Beginning

Soldier

These pasts few months of reading and being taken over by Wallace Stevens poetry have been a blessing and a rough realization for me. Stevens has brought me very close to my father, in ways I never thought possible and it has shown me how much time I have wasted not getting to know him. As much as I believed my father was the one who was quickly trying to make up for lost time, it is clear now that I am the one who is running to catch up with all the time I have wasted. 

Wallace Stevens does a beautiful job of bringing the great heroism of a soldier to our minds. When I began dissecting the poems that reminded me of my father I thought Stevens was trying to bring these heroes to life but as my father has reminded me that if Stevens truly knew how to speak of a soldier then that wasn’t his goal. Wallace Stevens only wishes to make others aware of the hero. 

Stevens speaks of the hero as a giant in “Repetitions of a Young Captain.” That the giant has nowhere to and that the giant itself can’t share the life of the soldier because the giant has become a reality of its own. Using giant is a fantastic way to associate how large and life like the hero in a soldier has become. The giant is so large that it can’t live amongst others, it wouldn’t fit in, it would complicate and break down what others believe as regular life. 

Stevens speaks of the stature of a soldier. How a soldier stands taller than a person stands in “Examination of the Hero in a Time of War.” He says the the hero has less human eyes, a nod toward the harsh reality the soldier has seen and endured, so much so that it is evident in his eyes. He refers to his body as primitive, I believe this is in reference to the reality of a soldier as well. Meaning that a soldier sees the true reality if life when at war, so primitive meaning original, truth. Others are not primitive since they don’t know the true reality of life. 

The hero can also live in everyone else's reality without it affecting who he is and what he has done. Seeing and living in the reality of those who haven’t seen true reality does not change the hero. THe very nation he defends is the hero, but the hero puts this fact to the side. The hero stays away from that fact, he remains humble. 

Stevens talks about the man himself. 

“The highest man with nothing higher 

Than himself, his self, the self that embraces

The self of the hero”

The hero here is the highest caliber of himself, he knows it yet is humble enough to remain himself, to not let this great being he was take over himself. Wallace Stevens reminds those who don’t know what it is to be true hero what these great beings become humble about. 

These soldiers are heros for two things. One being the great things they must do to allow the nation they defend remain at peace and live what they feel as their truth. The second being that even after all of their great achievements, sacrifices, losses, and discoveries they graciously let it pass. They don’t carry it with them to their everyday life as a civilian. To have the humble ability to allow these decorated heros inside of them remain un-noticed and un-celebrated is a true hero. 

My father is one of these men. He has given up so much of his life to give me and my family the best life he could. I hear these heroic stories of missions he carried out, of friends and civilians he has saved and I am in awe. My father is a great man, hero, and father. These accomplishments of is life are put away for the sake of his family living happy. 

Stevens makes a great last point of a soldier, of particular soldiers. 

“This is his day. With nothing lost, he

Arrives at the man-man he wanted.

This is his night and meditation.

A soldier who can come back to normal life, with himself intact and the ability to allow these heroic acts pass afford him the greatest of peace. To become the man he wanted, the one he wanted to be before facing true reality. Stevens sheds light on the three men a soldier is, the one before he becomes a soldier, the one during war, and the one who come out of way and leaves the soldier of him behind. 

My father was become the man he wanted to be. He was a hero and let that pass to be with his family. He as become an Aeronautical Engineer since leaving the Marines.  He is happy and can provide greatly for me and my family. He is a hero inside and out.