Compare and Contrast the four poems ‘For the Fallen’, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, ‘The Soldier’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ All of these four poems are war poems but are written from different perspectives. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ and ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ are both written by Wilfred Owen, a soldier on the front line. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ portrays, using metaphors, how the soldiers’ deaths go without a funeral fit for such heroes. ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ is literally about a gas attack on some English soldiers , but metaphorically it is an ironic poem which pokes fun at the phrase ‘It is right and proper to die for one’s country.’ ‘For the Fallen’ is written by Laurence Binyon, a man too old to fight for his country. The subject of ‘For the Fallen’ is an elegy reminding us how many men died so that we may live.
Anthem For Doomed Youth is a sonnet written by Wilfred Owen about the realities of war. Wilfred Owen was a soldier during WW1 and therefore understands fully the true experiences of war. He was against war and was appalled by the effects of war on people and their families. The purpose of the poem is to inform the public of the true realities of war and how young men where dying needlessly. This was because during war times the media would tell the public that the war going great and that the men where doing just fine, but this obviously just wasn’t true.
After reading war poems we are able to get a true idea of how horrific war was and learn of its negative consequences. The main idea in war poems becomes apparent when reading Wilfred Owen’s poem, Dolce et Decorum Est. In the last stanza, the lines: “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old lie: Dolce et Decorum Est, Pro Patria Mori” demonstrates the main idea. ‘Dolce et Decorum est’ is a Latin saying, which means ‘it is sweet and right’. The poet is saying that people should not talk about war as enthusiastically as it gives the impression that war is glorious.
I am going to do this by indicating what methods and techniques they use to affect the reader and make them feel emotion towards the soldiers. Owen uses irony with the title Dulce et decorum est because it translates to it is a “Sweet and right thing”. This is irony because the poem is trying to say that war is bad and not a sweet and right thing. Owen also uses these words to hit out to Jessie Pope, who was a propaganda poet and Owen disliked her. Pope thinks that war was good and it was Ok to die during it but Owen strongly disagreed with that.
This can be seen in his two poems ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Parable of the Old man and the Young’. Through these poems, Owen is motivated by a powerful examination of people during a highly negative state. Focusing on the exhaustion of soldiers and their movement throughout the battlefield is one of Owens key techniques throughout his poetry. When it comes to Owens poetry, the impact war has on the soldiers is clear, this is evident in his poem, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. Soldiers who go off to war are meant to be healthy and strong, however, this poem portrays the soldiers as old and unhealthy people.
Not So Sweet Nor Becoming Wilfred Owen was a man of two professions: writing and fighting. As a soldier in World War 1, Owen was horrified by his experiences and the tragedies he witnessed. These memories motivated him to write poems that relayed the truths of war. “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is perhaps the most famous of these pieces. When looking for a poem to analyze, this one jumped out at me; immediately upon reading its title, I thought of another piece of art that references the same phrase.
And this helps to make the reader to consider about the roll of honor for the people. And with the literature devices use from the poem we can understand how the poet has shown her sorrow towards the victims in the wars. In Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen has described a gas attack during World War One with his strong emotions. He is strongly denying the concept of serving your country is glorious. The language used in the section about the gas attack represents both the pain of the victims from the gas attack and the effect on those who have seen the scene.
Identify what you consider to be the authors main purpose in producing each of the texts you have studied and explore, in depth, one or two main techniques used to achieve this purpose. The poems ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ by Wilfred Owen and ‘Suicide in the trenches’ by Siegfried Sassoon used the techniques of personal pronouns and irony to convey the poets feelings towards war. Before Owen and Sassoon all war poetry had been patriotic and was used to encourage recruitment of young men. However both Owen and Sassoon had witnessed the horrors of trench warfare first hand and their poetry was therefore realistic about the harsh realities of war. Owen commented on his poetry that ‘my subject is war, and the pity of it… all a poet can do is warn.’ Owen and Sassoon were both trying to warn young men against war and inform the public on how brutal and disgusting war actually is In both poems, after describing the obscene conditions of war and the impact that these conditions had on the soldiers, the poets dedicated a stanza to condemning the reader on any encouragement they may have had towards young men going to war.
Introduction Paragraph 1 In his poem, Strange Meeting, Owen recreates the horror of war through his shocking and realistic account of the experiences faced by soldiers on the battlefields during World War One. “And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, - By his dead smile I knew we stood in hell”. Owen has used first person and a pararhyme to reinforce the brutality and horrors of war. Owen came to the realisation, by talking to this man, that no one there was truly alive, breathing or not breathing. What mattered was the truth of war and what he felt he must share and let people know.
Anthem for Doomed Youth Wilfred Owen wrote out of his intense personal experience as a soldier, he wrote with unrivalled power of the physical, moral and psychological trauma of the First World War. The atrocities he witnessed in his career as a soldier left him scarred for life. His poetry is a vehement protest against the evils of futile warfare. In a letter to his mother, dated May 1917, he wrote, "I am more and more a Christian. .