A lie fuelled by propaganda which drowned the desperate amongst a green sea of choking gas. It is from these experiences that my poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ was inspired. At war, you will be degraded to ‘beggars’ and ‘hags’ and you will be hacked away so when you are at your most vulnerable, the gas attacks will send you into a desperate panic for clean air. The quickened pace stimulated by repetition and punctuation of the ‘Gas! GAS!
In “Dulce et Decorum est” one particular man is severely suffering from an awful gas attack. The gas is entering his lungs and drowning them, the rest of his friends have to merely watch as he is “Guttering and choking”. This would be a traumatic scene to experience as well as to witness; it would probably mentally scar the soldiers. At one point the Soldier dying directly asks the narrator for help, this is a very prominent part of the poem and emphasises the pure desperation. Also, similarly to “The Send Off” Owen continuously uses sarcastic and rude comments towards the government.
Owen is addressing the reader, who possibly doesn’t have the first hand experience of the war, and criticising the enthusiasm with which the war is described, particularly to vulnerable children (BBC, 2013). Owen uses the language and a variety of literary devices to vividly depict the true reality of war and suffering of the soldiers. This is evident from the first two lines where Owen uses simile to describe soldiers who are ‘like old beggars’ and ‘coughing like hags’ (lines 1,2). They are ‘blood-shod’, ‘drunk with fatigue’ (lines 6,7). Owen depicts soldiers not as undefeatable heroes, but desperate, weak, and pitiful human beings.
By using words like “sludge” and “trudge” contrasts with the way an average person perceives the idea of a soldier, they are usually seen as marching and singing songs to keep up spirits however this is not the case here. The second verse greatly enhances the mood by using conflict, danger and death the poet achieves this by creating a sense of urgency. The first words of the second verse are “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” this achieves the sense of haste the writer was trying to achieve by using short sentences and exclamation marks to grab the attention of the reader, also this contrasts with the first verse describing the sense of exhaustion to one of extreme panic and danger.
HOW DOES WILFRED OWEN CONVEY THE HORRORS OF WAR IN POETRY ? Many of Owen's poems direct anger towards the generals and those at home who have encouraged war.Owen's war poetry is a passionate expression of outrage at the horrors of war and of pity for the young soldiers sacrificed in it. It is dramatic and memorable, whether describing physical horror, such as in 'Dulce et Decorum Est' or mental torment such as in' Disabled'. His poetry evokes more from us than simple disgust and sympathy. Owen sympathizes with the vain young men who have no idea of the horrors of war, who are 'seduced' by others (Jessie Pope) and the recruiting posters.
“Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?” (6) His diction in this sentence is overwhelmingly powerful. He questions cutting large painful slits around worried eyes. A repulsive question showing the reader the endeavors the men faced in war. All of the rhetorical questions in the first stanza are symbolic of the insanity of the men fighting. The opening lines of the poem draw ironic parallels to the Bible.
“Generals Die in Bed” shows that humans are totally dehumanised by war. Discuss. ‘Generals Die in Bed’, written by Charles Yale Harrison demonstrates the tremendous impact that war can have on an ordinary man and the dehumanising acts that this entails. It shows that the battle of war can test the dignity and morals of men and the emotional impact of this can further destroy that of comradeship and mateship. However, when all dignity and values seem lost, signs of their former selves can, and do return.
Charles Yale Harrison’s novel Generals Die in Bed strips away the misconception that war and is glorious and in doing so strongly conveys to the reader the horrible reality that was the First World War Harrison emphasises the harshness of this reality through the constant bombardment of gruesome and desensitising events experienced by the Narrator. The dramatic degree of different between the fictional views held by the public and the truth is highlighted by the contrast of the soldier’s experiences and society’s false impressions. Furthermore the novel shows war for what it truly is, a dominant force with the power to consume, transform and scar all that stands in it’s way. Through GDIB the reader is given a raw and truthful depiction of the
The start of the poem (read first 3 lines) has quite a sarcastic tone and I think this shows how she feels towards the military glorifying war, doing whatever they can to convince you to join. As the poem progresses, Mikhail begins to mock the routine of war, (wakes the sirens…dispatches ambos…swings corpses through the air) therefore showing us the harmful effects of war. Today, I’ll be analysing the poem, The War Works Hard, by Dunya Mikhail. She’s an Iraqi-American poet who has been awarded the UN human rights award for freedom of writing. She has experienced war first hand and was forced to flee Iraq in 1996.
This simile is an important contrast of the information people were fed at the time of soldiers being strong and proud. Owen strips away the image of a glorified war to reveal the bitter and cruel nature of the war. The bitter imagery “Coughing like hags” and “but limped on” also develops the idea of these young man seeming old. Owen takes pity on these tired and weary soldiers as he describes them in the most unglamorous, inglorious manner. The statement “all went lame, all blind’, while being somewhat hyperbolic suggests that the soldiers had lost all previous objectives of war along with the line “cursed through sludge”.