Contrast Between The Wartime Poetry

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Contrast between the wartime poetry of Jessie Pope and Wilfred Owen This essay will focus on the contrast between the wartime poetry of Jessie Pope and Wilfred Owen and how their work gave people different ideas about modern warfare; they are both trying to persuade people to do something but in very different ways using different techniques and uses of language. ‘Who’s for the Game?’ by Jessie Pope and ‘The Sentry’ by Wilfred Owen. These poems that I have studied are extremely different and their views are totally opposite. It is blatantly obvious that Wilfred Owen despises the war and doesn’t want anyone else to endure the suffering of trench warfare. Jessie Pope is of a different view, she was not a soldier like Owen and had no experience in warfare at all and especially trench fighting. Wilfred Owen’s poems are very sad and bleak; there is a harsh realistic feel to them. Jessie Pope on the other hand uses her poetry as an advertisement for the war and describes it as a ‘game’ and ‘fun’. The contrast is quite extreme, on one side the war is being described, by an ex-serviceman as a horrific, terrifying experience, but on the other side a comparison to a team game. The two writers were very different; Jessie Pope had a few excuses for misinforming the public with her poetry, firstly she was an inexperienced journalist and she did write ‘Who’s for the Game’ in the early stages of the war and therefore not many battles had been lost by the British army yet, so there was still a lot of confidence in the British public. Also there was a great deal of censorship and propaganda in the wartime media; therefore she couldn’t have had the facts about the military situation in Europe. The British public were lied to throughout the war to keep up the morale and the steady stream of new recruits. Jessie Pope’s poem is geared at making young British men join up to
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