Compare the Ways in Which Owen Portrays the Impact of War on Soldiers in These Two Poems:

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Compare the ways in which Owen portrays the impact of war on soldiers in these two poems: You should consider: -The situations Owen describes -The feelings he conveys -The language he uses and its affects Wilfred Owen was an English poet-one of the leading poets of the First World War and a soldier. Being a soldier himself during the war, he gave his personal views and interpretation on the war in each of his poems. His poems reflected the realism of the war, in contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the majority of patriotic poets such as Rupert Brooke. Both Conscious and the Letter portray his individual thoughts diversely, and leave an emotional impact on the reader. One predominant comparison between the two poems is the environment each poem is set in and how the two characters react to them. Conscious is set in a hospital, in which the character is trying to assimilate what’s going on around him as he is confused, in contrast to The Letter which is set on the front line in which the character is fully aware about everyone and everything around him. In Conscious, “His fingers wake, and flutter; up the bed”, he is trying to reassure himself by making sure that he is safe, it seems to be an instinctive reaction after being a soldier to be aware. He seems to be feeling alone, whereas in The Letter there is a sense of someone being there and company as there is a movement of the soldier writing the letter and a conversation with one of his comrades. In Conscious, the soldier is drifting in and out of consciousness. In the first stanza, he drifts into consciousness and the pain that he’s going through to receive consciousness is evident, “His fingers wake, and flutter; up the bed. His eyes come open with a pull of will”. He has to come out of sleep, his ‘fluttering fingers’ suggesting imperfect bodily control, though his ‘his

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