Question

In "The Song of the Mud," what is the most significant aspect of war represented by mud?

Answer 1

Answer:

The most significant aspect of war represented by mud is:

C.  the power of war to strip individuals of value

Explanation:

"The Song of Mud" is a poem by author Mary Borden. The speaker talks of the mud in a contrasting way. The mud is slimy, unwelcome, yet beautiful. It covers everything and everyone - hills, clothes, guns. It creates a new style, a new fashion. It stops things, thus stopping war. However, and this is the most significant aspect talked of in the poem, mud swallows the bodies of the men who died at war.

The problem here is not mud. Mud is not guilty of killing those great and honorable men - war is. War has stripped them of their value, forcing them to die away from home, to be buried by mud in such a way no one will ever find them - as if they never existed. Men who could have been with their families, enjoying the little perks and difficulties of life, are now rotting in the mud, as if their lives were worth nothing:

This is the hymn of mud-the obscene, the filthy, the putrid,  

The vast liquid grave of our armies. It has drowned our men.  

Its monstrous distended belly reeks with the undigested dead.  

Our men have gone into it, sinking slowly, and struggling and slowly disappearing.  

Our fine men, our brave, strong, young men;  

Our glowing red, shouting, brawny men.  

Slowly, inch by inch, they have gone down into it,  

Into its darkness, its thickness, its silence.  

Slowly, irresistibly, it drew them down, sucked them down,  

And they were drowned in thick, bitter, heaving mud.  

Now it hides them, Oh, so many of them!  

Under its smooth glistening surface it is hiding them blandly.  

There is not a trace of them.  

There is no mark where they went down.

The mute enormous mouth of the mud has closed over them.