How Far Do You Agree That the Attitudes Presented in This Poem Are at Odds with Those Found Elsewhere in the Selection? in Your Answer You Should Consider Form, Structure and Language, as Well as Subject Matter.

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(45 marks) To a large extent the attitudes presented in this poem are not at odds with those found in the selection. An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by W.B. Yeats presents similar attitudes to those presented in the earlier set of poems such ‘The volunteer’ by Herbet Asquith. They all present a positive view of war and are grateful for how the war has changed soldier’s lives for the better. In both poems life without war or before war is resented as unfulfilled and not glorious. In An Irish Airman Foresees His Death he uses the last line of the poem to compare his life before, during and after, ‘ A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death’. The use of chiasmus creates a crossing structure at the end of the poem. It creates a balancing of the claims of the future with the past in his mind and neither seems worthwhile what was in-between; serving Britain in world war one. Correspondingly in the Volunteer Asquith uses language to present the power and fulfilment of joining the war by saying that life before was ‘Half his life’’. This shows the distinct lack of fulfilment in the clerk’s life before going to war as it is as if war would complete his life and therefore if he were to die at war at least he would have lived a completely fulfilled life. Both The Volunteer and The dead use the structure of the poem to show how the war changes men’s lives for the better. The Volunteer uses the first stanza to show how drab life was before war and the dead uses the first stanza for a similar reason to present life as less ‘glorious’ before death. However it should be noted that the Volunteer is significantly more optimistic and idealistic of war than the attitudes presented in The Dead and An Irish Airman Foresees Death because Yeats is more preoccupied with the pleasure that flying brought to the soldier, ‘ impulse of delight’, neither of

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