A civil war is, may we say, the prototype of all war, for in the persons of fellow citizens who happen to be the enemy we meet again, with the old ambivalence of love and hate and with all the old guilts, the blood brothers of our childhood. In a civil war especially in one such as this when the nation shares deep and significant convictions and is not a mere handbasket of factions huddled arbitrarily together by historical happen-so all the self-divisions of conflicts within individuals become a series of mirrors in which the plight of the country is reflected, and the self-division of the country a great mirror in which the individual may see imaged his own deep conflicts, not only the conflicts of political loyalties, but those more profoundly personal.
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About Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was a 20th-century American poet, novelist, and literary critic. Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, literary critic and professor at Yale University. He was one of the founders of New Criticism. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- War — Reflections on conflict, peace, and the human cost of war