How Are Emotions Expressed in Ww1 Poems

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At the outbreak of World War 1 hundreds of thousands of young men enlisted in the Army. This was fuelled by the jingoistic glorification of war and associated propaganda. This included posters of strong fit and brave young men wearing smart uniforms believing ‘Dulce et Decorum Est. (it is honourable to die for one’s country) Siegfried Sassoon, and to a lesser degree Wilfred Owen believed this propaganda and both enlisted in 1915. In this essay I will explore the emotions and moods portrayed in two poems, ‘Suicide in the Trenches’ by Siegfried Sassoon and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen. Siegfried Sassoon was twenty-eight years old when he joined the Army, this was old by the standards at the time with the average age of recruits being 16/17 years. Sassoon was a 2nd lieutenant in charge of leading these boys as he seen them. He was nicknamed ‘Mad Jack’ for his near suicidal exploits on the battlefield. He survived the war living to eighty years old but was deeply affected by the horrors of war. Wilfred Owen, also a lieutenant, was shot on the 4th November 1918, one week before Armistice Day. Owen met Sassoon at Craighart Hospital in Edinburgh, where Owen was suffering from shell shock after being blown up by a mortar. Sassoon’s poem, ‘Suicide in the Trenches’ has a simple four line stanza with four stanzas in total. This regimental stile of writing is reflecting a regimented lifestyle. Sassoon wrote romantic poems about war before he was sent to the front lines. This is reflected in the first stanza as it is a cheery, upbeat start. ‘Who grinned at life in empty joy’. This boy was happy and carefree. This poem refers to a ‘soldier boy’ and has a rhyming couplet structure such as ‘boy’ and ‘joy’ or ‘dark’ and ‘lark’ This is like the structure of children’s rhythms, a subtle way of illustrating how young the soldier is. The alliteration in line 3 ‘slept
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