BULLETS IN THE AIR, BLOOD IN THE SOIL, INK ON THE PAGE: LEADERSHIP, WAR, TRAUMA, MEMORY AND HEALING IN THE SELECT ENGLISH POEMS

ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 89 BULLETS IN THE AIR, BLOOD IN THE SOIL, INK ON THE PAGE: LEADERSHIP, WAR, TRAUMA, MEMORY AND HEALING IN THE SELECT ENGLISH POEMS Ms. M.S. Sowganthiga English Literature, CDOE, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore superstarms.[email protected] Dr. S. Kalaivani Assistant Professor of English, CDOE, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore [email protected]u.in https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17283367 Abstract The leader or the leadership does not vanish when the mission ends. Bullets tore the air, blood soaked the soil, but ink preserved what war tried to erase. In the silence that follows conflict, leadership is tested, memory is fractured, and poetry bears witness. Where strategy ends, verse begins—carrying the weight of trauma, the echo of command, the fragments of memory, and the long road to healing. This paper explores Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” as a foundational elegy that fuses leadership, war, and healing into a poetic structure that anticipates 20th and 21st-century trauma literature. It’s a landmark elegy that redefined how poetry could mediate national trauma. By examining Whitman’s treatment of Abraham Lincoln’s death as both personal and national loss, the study highlights how natural imagery becomes a site for ethical remembrance and moral leadership. The paper then extends this framework by integrating voices from Wilfred Owen, Don DeLillo, John McCrae, Seamus Heaney, Mahmoud Darwish, W.B. Yeats, and Langston Hughes—authors whose works similarly convert grief into collective memory and resistance. This article-- using literary theory, historical stances, and leadership models-- argues that Whitman’s elegy and Lincoln's leadership brings out a worldwide tradition of poetic mourning in response to war and conflict. Keywords: Leadership, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Ethical Leadership, War Poetry, Trauma literature, Memory, Healing. Introduction War is not just a backdrop but a crucible for reckoning trauma, leadership, and memory. In this paper, we consider “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” as a pivot to examine and address the evolution of the 20th and 21st-century war literature. This comparative lens reveals thematic continuity across diverse geopolitical contexts and four key thematic clusters: representation, ethics, memory, and humanitarian concerns. The paper positions war poetry as both a personal witness and civic commentary. The works of Wilfred Owen, John McCrae, Seamus Heaney, Mahmoud Darwish, W.B. Yeats, and Langston Hughes are examined to understand how grief is transformed into ethical remembrance. By examining Whitman’s symbolic strategies alongside evolving theories of servant and transformational leadership, this article positions his elegy as a cornerstone text in the global literary response to conflict, memory, and national conscience. War Literature and the Emergence of Trauma Narrative In the vast terrain of 20th and 21st-century English literature, war has long functioned as the trajectory from shattered self to imaginative healing, becoming central to excellence in literature. World War I had destroyed the image of idealizing war. The combination of trench warfare, gas attacks, and mechanized killing resulted in severe physical and psychological wounds. The WWI era had a major literary shift, which marked the birth of modern war poetry. ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 90 Literature explores shattered identity and silenced experiences. War literature started using fragmented narration to show deep psychological damage. The victims’ memories were often scattered, and their identities were fractured. Generally, trauma resists linear storytelling, which creates non-narratable experiences. Literature used these techniques, such as interior narration for moral analysis and identity repair. Trauma makes it hard to tell a “normal” story, so characters struggled to tell stories in a chronological order. One good example of such a technique is given in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. WWII Literature continued the same trend, but it also began to explore resistance, survival, ethics, and reconstruction. Writers also analysed how people rebuild their identities and find meaning after such profound suffering. Comparative and Global Approaches The complex intersections of war, trauma, and remembrance in literature are organized into key thematic clusters that frame the scope of this study. They include representational strategies, ethical implications, memory, and humanitarian concerns. Whitman’s elegy is considered as pivot to understand the literary discourse of 20th and 21st-century English literature. The global literary responses to war from the trenches of Wilfred Owen to the occupied homelands of Mahmoud Darwish, this study uses a framework that highlights both thematic continuity and geopolitical specificity. It positions war poetry as both a personal witness and a civic commentary across cultures. Whitman’s Elegy as a National Blueprint for Healing Walt Whitman’s elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” is not just a commemoration for the 16th president of the US, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a great leader whose leadership was based on ethics and transformation. He led the country through the Civil War with strategies and preserved the Union. It was an early example of war literature, composed right at the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination. The poem demonstrates the blend of personal sorrow and collective grief. It mourns the leader and the soldiers, and creates a unified space for healing. The elegy reflects on the enduring nature of Lincoln’s leadership and legacy, within a setting of mourning and springtime (renewal). The Symbolic Architecture of Grief Whitman responds to Lincoln's death with a poetic architecture of grief. He uses three symbols of nature, which are the lilacs (rebirth or renewal), the star (leadership), thrush (grief, death, and transcendence). Lincoln’s death represents more than a personal tragedy; it represents a moral and spiritual fracture in the nation. The poem creates a structure where grief is not erased but embedded in memory and hope. Through layered natural symbolisms, Whitman converts this rupture into a process of healing. The contrast of nature with the violence makes the catastrophe stand out more. Whitman’s use of blooming lilacs during a national mourning offers beauty, hope, and peace, creates a contrast, and helps them process grief. Nature and the Irony of Renewal The poem begins in elegiac tones: “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, / And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night” (1-2). Here, Lincoln is not just a man, but a fallen “star”—a celestial compass extinguished too soon. The juxtaposition of nature (spring’s renewal) with death is a literary strategy found in later war texts, where natural cycles are contrasted with human loss. Like Whitman, the World War I poets or post-9/11 writers use ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 91 nature or the natural world to negotiate personal sorrow and public grief. In “Futility” written by Wilfred Owen, the speaker describes a dead soldier and wonders if the sun can bring him back to life. He asks, “Move him into the sun— / Gently its touch awoke him once” (1-2). The sun is generally a natural symbol of life and warmth, but here it is powerless to bring him back to life. This showcases the helplessness of nature against the irrevocable destruction caused by humans (war). The literary technique of blending nature with war channels the grief into natural cycles, thus binding death to regeneration. Whitman’s Poetic Leadership Philosophy Unlike Whitman’s more structured “O Captain! My Captain!” which foregrounds national victory and emotional connection, this poem offers a philosophical and symbolic portrayal of leadership, mortality, and legacy. Whitman uses the symbols of the lilac, the fallen star, and the thrush to convey the complexity and moral foundation of Lincoln’s leadership. The elegy mirrors modern trauma narratives where linear expression is insufficient, and memory returns in fragments. Whitman writes: “I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring” (3), showing how his grief keeps coming back every year, like a cycle. Later war poems also continued this style--seasons, objects, and symbols are used to bring back memories of loss. The poem’s long central section traces Lincoln’s funeral procession across a grieving nation. As the coffin moves through fields and cities, the poem enacts a ritual of public mourning. Bells toll, dirges echo, faces remain unbared. 20th and 21st-century war literature narratives become a vessel for national healing. Whitman’s symbolism creates therapeutic structures, and each element helps the narrator and reader reframe death not as an end but as part of an integrated, painful continuum. From Fragmentation to Continuity: Lincoln’s Ethical Leadership The hermit thrush’s song, appearing later in Whitman’s elegy, is a turning point: a moment of quiet consolation amid sorrow. Lincoln’s leadership, marked by sacrifice and vision, becomes emblematic of a nation’s lost moral centre. His assassination is treated not only as a personal loss but also as a historical trauma. Whitman positions Lincoln’s leadership as ethical and servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1977) through the themes of sacrifice, empathy, and service. He had a clear vision and gave visionary guidance (Bennis, 2009) to his people through his speeches. Lincoln prioritized the nation and people over personal gain 9 (Sinek, 2009). Lincoln was a transformational leader who shaped democratic ideals and unity (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985). His values and ideas, such as unity, compassion, and emancipation, remain in practice in American democracy, much like the lilacs over his grave. This is the ‘pinnacle leadership’ (Maxwell, 2011), where a leader’s impact sustains because of who they are and what they represent. Literature continues this way to honor fallen soldiers and leaders as icons of moral struggle, sources of inspiration, or reminders of societal responsibilities. The narrator’s grief has not disappeared, but it has become bearable: “Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul” (205). This poetic twining reflects how art and memory work together to convert trauma into meaning. It is a healing instinct found in modern and postmodern trauma literature. Literature as Memorial and Moral Archive: War, Representation, and Ethics This enduring or everlasting nature of war poetry lies in its ability to convey the cruelty of war and the emotional truths, which are often lost in political narratives. Following Whitman’s foundational elegy, the poetry of World War I & II must be explored as it provides one of the most devastating literary responses to war and conflict in English literature. These poems ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 92 question the cost of war, and depict the ethics, humanitarian concerns, and emotional dimensions of trauma and reconstruction towards healing. Lament and Leadership in Wilfred Owen Wilfred Owen, like Whitman, was both participant and witness. Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” offers a lament not only for the fallen comrades but for the failure of leadership that sent them to die. His poetry insists that a leader has the duty to protect his people, not betray them. He asks: “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” (1), invoking the same funeral atmosphere as Whitman’s funeral train. Owen’s use of stark imagery and simile ‘as cattle’ highlights the impersonal brutality of war, that is, the dehumanized slaughter of lives like cattle. He critiques how war denies these young soldiers the dignity of proper funerals. Owen does not just mourn the loss but also blames the war machine that ruins young lives. Both the poets ultimately elevate the dead: Whitman through symbols of renewal and transcendence; Owen through truth that demands remembrance and moral clarity. McCrae’s Mobilized Memory John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” is more than just a sad poem that offers a tribute to the dead soldiers. The speaker is a fallen soldier. He asks the living to honor the dead by continuing the fight and to “Take up our quarrel with the foe” (10) and “hold it high”. He does not want their sacrifice to go in vain. These lines invoke both mourning and rallying. The imagery of the red poppies blooming amid the graves reflects the same symbolic strategy Whitman had used with the lilacs. Nature becomes a canvas where human grief and sorrow are painted. This passing of the torch converts mourning into duty. The elegy refuses closure; it weaponizes remembrance. Like Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d ”, McCrae uses nature, specifically flowers, as a vessel for national grief. The red poppies, blooming amid rows of crosses, mirror Whitman’s lilacs that grow ‘with delicate colored blossoms’ near Lincoln’s body. Both poets use flora to eternalize loss, anchoring public memory in natural recurrence. Whitman’s star drooping in the western sky and McCrae’s poppies blooming between crosses both render absence visible: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row...” (1-2) (McCrae) “Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, Lo, the most loved, the Northern Star…” (Whitman) Nature does not simply witness grief—it becomes its emblem. In both poems, flowers grow where bodies lie, marking the space between death and legacy. Vision and Voice: Langston Hughes and the Poetics of Awareness In “I Look at the World,” Langston Hughes writes, “I look at my own body / With eyes no longer blind” (11–12). This self-recognition is the beginning of ethical leadership—a hallmark of Whitman’s Lincoln. His verses signal a sense of awakening. Hughes, like Whitman, believed that the leader must first be morally awake. His poetry doesn’t just mourn injustice—it musters hope and courage. Leadership is not rhetorical but lived: in the trenches, in resistance, in memory. Together, these poets sustain Whitman’s legacy of the elegy as a political and spiritual act. Their works create an architecture for healing. This architecture is built on ethical remembrance as these poets do not merely mourn but bear witness, and transform the personal and collective grief into a call for justice and moral clarity. ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 93 Heaney’s Mourning: Elegy, Silence, and Political Conscience Seamus Heaney’s “Casualty” also integrates personal memory and political crisis. Much like Whitman to Lincoln, Heaney’s work moves beyond personal loss to question broader societal issues. The speaker mourns a friend killed during the Northern Irish Troubles in a pub bombing after Bloody Sunday. The poem pens the impact of the political violence on ordinary people. The dead fisherman was an apolitical figure who was caught in the web of political violence. Heaney reflects on the loss and expresses how he became an emblem of moral complexity: “How culpable was he?” (74). This line highlights the ethical tensions in modern conflict. The use of water imagery: “Like blossoms on slow water” and elegiac tones evokes Whitman’s lilacs and thrush. In this way, Heaney contributes to a contemporary memory culture where literature not only preserves the dead but also questions the terms of their death. The poetry becomes a form of ethical witnessing, not just memory. Siege and Survival: Mahmoud Darwish and Resistance through Elegy Mahmoud Darwish’s “A State of Siege” was written during the Second Intifada. He continues this course in a different cultural narrative. The poem reflects on endurance, civic duty, and poetic responsibility. The lines “We do what the prisoners do/ We sow hope.” (3,5) express resilience amid adversity and hardships. He writes: “I have no more earth to lose”. Nature imagery in the poem such as doves, olive groves, rain, golden autumn, and blue sky explains how life can be peaceful and beautiful. At the same time, the poem talks about gunfire and destruction, which creates an emotional impact. Flowers and birds, like in Whitman’s elegy, stand for hope and surviving hard times. Putting peaceful nature and violence together makes the theme very powerful. Yeats and the Mythologizing of National Trauma: “A Terrible Beauty” Yeats’ poem “Easter, 1916” meditates on leadership, martyrdom, and the cost of sacrifice for the transformation. The refrain “A terrible beauty is born” expresses the paradoxical birth of new political realities that come through violence and loss. Like Whitman, Yeats is also caught between admiration and mourning; he immortalizes the leaders of the Rising, yet questions the cost of their death. This poem’s use of the symbolic nature, “the stone in the midst of all”, mirrors Whitman’s style: fixed symbols in a shifting moral landscape. Yeats ultimately recognizes the transformation of ordinary people into eternal figures, a process that Whitman enacts through Lincoln. Collectively, these poets represent a transhistorical dialogue about how literature reclaims trauma, reconstructing it into a purpose and reimagining a healing. Whitman’s Ethical Imprint: Leadership Remembered Through Loss Rather than power or charisma, leaders of great wars like Lincoln are remembered for sacrifice, humility, empathy, and vision. His death is not merely an end but a moral inheritance. Whitman writes: “For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands— And this for his dear sake, Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul.” (204–206) The poem mourns not just a person but an ideal for ethical and visionary leadership. This vision transcends the American Civil War. By making grief a source of moral clarity, Whitman elevates the elegy into a unified space where public loss becomes an ethical call to action. ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 94 Conclusion Poetry does not merely record the past but reclaims and reshapes pain into purpose. This paper examined how Whitman’s elegy turns grief into ethical reflection and influenced later war poetry. All these poets use poetry to link sorrow with public responsibility. By linking personal sorrow with public memory, these poets show how literature can help societies process trauma. Nature plays a vital role in processing grief. Literature keeps that memory alive. The true triumph of leadership lies not in conquest, but in the legacy of the leadership that outlives it. These findings highlight poetry’s enduring ability to help societies process trauma and reflect on leadership. References Barker, Pat. Regeneration. Plume, 1993. Bennis, Warren. On Becoming a Leader. Basic Books, 2009. Darwish, Mahmoud. “State of Siege”. Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché, in the Butterfly’s Burden, Archipelago Books, 2007, pp. 109–139. DeLillo, Don. Falling Man. Scribner, 2007. Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books, 1995. Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Leadership: In Turbulent Times. Kindle ed., Simon & Schuster, 2018. Greenleaf, Robert K. Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Paulist Press, 1977. Heaney, Seamus. “Casualty”. Ronnow Poetry, www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/heaney/Casualty.html. Accessed 1 Aug. 2025. Heaney, Seamus. Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966–1996. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. Hughes, Langston. “I Look at the World”. Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poem/i-look-world. Accessed 1 Aug. 2025. Lawrence, D. H. The Prussian Officer and Other Stories. Penguin, 1986. Maxwell, John C. The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential. Kindle ed., Center Street, New York, 2011. McCrae, John. In Flanders Fields. Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ poems/47380/in-flanders-fields. Accessed 1 Aug. 2025. National Army Museum. "Easter Rising." National Army Museum, www.nam.ac.uk/explore/easter-rising. Accessed 1 Aug. 2025. O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Owen, Wilfred. The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen. Edited by C. Day-Lewis, New Directions, 1965 Owen, Wilfred. “Futility”. Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ poems/57283/futility-56d23aa2d4b57. Owen, Wilfred. “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poem/anthem-doomed-youth. Accessed 1 Aug. 2025. Sinek, Simon. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't. Kindle ed., Portfolio Penguin, 2014. Sinek, Simon. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Portfolio, 2009. “The Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish.” Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. 29, no.3, 2000, pp. 68–85. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2676526. Accessed 1 Aug. 5. “The President Abraham Lincoln”, The White House, www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-whitehouse/presidents/abraham-lincoln/. Accessed 30 July. 2025. ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 95 “Whitman, Walt.” Memories of President Lincoln. Google Books, 1912, https://www.google. co.in/books/edition/Memories_of_President_Lincoln/jYrAQAA. Whitman, Walt. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Leaves of Grass, edited by David S. Reynolds, Oxford UP, 2021, pp. 395–405. “Whitman, Walt.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopaedia, Wikimedia Foundation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman. Accessed 30 July. 2025. Yeats, W. B. “Easter, 1916.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43289/easter-1916. Yeats, W. B. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Wordsworth Editions, 1994.