A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible in order to get relief.
John Dos PassosRead
There's something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting out at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote evokes the beauty and excitement found amid the chaos of war.
In this vivid description by John Dos Passos, the juxtaposition of the serene sound of a plane flying overhead with the violent chaos of warfare underscores the complex emotions tied to such experiences. It suggests a paradox where beauty can exist even in the most tumultuous and destructive circumstances, highlighting the interplay of fear, awe, and the human capacity to find fascination in the unfathomable.
Themes
WarBeautyChaosConflictAwe
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the complexities of human emotion during wartime.
More from John Dos Passos
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The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs
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U.S.A. is the speech of the people
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