Soldiers frequently got injured and lots of them died in battles or of illness in the deplorable conditions of the army. The poem is indignantly ironic about the war and emphasizes the bitter aftermath. 'The Soldier' focuses on the glory of sacrifice for one’s country, not mentioning the process of sacrifice, i.e. being injured and dying. Brooke writes about the dead soldier instead of one that has survived.
Due to his plight, he sees the bridge as a dead end for him: “I am seventy six years old. I have come twelve kilometers now and I think now I can go no further.”(2) The war has affected his state of mind and destroyed the love of life in him. Through this character Hemingway is actually making an example of the old man WITH the aim of describing the effects of war on the state of mind of innocent civilians. Neither his tired body nor his confused mind seems capable of grasping or coping with the sudden collapse of his entire world. By the end of the short story, the narrator, who is a soldier in this war, , reports to the reader that the old man “got to his feet, swayed from side to side and then sat down backwards in the dust.”(3) This description is very telling because it reflects the inevitability of death when it comes to war.
"Owen's war poem do not always deal with the horrors of the battlefield but with life before and after the fighting." With close reference to at least two of poems explore this aspect of his poetry. Wilfred Owen's poems Disabled and Wild With All Regrets both deal with the aspect of life before and after the fighting. These aspects are presented differently with different themes, where Disabled highlights the physical impacts of war and what one misses out on such as due to them such as sex and love. Wild With All Regrets showcases the friendship and camaraderie between soldiers though the poem is about a soldier on his deathbed saying goodbye to a friend.
Compare how loss is presented in 'Journey's End' and 'Not So Quiet' in the light of the opinion, 'So much more than life was lost in the Great War'. RC Sheriff’s Journey’s End is an anti-war play set in World War One. The play takes place over a series of three days. In this essay I shall be discussing how those who participated in the war effort lost more than their lives. The war bought about many changes, not only was a generation of men lost; but there was a loss of innocence, a loss of humanity and most importantly a loss of self.
The poem ‘Rain’ by Edward Thomas is an autobiographical poem about a soldier who is to fight in the first World War. The soldier is currently training in the English countryside at the time of writing the poem and is visualising his fate on the battlefield. The theme of the poem is the futility of war and death. The poet’s attitude throughout is one of depression, sadness and anxiety because he is completely certain of his fate on the battlefield. The poem is structured using free verse and one stanza.
It seems like an odd conversation but the men were using whatever they could to get their minds off of the war. “Gentlemen your Verdict” is about a commander in a war who gets placed himself in a tricky situation he has to choose between morals and saving lives. “War” reminds me of while the war was happening, the families are morning their loses and “G.Y.V” is more after the war since it’s a flashback. I compared these because for me they are connected into one story. The two stories were written at different times “War” was based in 1914 but wasn’t published until
War is not depicted as glorious or patriotic but rather as the destroyer of young lives as the realities of the hardships faced are exposed. The unnamed soldier in Disabled is key, as Owen refers to the soldier as “he” we never truly get the sense of whom he is talking about. The anonymity of the soldier suggests that he is representative of all soldiers. The soldier initially a footballer now finds himself in a wheelchair. In the beginning of the poem the soldier starts to reminisce about his past.
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
Wilfred Owen uses contrast in this poem to help show the major changes for example “ There was an artist silly for his face, For it was younger than his youth, last year. Now, he is old; his back will never brace” This talks about before the war he would have people wanting his picture. But now no-one wants to see him, he looks old even though he is still young and his back will not support him. Many soldiers lost their limbs in battle and this poem helps people realise the pain the soldiers went through both physical and mental. “Mental Cases” is about the men who went crazy due to the events of World War I. it helps explain how these men looked with the use of half-rhymes, metaphors and similes “ drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skullls teeth wicked?” This talks about what the men looked like after going crazy.
Speech – Good Morning students and teachers today I will be talking about some Wilfred Owen Poems that conveyed the experiences of wars. The two poems that will be discussed are “Dulce Et Decrorum Est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. Many of his poems show that wars are bad and it is not needed. Wilfred Owen was born on the 18th march 1893 and died on 4 November 1918, he is best known as one of the most powerful war poets, who detailed the reality and horrors of the First World War. Owen's first experience of the war was in hospitals treating the wounded soldiers.