Essay # 6- Revision of Through Soldier's Eyes

Maria Gagliano
Adam Weinstein
En 101
9 December 2007

War in Iraq is three simple words, but when put together they become words strong enough to deliver chills through one’s body and make someone quiver with anger and sadness. The war is not an easy subject to express feelings on, but it is something that will impact the lives of many forever, especially those fighting for their country. The life of a soldier is tough; they have to be away from home, their family, and everything they know and love while they fight to keep their own lives as well as defend their nation. Many families lose their own hero at war, while some families cannot even comprehend a loose such as that. I am one of those families; I have not had to experience a family member leaving for war, and I would rather not have to feel that pain. Since I, as well as many other families, have not had to experience that particular side of the war, the song “4th25 Live from Iraq” helps to show and teach the hard life of infantry and dying soldiers over in Iraq.

The song “4th25”depicts the war through the eyes of a soldier who is over in Iraq fighting for his own life’s safety as well as his nation’s safety. The very first verse of the song,
“Every days like a gamble here, this is no joke, this is live from Iraq, where we’re prayin we make it home,”
tells everyone that soldiers do not always make it out alive and that war is not just a game that one can opt out of; war is the real deal where people lose lives for whom and what they love. A day in a soldier’s life is long, hard and frightening where every second they must constantly take cover. The soldier in “4th25” wants people to listen to this song and understand what is going on in the world, in Iraq, and mainly in a soldier’s life. This song is for people who do not understand the true life in Iraq.

Through ethos, the soldier speaks the truth about the war and life in Iraq to those who need to hear it the most. He wants the people that do not understand the hardships of a soldier to learn through what he has to say. The soldier creates a strong sense of pathos to get the audience of this song to feel for him so that he can get his clearly get his message across. He knows life, for anyone, is not easy, but he wants people to see through his eyes how much harder it could be by painting the picture of the war and what he feels. The verse
“True gutter for you fuckers, think its gutter where you from, here is life by the second, this is everything wrong,”
helps show the audience how tough life can get. The soldier defines war in the verse when he says,
“The true definition of goin hard, no games, this is hundreds of bodies, in the streets when we bang.”
This shows that other soldiers and people will not make it out alive; people are dying every day, and he is forced to keep on with his duty of serving and protecting and putting his own life on the line for his country. Starting to feel for him yet?
“This is nothing yall been thru, yall aint seen shit, and this is not what’s on the news, what really happens ain’t printed,”
shows just how gory the war is; the soldier is saying that the war is so bad right now that the average American might not even be able to handle seeing it. The whole chorus in itself depicts the war through a soldier’s eye perfectly. He says that for their country, soldiers gamble their lives daily. He states that the war is the “Blood of soldiers of which the streets are now paved.” “But we don’t fold hands, the cards we are dealt get played,”
reveals that there is no time to stop fighting; they have to keep on no matter what happens or who they lose. War is not a game that you can just fold your cards and give up whenever you want.

The soldier also argues the fact that they are all just over there fighting, and that is all that they are doing. He says that all the soldiers are,
“playing with no type of goals.”
He wants those goals to be set so he has something to look forward to. He wants to be fighting for a set reason; through this the soldier develops a sense of logos, he begins to argue that fighting should be done for a reason, and in return he wants answers for what he is risking his life for. The soldier also says,
“Sure its politics back home, here its bullets thru our tissue.”
People are fighting because they are told and trained to do so, but they are dying as they go on. While people are here, back in the United States, arguing and talking things out, soldiers are literally losing their life; the soldier wants the war to hurry up and end.

The only negative aspect of this song is that the tone of soldier sounds very unhappy, and that he feels obligated to be in Iraq fighting. He does not want to be over in Iraq, and the only reason he is, is because he knows that someone has o do it. Although this tone is portrayed, this song still expands the knowledge of the war in Iraq to those ears that have been longing to hear it the most.

The artist successfully gets the point across that through the eyes of a soldier that war is faulty and definitely unwanted. Through the soldier, the artist allows one to see and feel how terrible and how much more there is to war when you are actually the one who is fighting. This song evokes strong emotion in the audience which really helps aid the soldier as he delivers his message about the hard filled life of being a soldier. The artist of “4th25 does a great job of putting you in a soldier’s shoes as he presents the truth behind the fighting, how scary and deathly the war really is, and how soldiers are losing their lives as they fight for us and for our country. Until one may truly understand, I invite you to join those soldiers and learn that risking your life for your country is an everyday thing, and that fear is sometimes unwelcome.