His sonnets were made to be passionate and patriotic and to show hope and rid the fear of future soldiers. The first sonnet is ‘Peace’, already from the title it is focusing on a positive message. Messages and tones that glorify the war and the deaths, focusing on the implementation that death in war is a glorious moment and that it should not be feared. Death was silenced and only the brighter side of war was shown to the public so nobody would be afraid. His use of patriotism, honour and enthusiasm gives across a positive tone to the poem.
He opened the door to what few people imagined could be depicted by tapping into his horrific memories, but questions of his allegiance to his country arise when taking a deeper look into the life and works of Owen. Owen was an anti-war poet seeking to denounce the war while profiting monetarily. Many aspect of his life contribute to his selfish personality. Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 to a seemingly affluent family; his grandfather, Edward Shaw, was the mayor of Owen’s birth town, Oswestry, England. The Owen’s lived a comfortable life in a nice house on wealth of Shaw.
Dulce et decorum est is a poem by Wilfred Owen written during world war I, while he was in the trenches. The title is the first part of a quotation by Horace’s Odes: “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori” that means “It’s sweet and honourable to die for your country” but the whole poem aims at contradicting the title. His style is experimental in fact he uses the free verse. In the first stanza Owen describes the subject, that are the soldiers, through similies such as “Old beggars” and “Hags” because he wants to show us anti-heroic figures, going against the propaganda that encourages young men to go fighting and dying for their country preaching the ideals of nationalism, glory and courage. Owen describes us horrible and degraded scenes of the real life in war and he adds emphasis using allitterations: of the b in the first line Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, of the kn in the second, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, of the m in the fifth, Men marched asleep.
Do they matter?-those dreams from the pit?... You can drink and forget and be glad, And people won't say that you're mad; For they'll know you've fought for your country And no one will worry a bit. Critics have called the Sassoon's speaker "morbidly complacent." His speaker uses a sarcastic tone, which Dalton Trumbo borrows in his novel When Johnny Got His Gun... The poem uses a question and answer structure which satirizes the uber-patriotic notion that it is noble to die (or, in this case, to become an amputee, a blind man, or a mad man) for one's country.
Lindsey Pugh AP Literature For Whom the Bell Tolls Answers 1. The title For Whom the Bell Tolls symbolizes a feeling of community in the sense that one man’s death effects mankind as a whole. This directly addresses the reason Robert Jordan joined the war in the first place, although he begins to question these values as the novel goes on. However at the very end, he readopts his values of community by somewhat sacrificing himself for the group to kill the fascists. In addition a church bell ringing symbolizes death.
As I mentioned before the topic dealt with in this poem is the war and patriotism. It is from the viewpoint of a soldier and he is explaining how every death of an English soldier on another land is a victory. Rupert Brooke uses imagery to help you see the text as it progresses. Line one is ‘If I should die, think only this of me:’ this implies that Rupert Brooke believes everything he has written. And if he was to die in another country he would be proud.
Owen seems to suggest that the artificialities of love pale in comparison to the true honour and love of men on the battlefield – men who cough, struggle, and die. Owen is calling attention to the authenticity of these soldiers' actions and finding within them meaning Alternatively this can interpreted as the soldier has a somewhat erotic feeling towards war and aspects of war e.g patriotism and his doubts for example Red lips are not so red” . shows that Owen is losing interest in fighting the war as he comes to realize its true form. This is then emphasized in line 5 with “your eyes lose lure”. Which show a versions of reality theme which is also found in another Owen poem; Dulce Et Decorum est where Owen shows the horrors of war and uses it to send a message to people at home who are as he refers to a common patriotic quote as “ The old lie”.
Hardy uses slang to get the reader involved in the poem, this allows Hardy to make a strong point in highlighting the irony behind how war can turn friend into foe simply by association and sway the reader against war. Both poems are against war and the reasons and ethics behind them. Though Hardy uses a more direct approach to get his point across, both poems successfully complete the objective that the poets had for them, which was to open the reader's eyes to the true reality of war. In "Dulce et decorum est", Owen is showing how the press and public at home were comforting themselves in the belief that all the young men dying in the war were dying noble, heroic deaths. Owen on the other hand, shows how the reality was quite different; the young men were dyeing and deaths in the trenches.
What ‘Spring Offensive’ tells us is that, when the soldiers were back in their home country, they were told that it would all be easy and over very quickly, they would be heroes. This is not the case as Owen shows us. In this poem we learn that there was a lot of sad waiting around, some waiting for their inevitable death and others depressed over losses of friends, showing that their was time to reflect on the war as Owen did. Also the use of the phrase, “warm fields” is very much contrasting to that of the coldness of war and its own inner brutality. This links with Exposure as we learn that the coldness of the war even effects those in charge, the officers, on the same side as the soldiers Owen was describing, were sending them to their own death to no avail, causing the question to be asked, “what are we doing here?” The repetition of
The poet emphasised the cruel and horrible side to war by realistically describing the dead soldier, “the white eyes writhing in his face.” As the wagon he was “flung” into jolted, his blood “came gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs.” The poet conveyed the theme of his poem very successfully. He was angered by “the old lie.” “Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori” – it is a good and fitting thing to die for ones country. He wanted people to realise that war was a senseless waste of lives and he managed that through describing the horrors in vivid detail. Roger McGough shared this view but expressed it differently in his poem “Why Patriots Are a Bit Nuts in