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The limits of abhorrence

by
September 2009, no. 314

Killing: Misadventures in violence by Jeff Sparrow

Melbourne University Press, $34.99 pb, 282 pp

The limits of abhorrence

by
September 2009, no. 314

On 4 October 1918, one month before he was killed, Wilfred Owen wrote to his mother describing the ‘mop-up’ operations in which his division was engaged. ‘It passed the limits of my Abhorrence. I lost all my earthly faculties and fought like an angel.’ Owen assured his beloved mother that his nerves were ‘in perfect order’. This letter, written by the poet who gave us ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, the metaphor of a generation sacrificed like cattle on the battlefield, is a terrible indictment of war and its effect on the human psyche.

Killing: Misadventures in violence

Killing: Misadventures in violence

by Jeff Sparrow

Melbourne University Press, $34.99 pb, 282 pp

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