Essay Questions

What is the primary issue Sontag takes with Virginia Woolf’s position regarding pacifism and unity?

At the beginning of Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag references Virginia Woolf's book Three Guineas, in which she talks about pacifism and the possible usage of war photography as a visceral means of uniting disparate types of people against the war. Additionally, a question is posed to Woolf by a male lawyer: "How in your opinion are we to prevent war?" She answers him by saying that he has no basis on which to speak of a 'we;' men and women see war very differently, and their differing perspectives do not allow them to have opinions on the same subject, as their frameworks by which they view the subject essentially mean that they can't see eye to eye.

Sontag, however, accuses Woolf of not going far enough with her argument of non-solidarity: Woolf gives in after the gender difference, saying that people will be united in their pacifism after viewing such horrendous images as the ones captured by war photographers. Sontag argues that these photographs will not actually have the uniform effect Woolf anticipates: when presented with an atrocious image of suffering, a person might be just as likely to support the war effort even more wholeheartedly in order to end suffering like that, as they would to petition the government to call off the war altogether.

Explain the effect of movies on war photography, as articulated by Sontag.

When they were initially published, war photographs were novel and astounding. Their effects, as seen through works such as Robert Capa's Death of a Republican Soldier, have proven to be profound, although not necessarily quite as effective as hoped. Regardless, as movies have been produced based on the same atrocities of war, bringing the terrors of the photograph to stunning and sobering life, the photographs no longer have the same effect. Once they begin to look like scenes from a movie rather than photographs capturing a moment in real life, they start to lose meaning and become just another image. Thus the directors of such movies, in bringing these photographs to life, have inadvertently and ironically eroded their foundations.