"Worship the State. Worship the State, or die." With these astonishing words, Stephen Vincent Benet prompts a disturbing question: when does patriotism cross the divide into state-worship? By creating myths of glory that affect the emotions, the elite is able to maintain power. Since nationalism is based on sentimentality, the elite manipulates citizens to accept uncritically the role of patriotism as a good thing. On the other hand, in "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "In Response to Executive order 9066," both Owen and Okita question the value of patriotism.
First, instead of promoting nobility of soul, patriotism results in horrible bloodshed. Owen shows how ugly and inglorious war becomes. Instead of smart-looking lads who should be bright young boys falling in love, the soldiers are described "like old beggars." Also, Owen describes how the soldiers march in their sleep, and how all appear to be lame and blind. Thus, Owen shows how war destroys beauty and youth like time does. Not only is war ugly, but war lacks dignity as well. Owen describes the terrible death of a young man like himself. As the dead soldier is "flung" into a wagon with an expression on his face like "a devil's sick of sin," Owen describes how the soldier dies unmanly, lacking all dignity of a human being. Indeed, in "Dulce et Decorum Est," Owen successfully causes a reader to question the sweetness and glory of dying in battle.
Second, instead of bonding relations between citizens, patriotism results in misplaced loyalties. Okita shows how patriotism fails to define what is an American. Because of this lack of definition, American citizens will be treated unjustly. Therefore, Okita questions whether this "national" injustice outweighs the destruction of bonds in smaller communities. Both in manner and in thought, the young girl in "In Response" is "American"--all except for her providential birth to parents of Japanese descent and not of European. The young girl admits having "bad spelling," having "a messy room," and having a fondness for hot dogs. Her willingness to report to the relocation center offers proof of her Americanism. Yet her friend and other classmates accuse the girl of "trying to start a war" and of "giving secrets away / to the Enemy." Tragically, the little girl's life is forever changed, because undefined limits of patriotism replace the tangible bonds of friendship. Hence, Okita wants the reader to question whether patriotism is worth the friendship of two innocent girls.
Patriotism becomes evil when friendship between countries and individuals are destroyed. With their poems, Owen and Okita display how patriotism causes pain. While Owen uses the lack of dignity in war to force the reader to question the value of patriotism, Okita uses the betrayal of an innocent girl to do the same. If patriotism degenerates into blind obedience to live and die for the State, then citizens are no longer patriotic; they are enslaved.
This paper represents a good example of the "A" paper. The elements that make this paper stand apart from the "B" paper are its use of transitions, its good attention-grabber at the beginning, its thought-provoking clinchers at the end of each paragraph, and for the most part, its absence of pronouns as subjects and objects.
In addition to this, the writer does an outstanding job using parallelism within the paragraphs. Note especially the parallel structure of the two topic sentences.
This writer consistently submits fine writing. He revealed to me that he takes my advice (flattery is always appreciated) by spending about ten to fifteen minutes working on his thesis and topic sentences. After he is satisfied with these three sentences, then he spends twenty-five minutes writing the paper and five minutes with revising and proofreading. This kind of writing reflects a thoughtful plan and reveals a style that has emerged from a lot of practice. The writer submits articles to the school newspaper and many letters to the editor at the local newspaper. The key to good writing is plenty of practice and working with words.
Introduction: The opening quotation by Benet certainly does grab the reader's attention. The writer keeps the reader's attention by asking a question. Oftentimes, a student poses insipid questions like "Is patriotism valuable for today's society?" The writer of the above paper connects his question with the quotation, thus maintaining continuity. The next two sentences are united by discussion about the elite. However, all of the sentences in the introduction drive the reader toward the thesis, which concerns the value of patriotism. The sentence structure is complex, and the phrases and clauses are broken nicely in order to avoid monotony. Notice the transition "On the other hand," which alerts the reader that there is going to be a change of thought in the next statement.
First Topic Paragraph: The topic sentence offers a contrast of virtue with bloodshed. The paragraph is divided nicely with the first half concentrating on youth and ugliness. The second part centers on the lack of dignity. The author does a good job by using specific phrases and ideas from the text. The writer uses good transitions such as "instead of," "also," "thus," "not only...but," and "indeed." The last sentence is a clincher that causes the reader to reflect for a moment about what the paragraph said concerning death and glory.
Second Topic Paragraph: The topic sentence follows the same pattern as the first one. The contrast is genuine bonds among citizens and the false bond of nationalism. Like the first topic paragraph, the writer tries to divide the paragraph into two parts as well. He attempts to show how undefined concepts can cause misunderstanding, and then he pulls from the poem the example of the girl. This is especially effective, because the writer has the reader thinking about the undefined national bond called "patriotism," only to concentrate later on a bond that everyone can define, which is friendship between two individuals. Notice how the student avoids the temptation to offer a mini-history lesson about Pearl Harbor and to provide the reasons for Japanese-Americans having to go to relocation camps. The writer centers his remarks on the material from the poem. Once again, the writer uses good transitional words and phrases like "because of," "therefore," "yet," and "hence." Regarding the use of specific examples, the writer integrates the ideas well into this paragraph. He does not use lengthy quotations from the text, but uses enough to support his argument. Also, the clincher causes the reader to pause again to reflect about the importance of friendship. The feeling that most readers have with Okita's poem is one of sadness and tragedy. The writer does a good job by affecting the reader's emotions with his choice of examples and words like "tragically."
Conclusion: If this paper has a weakness, it would be the restatement of the thesis. The first sentence seems to equate value with friendship, even though the idea of friendship is absent in the first topic paragraph. However, the writer can be forgiven, since he does a good job summarizing the main topics in the third sentence. The final sentence is a very good clincher in that the writer connects the idea of state-worship with the quotation found in the introduction. This paragraph ends with the profound thought of the citizen who loves his country actually using a means that will end in his enslavement. Thus, the choice for the citizen of a nation-state is either death or slavery, which brings us back to the first sentence of the paper.
Notice that every sentence in this paper is relevant to the assignment. There is little, if any, verbal throat-clearing. The writer helps to bridge between sentences with transitions. If there is a single mark of the mature writer, the use of transitions would be that mark. The paper flows nicely from one thought to the next. The writing is bold, because the writer uses present tense verbs and avoids hedging. This writer tells me that while revising his papers, he looks especially for hedges like "maybe," "possibly," and verbs like "suggest" and "tend." This is not bad advice to our students, as well as readers, since we all "tend" to tone down our rhetoric in order "to appear" modest [...since we all tone down our rhetoric to be modest].