Although they know there is a sniper, they still fear him because they cannot discern when he will shoot them. “Sooner or later this German sniper, who keeps us cowering in cold fear, will be caught in an advance by our troops.” In the same chapter, the sniper kills the character Brown. Brown’s death has made the narrator more fearful of the unknown because he now knows what the sniper’s ability. This shows us why the narrator would fear the unknown in the novel. What’s more, the inhumanity is another big deal.
In the first stanza, Owen presents the idea that the personal struggles faced every moment on the front line are extremely underestimated, immeasurably terrifying and “obscene”. It seems more realistic when the story is told from a first person narrative; it allows us, the readers, to imagine what it would feel like if “we” were in the trenches and fighting on the front line. That understanding makes us realise the cruel situation that was, for them, an everyday occurrence from which they had no escape. The determination of the soldiers that they “limped on” even when they were “asleep”, “had lost their boots”, were “lame”, “blind”, “drunk with fatigue” and “deaf” to their “distant rest” makes it almost seem as if they were unbreakable; their defiance against anything thrown in their path was god-like and shows an unwavering sense of honour, as they “marched” and “cursed through”, for the fate of all those left at home. The distant rest could represent the end of the war, so far out of their sight, or the release of an untimely death.
Owen starts the second stanza with an ironic ‘merry.’ The war front was not a happy place, but a place filled with intense pain and death. In the next line Owen exposes reality of how ‘death becomes absurd and life absurder’ and how soldiers lost all morality and became desensitised as they felt no ‘remorse of murder.’ The soldiers were trained to be mindless tools of their government as they did what they were ordered to do without questioning the morality of what they were instructed to do. Owen personifies fear as something which can be ‘dropped off’. Fear can be paralysing which can be disastrous for a soldier. ‘Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon’
Through this detailed description, Gurganus adds to his argument, making the war sound even more horrific. He is trying to get people to see his perspective, and to make all the glory of war seem meaningless. We send these men over to live in terrible conditions and they don’t even know why they are there
The mental burden that probably weighs the most on the hearts of the men is fear. This fear comes from many sources. The men are constantly haunted by the fear that they may die. Ted Lavender’s death and how the men react to it show its impact on the soldiers. Kiowa expresses the sense of weight that the threat of death has on the men when he describes Lavender’s death: "Boom down, he said.
Owen used his poems to deliver the truth about war and change the views of society at that time. He used graphic and gruesome imagery about the horrors of war in order to illuminate his feelings. The horrors of war are most vividly and strikingly captured in the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est.’ Owen attacks the reader with a barrage of detailed, gruesome, descriptions of life at war. He uses this technique of imagery to force the reader to visualize the truth about war. Owen also seeks to expose the betrayal of the authorities throughout poems such as ‘Disabled’ and ‘The parable of the old man and the young.’ He expresses how they acted with a disregard for the lives of their countries young men.
Mental Cases was written to demonstrate the mental consequences of war on participating soldiers in World War I. The subjects of this poem are the inmates in a military hospital. The poem displays a part of the war that to some civilians can be considered worse than losing your life, losing your mind due to shellshock. Owen describes how they are now forced to re-live the terrible acts that they have witnessed on the battlefield. The mood of the poem is one of fury, this is shown throughout the poem with the use of imagery.
In Liam O’Flaherty’s “The Sniper”, we are exposed to the unfortunate brutality that Civil war inflicts on those involved. It’s ability to pit brothers against each other is a tragic realization that the protagonist in the story must come to realize. The author’s effective use of setting and characterization clearly provides a poignant insight to war that reveals it’s ferocious tragedy. O’Flaherty continually uses setting to create tension within the reader and give a more realistic approach to the nature of war. His short, choppy sentences cause a feeling of hurry, much like the character would have been facing in the story.
O'Brien's extract conveys to the readers the contradictory feelings that war evokes in a person. War can be seen in different perspectives and can be felt with many different emotions. The author describes war as astonishing; an adjective rarely used in the general opinion. But O'Brien has seen and felt first hand, and writes that war makes you grow up and learn about yourself as a person. You learn to value life in those desperate moments where death comes close.
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.