Literature and Peace
D’Aronco Lorenzo 4D
AIM
• Finding out how literary texts
may promote peace
MATERIALS
• W. Shakespeare, Macbeth (Mondadori 1983)
English and Italian parallel text
• W. Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act III Scene 1 “To Be
or not to Be”
• S. Sassoon, They
• S. Sassoon, Glory of Women
• W. Owen, Futility
Working Method
• Textual Analysis
• Finding relationships between texts and
peace
• Class discussion
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
• Shakespeare was the
most extraordinary and
prolific playwright of the
Renaissance.
• He wrote 23 plays that
can be classified as
histories, comedies and
tragedies.
Peace in Macbeth
Peace in Macbeth
• Macbeth is a tragedy
• The title refers to the tragic hero.
Peace in Macbeth
• In Macbeth the natural order (symbol for
peace) of Duncan’s Kingdom is broken by the
King’s murder.
• Such event creates new wars and contributes to
break Macbeth’s and his wife’s inner peace.
Peace in Macbeth
• The loss of inner peace drives Macbeth
and his wife crazy.
• In the play the obsessive search for power
persuades Macbeth to change the natural
order of things (symbol for peace)
Peace in Macbeth
• Peace (natural order) can only return with
Macbeth’s death because balance must
be established again.
Peace in Shakespearean Macbeth
• The word “peace” occurs very frequently in the
play (11 times).
• It is often compared to silence; when a
character says “peace!” he means “shut up”.
• The comparison can be drawn because peace
is also symbol for the quietness Macbeth is
unable to obtain.
Peace in Macbeth
Peace in Hamlet
“TO BE OR NOT TO BE”
A monologue speech where a character
expresses his or he most inner feelings.
Peace in Hamlet
• The first line expresses the question: Hamlet's mind is
busy deciding "Whether to be or not to be".
• "To be" is compared to "to live" but here connotation is
wider.
• "Not to be" is compared to "to sleep no more".
Peace in Hamlet
• Hamlet’s question : is it nobler in the
mind suffer and fight against the
problems of life?
• Shakespeare speaks about the problems
of life using an hyperbole: "a sea of
troubles".
Peace in Hamlet
• Shakespeare's answer is: the human being
prefers suffering because he does not know
what happens after death.
• The metaphor "the undiscovered country"
refers to what the human being does not know
about life know after death.
Peace in
S. Sassoon’s and W. Owen’s Poems
Peace in Sassoon’s and Owen’s Poems:
• S. Sassoon and W. Owen are “war
poets”.
• Their poems are about war, the pity of
war especially.
• Their poems convey an implicit message
of peace
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems
They
• Title = poem about people different from
the
speaking
voice
• The word “They” conveys the idea of
distance.
• A bishop tells some boys that when men
come back from a war they change
because “they fought in a just cause”.
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems: They
• Bishop: men had the courage to fight against Death.
• The boys tell the bishop they have surely changed
because war has mutilated their body.
• Very important line: the bishop tells the boys that the
decisions of God are very strange.
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems: They
Words= from the semantic field of war:
“fought”, “attack”, “comrades”…
Two points of view : the Bishop's and the
soldiers'.
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems: They
• The bishop justifies war using some
abstract
words
like
“Anti-Christ”,
“honour”, “just cause” and “God”.
• Positive consideration of war: it can
change everybody if it is fought for a
just cause (in this poem the war is against
Anti-Christ).
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems: They
The soldiers’ point-of-view = negative
consideration about war.
Phrases like = “lost both his legs”, “Bill’s
stone blind”, “Bert’s gone syphilitic”
underline the negative aspects of war.
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems: They
Last line of the poem includes the message

nobody can understand the ways of God
which appear very strange.
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems
Glory of Women
Expectations= poem about some happy
women
Title = made up of 2 words
(glory and women)
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems
Glory of Women”
Soldiers criticize women’s point of view
about war

women love soldiers when they come back
like heroes from the war’s disgrace.
Women do not know the real face of war:
they believe
War can change men into heroes
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems
Glory of Women
Words come from the
semantic field of war
The poem underlines the different points
of view: the soldiers’ and the women’s
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems
Glory of Women
• Women can’t really understand war because
they are too distant from it so they can only
mourn their soldiers and pray.
• They also hope that their men will return as
heroes so they will carry on loving them.
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems
Glory of Women
The soldiers’ point of view : they know
what war really is

they can’t convey a positive idea of war.
Peace in Sassoon’s Poems
Glory of Women
• Considering all that said, you can
understand that in this poem the poet
wants to underline that war is
unimaginable and only soldiers know it for
certain.
Peace in W. Owen’s Poem
Futility
Title = an uncountable noun, similar to
the Italian adjective "futile".
Did the poet want to illustrate what is
useless in men's life?
Peace in Owen’s Poem
Futility
Words from the semantic field of nature:
"sun", "field", " morning", "snow", "seeds",
"clay", "star" and "earth“

the cycle of nature that never stops
Peace in W. Owen’s
Poem Futility
Important repetitions
"move", "awake", "rouse", "know", "wakes"
and "think" underline
the sense of men’s life futility
Peace in W. Owen’s Poem
Futility
The metaphor of the second stanza

“Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.”
star compared to a dead men

star is cold as a dead man
Peace in W. Owen’s Futility
The poem tries to ask a question about
men’s futile life

“O what made fatuous sunbeams toil”.
Men’s life is futile as he has seen
war’s atrocities.
Discussion on Peace
Peace is very important for everybody

It allows to live a very good life
It creates the conditions to improve our culture
and society
Discussion on Peace
• The loss of peace is now frequent
because war is very important for the
economy of some countries.
• There are a lot of wars all around the
world: consider the case of Israel and
Palestine, the conflicts in Africa, the
situation in Afghanistan and in Iraq …
Discussion on Peace:
• But war isn’t the only form of the lack of
peace: the obsessive search of power
makes men crazy.
• In fact they always want to become rich
and they commit crimes and other
delinquencies to reach their intent
Discussion on Peace:
• In peace human rights are respected.
• To safeguard this balance we must
avoid new wars.
• The global community have to understand
that keeping a global balance is an
urgent responsibility for everybody.
PEACE!