Literary Analysis:
The War at Home by Kerry Doc Pardue
What is happening to the real world?
Have they all gone nuts!
Protesting and carrying signs against something
They have no idea what's it all about
They are not the ones who should be
Believe it or not!
Why don't they keep the politics out
And let us fight to win.
What do you mean they killed Martin Luther King?
And Bobby Kennedy too!
Then Kent State and My Lai too
What is a good soldier to do?
How did they let the world go so wrong?
Now...we got a WAR AT HOME!
Vietnam's a funny place
People here from every race.
Black and white and brown
Helping to defend the yellow race.
Fighting side by side
Just to stay alive.
If the people back in the WORLD
Could only just see
How we live and fight and die
United by circumstances beyond our control
We don't care about the color
Of the skin.
That doesn't count on what determines
A person's worth.
What would be the greatest tragedy of all
To go home at the end of my time.
What is happening to the real world?
Have they all gone nuts!
Protesting and carrying signs against something
They have no idea what's it all about
They are not the ones who should be
Believe it or not!
Why don't they keep the politics out
And let us fight to win.
What do you mean they killed Martin Luther King?
And Bobby Kennedy too!
Then Kent State and My Lai too
What is a good soldier to do?
How did they let the world go so wrong?
Now...we got a WAR AT HOME!
Vietnam's a funny place
People here from every race.
Black and white and brown
Helping to defend the yellow race.
Fighting side by side
Just to stay alive.
If the people back in the WORLD
Could only just see
How we live and fight and die
United by circumstances beyond our control
We don't care about the color
Of the skin.
That doesn't count on what determines
A person's worth.
What would be the greatest tragedy of all
To go home at the end of my time.
This poem is indicative of the feelings surrounding the domestic effects of the war by the soldiers actually fighting. At home, many people felt the ill effects of war and decided to do something about it, ranging from draft card burnings to protest movements. This author intends to state that all of the events at home overshadow what was actually happening in Vietnam. Over in Vietnam, soldiers were dying everyday and living through events that would subject them to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. At home, Americans chose to fight the war in a different way, making protests and calling the Vietnam veterans "baby killers". From a soldier's perspective, Americans have "all gone nuts" and are causing more problems than necessary. The assassinations of prominent social and political leaders resulted in showing the "silent majority" that things had not really changed in America. The soldiers, "black and white and brown" all banded together in Vietnam to "defend the yellow race" showing the reduction of racism in the wartime setting. Many soldiers, in seeing all of the destruction at home, felt that going home would be the biggest tragedy. Due to the government's distortion of Vietnam combined with the aggressively liberal policies of the 1960s, the speaker of this poem delineates that with all of America's problems, war was better than going home.