard about Hiroshima”, there is a case of consonance of the letter 'W'. This is symbolic, firstly because the word “war” begins with a 'W'; and secondly, because the repetition of the sound of the 'W' makes an allusion to the sound of whooshing bombs falling continually on East-Asia during the Second World War. In spite of the fact that the effect of the alliteration on the reader is subtle and subconscious, it figuratively places the reader in the physical context of the war, in the battlefields, underneath the dropping bombs: the alliteration provides the reader with subliminal auditory input to mimic the sound of war.
In “The Responsibility”, the poet uses rhetorical linguistic techniques such as capitalization and repetition to aid in the conveying of his message. Throughout the entire poem, the word “Bomb” is capitalized, and this serves, in a sense, as a warning sign to the reader, who has now raised his guards and focused his attention on the threat of the “Bomb”: the capitalization of the word “Bomb” thus serves not only to highlight its importance (and potential for mass destruction), but to worry the reader as to why that word might be capitalized, and to reproduce the paranoia experienced by everyone during World War II, under the menace of nuclear war.
As previously discussed, “The Responsibility” is written in the format of a cumulative tale, which means that it contains repetition by default. This repetition of words and phrases like “Bomb” and “I am the man” symbolizes the incessant indoctrination suffered by soldiers and civilians alike during the war, and the robotic state in which they were left after the war: Their words no longer span beyond a list of repeated, clichéd and empty phrases, and this, once again, is one of the defining characteristics of the Absurdism movement. Another purpose of the repetition, particularly the repetition of the phrase “I am the man”, is for the reader to eventually accept the role of the “I” in the poem, of the persona. By the end of the poem, the reader will be reading “I am the man behind it all/I am the one responsible” as if it were themselves, and thereby taking the blame – accepting the responsibility at last. Besides the repetition, however, the cumulative aspect of the poem may represent the cumulative nature of a war, and of the paranoia, violence, and death it is associated with.
“Relative Sadness” seeks to communicate the idea that the Westerners, typified by Einstein (who reportedly contributed his knowledge to the construction of the atomic bomb), are spoiled and self-righteous to cry about the destruction caused by the bomb in Hiroshima, and indeed the issues of the entire occupied world. Grief about the miserable situation is only justifiable in those who experienced the physical pain and direct psychological trauma of it. “The Responsibility” expresses the idea that rather than one man or one government being to blame for a war, it is the civilian who is largely to blame, since he or she finances the production and distribution of the weapons, and since he or she may be a collaborator and refuse to speak up; either way, the every-man holds a large part of the culpability when it comes to the waging of a war. Although the meanings of the poems and the messages behind them are not identical, both poems emit an undeniable anti-war viewpoint: the poets merely achieve the desired effect – presumably convincing the reader to be anti-war as well – via different paths. While Kumar uses cultural allusions, sound repetitions and alliteration to captivate his reader and place them in the context of a violent, inhumane war, Appleton uses the capitalization of the key word in a war, “Bomb”, and the devices of sound repetition and accumulation. Ultimately, the effect of each poem on the reader is not the same. “Relative Sadness” seeks to shock, through whooshes of alliteration, well-known names and graphic imagery, with the result of leaving the reader to feel rather uncomfortable and shameful about the war and the monstrosities that took place. “The Responsibility”, on the other hand, aims to send the reader on an introspective journey, to eventually become enlightened about the fact that it is him, her and them who are ultimately responsible for the perpetuation of the war, and does so through the mystification of the capitalized “Bomb” and speaking his message in the first person.
From:http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/w/world_peace.asp
Insightful comments. Thanks. Do you know where "The Responsibility" was first published?
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