His aim is not poetry, but to describe the full horrors of war. In this essay I have firstly decided to analyze two poems by the war poet Wilfred Owen, taken from his writings on the First World War. Both 'Dulce et Decorum est' and 'Disabled" portray Owen's bitter angst towards the war, but do so in different ways. Then I will analyze a very different poem 'Who's for the Game?' written by Jessie Pope, and finally contrast this with the poems by Owen.
This unspecified and detached account of this action and the death in general, shows the way in which the members of the platoon deal with the complexity of the war experience. So much so that O’Brien is able to turn the story of Curt Lemon to a love story. Many go into a war story expecting to hear about triumph, pride, courage, and sacrifice. However, O’Brien claims that a true war story will shatter all previous expectations of a war story and instead be about evil and more obscene things. O’Brien says, “A true war
His aim was to shed light on what the conditions of were like in “War to end all wars” and its trench-warfare. He didn’t live to see his poems published and the fame they wrought him as he was killed not long after recovering and returning to the front six days before the treaty of Versailles came into effect on the western front on November 4th 1918. Wilfred Owen laid out his poem “Dulce et decorum est.” with details about the men and their state of mind first, with the pace building and the action unravelling. In the second stanza the action is at full pace with gas shells (or Five-nines) dropping behind and around them, the fumbling and panic of fitting a gas mask and eventually the effects of gas on someone unfortunate enough to have not been able to fit his mask in time. The third stanza starts with the man being thrown into a wagon and driven away.
The true war story has no moral; ask one’s self, “Is war truly moral? How is killing others justifiable by society or god and how is it moral?” Citizens, as well as most frontline soldiers, try to find this moral to soften the cold hard truth of it all; While they try to soften the blow of reality, the stories lose their truth, they are bent, they are “skewed” as O’Brien would say. It is simply another way to lose a true war story. The last way of telling a true war story is through belief. O’Brien stated: “It comes down to gut instinct.
He also makes it seem like everything is crumbling around Paul, and destroying all hope of survival and return to normal life for anyone who had experienced the front line. This is very different from pro-war poetry, which makes war seem fun. Something Remarque does either subconsciously or very well, is to make you feel sorry for the German and Central Powers’ soldiers, and to grow a subliminal hate for the allied soldiers, no matter who’s side you came in on. The Textbook also does this well, but in reverse. The Textbook gives off a sense of dislike towards the Central Powers, and made them seem primitive and destructive for no reason.
Shell shock was a term only associated with World War one due to the major impact it had throughout the war. It was specifically used in Britain to express a psychological breakdown for a soldier from stress and trauma and fear from battles and fighting. It was hard to cure them as people and doctors considered them to be cowards therefore refused to offer help. Some men only received help depending on their high class or rank in the community, while others were even put on trial and even executed for being ‘cowards’. Shell shock caused a lot of problems and casualties for the country and for the war.
This source is useful because it shows what soldiers have apparently said about Haig. However, knowing that John hated Haig, he most likely only chose to publish the negative things about him, taking what soldiers have said minus the positive things. From the way this source is written a very negative and biased opinion is very noticeable ‘There can never be forgiveness for their sheer incompetence’ proving that what John Laffin has written is biased, This source also shows me what Haig and the other generals were doing during the war and that is why I find it reliable. Another very useful source is source B2, this source was written by P.Smith, a soldier at the Somme, it was written in 1916. This source is useful to me because it is coming from a man’s point of view; that was actually there and saw what went on ‘It was pure bloody murder.
Owen and Sassoon, as well as being renowned anti-WW1 poets, also had a role as soldiers in the war. Although not together, they both fought against the German army, and knew, better than most, the terrible conditions that WW1 soldiers were faced with. It was probably their first hand experience that made them feel great pity and respect to other ‘ordinary’ soldiers, the ones still fighting, as well as the ones laid to rest. Owen and Sassoon also had a fierce hatred about them towards war enthusiasts feeling that they were sending hard-working men to their deaths and loathing the way that they wrote about the war when they themselves had not seen nor taken part in the war apart from sending people to it. I believe that Owen and Sassoon chose to write poetry about the war as a way to express their feelings as well as a way to express their feelings as well as a way to contradict the propaganda and tell people what was really going on when the sent their relatives to war.
The first technique that I will be discussing is rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is a question asked for effect that neither expects nor requires an answer in the poem Exposure there two rhetorical questions and they both go back to Owens hatred of war the first quote is “what are we doing here?” even though the soldiers know they are here to fight for the war they have started to question it due to the fact that they are now facing a new war on which they dislike very much, this new war is the war against the weather the other rhetorical question is “is it that we are dying? ” during the war the soldiers wanted out of the war so badly the wanted to die. The hatred they felt for he war was flowing through there veins “but nothing happened” they were freezing cold and getting shot at by the enemy who would not want out of that? The next technique that I will be showing is repetition.
Unfortunately one soldier doesn’t get his mask on in time and suffers a horrific death. Owen then describes the nightmares he has after witnessing such an awful sight which leads up to the moral message at the end of the poem. Wilfred Owen uses a number of literary techniques to describe the physical and mental suffering of the soldiers marching back to base. For example imagery is expressed with the use of the simile “like old beggars, under sacks” is effective because it compares the young soldiers to old beggars showing that the war has prematurely aged them and the sacks refer to the heavy bags of equipment they carry on their backs. A similar example would be the simile “coughing like hags” again a reference to being old as a hag is an elderly woman.