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.
HOW HAS THE POEM ‘MENTAL CASES’ EMOTIONALLY AND INTELLECTUALLY ENGAGE THE RESPONDER? BY MICHAEL SGRO 10A “Mental Cases” is a poem written by Wilfred Owen. The aim of the poem “Mental Cases” is to show the emphasis of the mental consequences that war has on soldiers. Wilfred Owen uses an array of techniques in this poem to emotionally and intellectually engages the responder. Mental Cases was written to demonstrate the mental consequences of war on participating soldiers in World War I.
Sassoon’s poetry described the horrors of the war and how disgusting it is. Two poems which show the perspective of war is: Firstly, Counter-Attack, which describes how war is like; and secondly, died of wounds, which show the condition of war. The poems relate to the feeling and emotion war creates. Also it shows how horrible war is. The techniques that Sassoon has used in the poems are: imagery, simile, metaphor and onomatopoeia.
Through his poems, Owen highlights the unjust experiences of soldiers to create a protest against the bureaucracy because of how they justified the harming and killing of many for their own political gain. He does this by highlighting the actions and inactions of the bureaucracy that contribute to benefit of the administration. This can be explored in his poems ‘Parable of the Old Man and the Young’ (Parable) and the epic war poem ‘Disabled’. These two poems employ Owens message of anti-war sentiment to establish a connection with the audience through his manipulation of poetic techniques. Owen highlights such unjust experiences of the soldiers to augment his argument against the bureaucracy.
Owen compares soldiers fighting in war to sick old men because it shows that soldiers are like outcasts from society. At the top left of the poster, the image shown represents the difficulty and the terrible physical outcomes, soldiers found travelling on ground particularly in sludges as Wilfred Owen states in the first stanza: “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge” The use of the word Knock-kneed is alliteration for emphasis, a hard, staccato sound to echo the harsh mood of these lines and soldier’s misery. It stresses echo the brutality of the soldiers’ destruction, their transformation from healthy young men into ‘beggars’ and ‘hags’. The use of the word coughing compares men to sick women, showing how they are unrecognisable; they have lost their masculinity, youth, health and therefore are now deemed to be outcast’s within the society. The word sludge is onomatopoeia to imply how heavy and difficult the ground is to cross for soldiers.
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. They did this through the use of personal pronouns. In ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ Owen condemns the use of the saying “Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori” (It is sweet and fitting to die for your country) by using personal pronouns to involve the reader in the reality of war “If you could hear at every jolt/ the blood come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs… my friend you would not tell with such high zest… the old lie: Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori.” In ‘Suicide in the trenches’ personal pronouns are also used to disapprove of the encouragement of war “You smug faced crowds… who cheer when soldier lads march by/ sneak home and pray you’ll never know/ the hell where youth and laughter go.” Personal pronouns are used in order to involve the
“Dulce et Decorum Est”, which translates from the Latin Poet Horace, “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”. The Title is Ironic because Wilfred Owen portrays the exact opposite in this poem. I believe this poem demonstrates the traumatic occurrence when people die for one’s country and to die for ones country in this poem projects anything but something fitting and sweet. This poem is about men dying from gas shells. Ones who died from these toxic gases were in a painful and miserable death.
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.
Stephen Touma Wilfred Owens poetry is driven by a passionate exploration of humanity at its worst. Refer to 2 poems Poetry written by Owen is directed by an intense examination of the human condition and society at its most negative state. Owen doesn’t merely search or subliminally display these experiences he heatedly exposes humanity at its absolute worst. Owen illustrates these experiences through his explanation of the exhaustion of soldiers and their movement between the battlefield, and the sacrifices of war. This can be seen in his two poems ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Parable of the Old man and the Young’.
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.