Here War Is Simple
Here War Is Simple - context Summary
Nanking and Dachau Invoked
Auden contrasts the bureaucratic, schematic language of war with its immediate human consequences. The poem compresses administrative signs—telephones, maps, plans—against the thirsty, dying, and bereaved, insisting that abstract ideas and charts cannot hide real suffering. By naming Nanking and Dachau, it anchors the general observation in specific, twentieth-century atrocities, prompting readers to recognize how official simplicity can obscure and normalize mass violence.
Read Complete AnalysesHere war is simple like a monument: A telephone is speaking to a man; Flags on a map assert that troops were sent; A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan For living men in terror of their lives, Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon, And can be lost and are, and miss their wives, And, unlike an idea, can die too soon. But ideas can be true although men die, And we can watch a thousand faces Made active by one lie: And maps can really point to places Where life is evil now: Nanking. Dachau.
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