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Bri Neves
ENGL 2157
War is a very difficult thing to understand, especially without the knowledge that comes
with personal experience. Gwendolyn Brooks, however, attempts to explore this understanding
in her poetry by establishing many of her speakers as soldiers. Some of these poems depict life
before war, adventure, and the excitement many soldiers face on their journeys. Others focus on
life during the war where the action is happening, where the stakes are high, and several of a
soldier’s misconceptions begin to deteriorate. Many poems following this are set after the war, in
which a soldier reflects on this experience, often resulting in deep introspection. This
introspection often leads to the idea that life is not all that the speaker once imagined it to be. In
fact, it has become nothing but a world of danger and suspicion. With this, Brooks utilizes the
idealism of youth, crushes it with the devastating impacts of war, and conveys the eventual
numbness felt by many trauma survivors. Thus, with their abrupt tone shifts and swift topic
changes, these poems convey not only a situational transition in a soldier’s life, but an emotional
learning process, which encompasses an internal struggle between his youthful idealism and his
emotional numbness.
Many of Gwendolyn Brooks’s poems in the set “Gay Chaps at the Bar” convey the
concepts of hope, adventure, and confidence. In all of these poems, when these concepts carry
positive connotations, they have one thing in common; they are associated with youth and a
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soldier’s life before entering into war. This life is filled with dreams, patriotism, and unrealistic
expectations about the future. Confidence is displayed in “Gay Chaps at the Bar” with the
sentence “We knew how to order” (1). As the poem progresses, the speaker spends a while
listing many more things that he and his fellow comrades “knew” how to do (“knew” being a
clear indication of self confidence) such as “[w]hether the raillery should be slightly iced / And
given green, or served up hot and lush” (3-4). These are very specific ways to order drinks and
say a lot about a person socially. Other things they “knew” how to do according to this poem
were “…how to give to women / the summer spread, the tropics, of our love” and “when to
persist, or hold a hunger off” (5-7). Women and relationships, not unlike the intricacies of
ordering a drink, are sometimes difficult to understand, so claiming that the speaker and his
fellow men were experts in those types of situations was a very huge statement to make. They
also knew, according to the poem, “white speech” and “[h]ow to make a look an omen” (8).
However, all of these talents that such soldiers happened to acquire in their lifetime (most likely
before going to war) have one very important thing in common; they have nothing to do with
war. This becomes even more significant when the speaker’s tone abruptly shifts into one less
self-assured statement: “But nothing ever taught us to be islands” (9). “Islands” in this statement
is symbolic of the idea of every man for himself, particularly in this case when it comes to
fighting in a war. As Melhem states, "And how ineffectual, the knowledge, the order, and,
finally, how false! The poem moves from social restraints to natural ones--death and the jungle;
from the officers' known place in the ordered, white-dominated world of the past towards the
spontaneous, unknown islands of their present and future and, by analogy, of their selves" (44).
Here the soldiers are at the bar drinking, courting women, and effortlessly fitting in with several
groups of people, but once you place them alone on the battlefield, they have no idea what to do.
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Social cues and suave mannerisms, which are the soldiers’ specialties, are not helpful in war. In
fact, the speaker reinforces this very idea in the sentence, “And smart athletic language for this
hour / Was not in the curriculum”, “this hour” being the hour of war and “curriculum”
symbolizing knowledge. Thus, because what they already knew was not in the curriculum, the
soldiers are forced to learn the skills they have not yet developed, not just by training, but by
being thrown into the war itself. This expresses the doubt and certainty that creeps up on these
soldiers as the war begins, serving as a turning point to the emotions of these soldiers.
Although, the emotions of these soldiers are already morphing, the first few poems in
Brooks’s “Gay Chaps at the Bar” set, particularly “firstly inclined to take what is told” and “God
works in a mysterious way” contain glimpses of the soldier’s former selves. Both of these poems
describe an earlier stage in the life of a solider—a stage in which denial has plenty of room to
rear its ugly head every once in a while. “Firstly inclined to take what is told” describes the early
eagerness of a soldier to follow orders. Youth is explicitly even conveyed here in the phrase,
“[f]or youth is a frail thing, not unafraid. / Firstly inclined to take what is told. / Firstly inclined
to lean. Greedy to give/Faith tidy and total. To a total God. / With billowing heartiness and no
whit withheld.” (10-13) Faith here is portrayed as something easy to find and to give. “God
works in a mysterious way”, which follows directly after these lines, expresses a similar
sentiment but in a different way—by reaching out to the external world to make sense of one’s
situation. The external world, in this poem, refers to both the spiritual world (in portraying God
as one who holds all the answers) and life here on Earth (in portraying humans as impatient
beings who do not know the answers.) Change here is described as “submit[ing] to winds” (2)
and the modern human as one who has “never heard of tact/Or timeliness/Or mystery that
shrouds/Immortal joy.” (5-7) Faith is taken so seriously here that the lack of faith is treated with
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outright social criticism. These divergences from the topic at hand are yet another way that a
soldier can remain comfortably in denial, at least at the beginning. Therefore, emotions are
portrayed not just as a product of their experiences, but a never-ending process that travels
Meanwhile, loved ones of the soldiers are also experiencing the “winds” (2) of change;
this is indicated by the speaker's tone shift in "piano after war" from "warm[ing] a room" and
"rejuvinat[ing] a past" to "a multiplying cry. / A cry of bitter dead men who will never / Attend a
gentle maker of musical joy." In fact, the way the speaker reacts to this new found realization is
not unlike the way a soldier reacts to his environment after returning from war: "Then my
thawed eye will go again to ice. / And stone will shove the softness from my face." The word
"softness" when applied to one's appearance and overall impression, is often expressed towards
youth. For instance, babies have soft skin. Adolescences before experiencing the tolls of heart
break, have soft hearts ready to be molded. The image of stone shoving such softness from the
speaker's face thus represents two things—the lost idealism in the speaker's attitude and the
fading of youth. With this overall tone as well, there is a certain sense of numbness--the very
same numbness that affects the lives of soldiers every day. By using an outsider's perspective,
one who has not fought in war, but one close enough to the issue to witness
its devastating effects, particularly death and grief, the speaker emphasizes a very important
reality; the aftermath of war affects loved ones just as much as soldiers, but in a different
way. As Melhem states: "Their intrusion on the speaker's reverie connotes not only human
sacrifice, but the inevitable postwar reappraisal" (44). In essence, the speaker is having very
similar doubts about the situations as the soldiers do and analyzes the war constantly as a result
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of these doubts. Analysis, thus, begins to form a sea of questions—one that surviving soldiers
and loved ones of soldiers, living or dead, must continue to swim through their entire lives.
The interaction between soldiers and their loved ones also changes as these poems
progress. “Love note I: Surely” and “love note II: Flags”, are letters written from a soldier’s
perspective; the first one is written to his love interest awaiting his return and the second one is
to the flag, which expresses a smorgasbord of feelings towards his now wavering patriotism.
Both of these poems are connected by a singular theme—the loss of faith, not just in war, but in
everything, including mankind. As Melhem points out, "He questions every aspect of his life, his
received politico-religious beliefs and, by implication, his personal relationships. The violet, a
spring flower; connotes modesty, among other associations, and symbolizes a love returned"
(49). Love for this soldier—both in romance and in the love for his country—has completely
changed its meaning. The soldier, therefore, has started to become emotionally numb in all areas
of his life, taking what he has learned from war and channeling it into his newfound ability to
become suspicious of others and their motives. In fact, the soldier becomes so suspicious that he
describes the flag’s love as “changeful”, when in reality the soldier is the one who has changed
as a result of his experience (12). The combination of this suspicion and the soldier’s newfound
nihilistic approach to life lead to constant questioning and an elevated sense of what could be
All in all, life for these soldiers is not getting any easier. However, we are provided with
one last poem of the collection depicting the aftermath of war—or at least what the speaker
thinks is the aftermath of war. Brook’s poem “The progress” is a poem of recovery and
rebuilding from the emotional trauma underwent by the speaker. It begins with a confident
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phrase symbolizing the soldiers’ continued patriotism and loyalty, “And still we wear our
uniforms” (1), and ends with a doubting rhetorical question (“For even if we come out standing
up / How shall we smile, congratulate: and how / Settle in chairs?”) precluding the beginning of
yet another war: “Listen, listen. The step/Of iron feet again. And again wild” (11-14). Ending a
series of related poems with yet another beginning is a strong message, stating “the war is never
over.” In the way of emotional transformations of these soldiers, these messages contain another
meaning; the transformation itself is never over. Whether a veteran or one who is still fighting,
the internal struggle between a soldier’s youthful idealism and nagging doubts never truly ends.
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Works Cited
Melhem, D.H. Gwendolyn Brooks: Poetry and the Heroic Voice. Lexington: UP of Kentucky,
1987