Hello readers. Recently, our ASTU class had time to watch movie American Sniper directed by Clint Eastwood. This film was portraying Iraq War through the perspective of American Sniper, Chris Kyle. Based on the real character, American Sniper generally glorify the character of Chris Kyle with patriotism and comradeship. Then again, American Sniper maintained its neutrality towards Iraq War. I would explore some of the scenes from American Sniper that I felt intriguing.

The character of Chris Kyle was portrayed as “hero” in the film. After 9/11 terror, Chris Kyle enlisted in American Navy Seal with burning anger towards enemy and patriotism towards one’s nation. This talented sniper soon became “legend” when he was sent as troops. In the film, there was the contrary role of Chris Kyle who was a sniper of Iraqi people called Mustafa. These two characters have the same role as a sniper on one’s side, but contradicting appraisals of “legend” and “evil” are following them on one’s side. In Iraqi’s side Chris is “evil” and in American’s side Chris is “legend.”

As the major role of the story focuses on the character of a sniper, Chris’s perspective towards war was projected through the scope of the gun. He was in the war but looking at a distance as the sniper. He watched enemies through the scope at the distance and killed them at the distance. When Chris Kyle hold rifle instead of a sniper rifle and went to the battlefields, he is drawn into a war. The scene that he saw, the noise that he heard from the battlefields were vicious and chaotic. What Chris experienced on the battlefield were contradictory to the battlefield that he saw through the scope where all emotions and noises remain silent.

His experiences were not only remained in the battlefields but also continued to harassing him even when he came back home. Suffering from PTSD, Chris was unable to entirely came back to his home but fighting on the battlefield in his mind. Chris choose to help war veterans and kept his role as “father,” “husband,” and “veteran” until he died by the gun of the war veteran who Chris tried to help. In the last scene, Chris’s wife Taya was gaze Chris and war veteran through a chink in the door. Two war veterans and heroes, who were seen in Taya’s perspective were projected differently: one as an attentive father and the other as the war veteran who lives in a reality that is the war to him.

Hello readers, this week we have read and explored the poetry especially the poem of Juliana Spahr’s “This Connection of Everyone with Lungs.” Juliana Spahr’s poem was the first poem that I read in this year, and it has been two years since I read my last poem. Throughout the history, the genre of poetry has the long history. People enjoyed reading of poetry as modern people read novels and fictions. Beowulf, the oldest surviving poem today, was an epic poem that people enjoyed heard or tell a story. Sonet 18 by William Shakespeare is well-known poem even in today that portrays one’s love towards the woman. Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is still considered as one of the greatest works of world literature. Compare to poetry’s long history and influences in literature history, the modern world doesn’t enjoy reading as much as people did before. Nevertheless, people still write poem and school teaching poem, make us read the poem. If people don’t enjoy and don’t look for a poem as much as we did in the past, why do we still need poetry?

I believe we still need poetry because human’s emotion is full of complex fragments and we still need boundless imaginations to explore our emotion. In the modern world, people speak what they need to speak, people learn what they need to learn, people memorize what they need to memorize, but there are less and fewer people imagining things, thinking outside of the box. Imaginations are significant and unique work that only humans can do. People imagine new things, new world, then we think, we plan, and we perform: this is how we have survived from history. Imagination germinates from words, language. More words mean more knowledge. More words and more knowledge help people to imagine more and explore furthers. Imagination is a foundation to frame topic and story. Word is an essential component to express one’s story and emotions. Those two essential components – imagination and word – are not just significant in writing poem, but also in living in the modern world and survive from the world.

All human always carries emotion. Different situation, different ages evoke a different emotion. Emotion makes the person perfect, but also imperfect. We feel emotion, we want to express that whether in facial emotion, in behavior, or in words. We often share our emotions in words. However, sometimes too many words degenerate original emotions. Poetry, compare to novels, required fewer words. Both poem and novel convey one’s imaginations and emotions. The only difference is that poem is using fewer words and its words are containing implications. Through poetry, we can convey and share our emotion with implicative and symbolic words. These make poetry as pure and suitable to express one’s emotion.

In the modern world, poetry considers as a complicate genre to write and to read compared to other genres. However, poetry is authentic literature genre that requires skillful words, boundless imaginations and conveys one’s original emotions. Poetry is most suitable and necessary literature in this century where fastness and indifferences become more common.