Killed Paive- July 8th 1918

For the first of my blogs this month, I decided to mix in some of what I’m learning in AP European History, the events surrounding the First World War, with my choice of a poem. For this month’s poem, I chose Ernest Hemingway’s poem Killed Paive-July 8^th 1918, one that heavily reflects on the perspective and attitude felt by many in the months before The Great War’s conclusion, which would leave an attitude of isolation and disillusionment, both of which would ultimately define the “Lost Generation” in the year to come. It is a bitter personal reflection, as Hemingway himself wrote this after being stationed in Paive, Italy in July 1918, a few months before the 11/11/1918 Armistice, and was an ambulance driver until he was severely wounded by a mortar shell. Hemingway begins his harrowing close-encounter with death with the opening lines, “Desire and all the sweet pulsing aches and gentle hurtings that were you”. Clearly, Hemingway is reflecting on who this soldier was as a person before he was ultimately found himself out on the front lines fighting a war. He reminds the reader of how each and every person who lost their life in the war isn’t just some number to be added to a long list of statistics, but a living, breathing, and amicable person, someone who had dreams and desires for how they wanted their life to be, just like any other person. Just like a person also they had their own heartaches and painful memories, but no matter how much we may not like to have these dreaded thoughts in our minds, it is what makes us all human, one of the key elements that helps to separate us away from mindless animals. The fact that Hemingway reminds us of just how human each and every soldier was is critical in regards to what he says next, “Are gone into the sullen dark”, because he now forces the reader to contrast the qualities of humanity with their absence. As the soldier finds himself nearing death, it is not just his body that will cease to exist, but who he was as a person as well. All the qualities of humanity, both the passionate desire for greatness alongside the pitfalls of pain and emotion, shall pass along into darkness and ceasing to exist. The final portion of the poem is a sad telling of the real event, in which when the mortar shell exploded, there was another soldier in between him and the shell, who was killed instantly while another had their legs ripped off. He hauntingly reflects on this experience by saying, “Now in the night you come unsmiling To lie with me A dull, cold, rigid bayonet On my hot-swollen, throbbing soul”. Hemingway’s lines here are a comparison between himself and the dead soldiers who now lie before him, seeing how cold and lifeless they have become in staunch comparison to his own pounding heart. Hemingway had a first-hand encounter with the atrocities of war, seeing how easily it consumes the lives of the soldiers forced to die on the front lines for a cause pressed onto them by their country. Even though the war would end in a few months, Hemingway knew from this moment onward that one can never really go back to how things were, and it seemed that through all the atrocities of war that he and everyone else in his generation felt a little less human in the years to come.