‘Mental Cases’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ are two outstanding pieces created by Owen, each using techniques such as hyperboles, personification and imagery that associate the two poems, giving us, the readers, a bigger picture of what is happening in the poets eyes. In the poem Mental Cases Owen expresses his perception that war is taking away a soldiers future, a life full of happiness. It illustrates the bloodshed and suffering of war, using a series of graphical description of young men who are treated for war-related illness’, such as shellshock. It was a heart-wrenching poem for Owen because he himself was a patient of shellshock. The repetition of question marks and dashes illustrate the confusion and frustration witnessing Owens fellow comrades, it is a demanding tone begging for explanation for the entrapment of victims.
In order to express her feminist ideas, Atwood uses criticisms of Offred and Janine’s complacency juxtaposed with positive feminist role models like Moira. When Offred has the affair with the commander, she is helping to sate the loneliness and desires of a man who is part of her oppression. She is therefore partly responsible for her oppression because she is helping her oppressor. As Barbara Ehrenriech¹ said, Offred’s character ‘has sunk too far into the...household she serves’. Although this can be seen as a failure of Atwood to create a strong feminist character, it seems to be more intended as an anti-role model, making Offred’s complicity obviously undesirable.
This notion is further emphasised through the use of jargon in the lines, “The Japs used to weigh us, to see how thin our bodies could get before we started dying”. This statement implies the nature of the camp to be brutal and unforgivable. Misto has incorporated both visual images and jargon to create an effective sense of authority to therefore relive their experience of war through memory. Likewise, the poem Dulce et decorum est by Wilfred Owen is how the post himself saw war with no knowledge, imagination or training which prepared Owen for the shock and suffering of front line experience. Its horrifying imagery has made it one of the most popular condemnations of war ever written.
Main ideas in War Poetry The main idea in war poetry, written during World War One – 1914-18, is the harsh reality of war. Poets such as Wilfred Owen use the language techniques of simile, rhyme, repetition and personification to help convey the main idea. Owen uses techniques to paint a grim picture of what war was like and how it affected people. Through this, we see that war is often glorified, thus Owen was able to counter the glorification of war. After reading war poems we are able to get a true idea of how horrific war was and learn of its negative consequences.
First thoughts Generals Die in Bed is a powerful novel, which vividly conveys the experience of the common soldier in World War One. Its title, part joke, part outrage, signals the author’s intention as polemical. The author creates a barren landscape, destroyed by war, and the characters inhabit this wasteland. The characters are seen fleetingly, in particular moments only, and we divine what they are feeling mostly through their actions. The story is punctuated by vivid descriptions of trench warfare, description of rest periods, and of the discomfort and danger of life in the trenches.
Although she presents valid evidence to support her point, she maintains a biased tone throughout the article. The following analysis will therefore show some elements of the author’s ideas that contribute to such a conclusion by identifying the flaws within the method the author uses and specific statements she makes. In nurturing her purpose, the author uses a counter effect, in that she uses the opinions of people who support polygamy and the promiscuity associated with it as a weapon against its self. She does this to create a differential canvas on which she carefully paints the social glory of monogamy and strongly highlight the adverse consequences of polygamy. In doing so, she focuses only on the benefits of one being monogamous and presents only, what is in her opinion, the social problems typical of polygamists.
Identify what you consider to be the authors main purpose in producing each of the texts you have studied and explore, in depth, one or two main techniques used to achieve this purpose. The poems ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ by Wilfred Owen and ‘Suicide in the trenches’ by Siegfried Sassoon used the techniques of personal pronouns and irony to convey the poets feelings towards war. Before Owen and Sassoon all war poetry had been patriotic and was used to encourage recruitment of young men. However both Owen and Sassoon had witnessed the horrors of trench warfare first hand and their poetry was therefore realistic about the harsh realities of war. Owen commented on his poetry that ‘my subject is war, and the pity of it… all a poet can do is warn.’ Owen and Sassoon were both trying to warn young men against war and inform the public on how brutal and disgusting war actually is In both poems, after describing the obscene conditions of war and the impact that these conditions had on the soldiers, the poets dedicated a stanza to condemning the reader on any encouragement they may have had towards young men going to war.
Introduction Paragraph 1 In his poem, Strange Meeting, Owen recreates the horror of war through his shocking and realistic account of the experiences faced by soldiers on the battlefields during World War One. “And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, - By his dead smile I knew we stood in hell”. Owen has used first person and a pararhyme to reinforce the brutality and horrors of war. Owen came to the realisation, by talking to this man, that no one there was truly alive, breathing or not breathing. What mattered was the truth of war and what he felt he must share and let people know.
Not So Sweet Nor Becoming Wilfred Owen was a man of two professions: writing and fighting. As a soldier in World War 1, Owen was horrified by his experiences and the tragedies he witnessed. These memories motivated him to write poems that relayed the truths of war. “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is perhaps the most famous of these pieces. When looking for a poem to analyze, this one jumped out at me; immediately upon reading its title, I thought of another piece of art that references the same phrase.
Whitman deliberately wrote his poem as an extended metaphor to end of the Civil War and most vitally the untimely assassination and subsequent death of President Abraham Lincoln; “What the reader goes on to find is that the whole story is in fact a metaphor” (Enrico). The returning voyage in the poem that apparently has despite impossible odds triumphed over an insurmountable hardship is a direct reference to the United States of America. The captain of the esteemed ship is none other than President Abraham Lincoln, and much like at the end