The two poems ‘Small Pain in My Chest’ by Michael Mack and ‘A Doctor’s Journal Entry for August 6, 1945’ by Vikram Seth are similar as both are anti-war poems.

In Small Pain in My Chest, the soldier boy receives physical injury in war, goes through the physical pain as well as the mental and emotional agony and finally succumbs to his injury. The poet here wants to raise our pity for the soldier boy and raise a voice against war and warmongers.

In ‘A Doctor’s Journal Entry’, the poet tries to depict a picture of the explosion-hit people of Hiroshima after the deadly atomic bomb was dropped there on August 6, 1945. The narrator of the poem, the doctor and his wife receive severe injuries, go through mental agony as well and the doctor finally gets grounded with his pain and cannot reach hospital. They see several dead bodies and injured people on the way. Thus, the poet here tries to raise a war against war and such inhuman killings.

Both the poems are anti-war, anti-romantic and realistic in theme and tone.

Again, the two poems are narrative poems and written in first person narrative technique. While in Small Pain in My Chest, the narrator is a man who helped the soldier boy and watched him die, in A Doctor’s Journal Entry the narrator is a doctor who tells the whole story from his side. So, the two poems share similarities in their theme, message and form.

Now you may like to read Contrast between Small Pain in my Chest & Doctor’s Journal Entry.