War

McGinley alludes to no less than twelve wars in her poem. Although she mentions them almost lightly, she assumes that readers will inherently understand that she does not mean to take the topic of war in anything less than a serious tone. For she and the rest of the world, when this poem was written, were still feeling the aftershocks of one of the worst of all wars, World War II. On August 6 and 9, 1945, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by the first atomic bombs used in warfare, which led to the end of the war and established the United States as one of the most powerful nations in the modern world. One of the aftermaths of World War II was the Cold War, which was at its height when McGinley wrote her poem. The world's two strongest powers, the USSR and the United States...