Soldiers who go off to war are meant to be healthy and strong, however, this poem portrays the soldiers as old and unhealthy people. Owen uses images that are far from noble. The soldiers are described as, ‘bent double, like old beggars under sacks’ and ‘coughing like hags’, and this highlights the exhaustion the soldiers were feeling. Considering that the exhaustion of the soldiers is representing humanity at its worst, this emphasises how Owens poetry is driven by a passionate exploration of humanity at its worst. The poem is also able to depict how the soldier’s condition is, and what they should be.
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.
Even though we see glimpses of empathy and humanity the reader is still engaged in how war changes, dehumanising and desensitizing the soldiers. Generals Die in Bed opens up a world to men that makes them feel small and weak, making them turn into animals. This is what makes them dehumanize each other and the enemy. “Some of us kick at the prostrate body as we pass it. It quivers a little with each kick.”P145 chapter 9.
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 protagonist, who was keen to remove himself from the rat and lice infested trenches, enrolled himself in a bombardment of the German’s, with little knowledge of what he was getting himself in to. The protagonist was experiencing the concept of ‘Kill or be killed’, had a German soldier at the end of his bayonet and his howling had unnerved him. His rifle stood between him and death and the decision to leave unarmed and possibly die or kill the soldier and survive was to be made. The emotional turmoil was unbearable and the pulling of the trigger was excruciating. Even after this ordeal and the shock, the protagonist was still able to sympathise with the dead German’s soldier’s brother.
Owen then goes on to describe how the mental trauma becomes worse. “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” This tells us the soldiers mind is haunted by the sight of his fellow soldier dying from the horrible gas. He is dramatizing this scene some time after it occurred, and his dreams are still filled with this unforgettable sight, which becomes a regular nightmare for the soldier. Wilfred Owen wrote this to shock the reader, and to make the reader think about what
What things would a soldier experience to totally change him? In Harrison’s novel Generals Die in Bed, the horror of war is a basic theme and has been described through many of the challenges the narrator faces in the novel. The horror of war has been described through the novel of the things such as having a constant fear of the unknown, inhumanity, and the most important thing is: death. | | First of all, unknown is a big problem in the war. Not knowing what’s around the soldiers and the narrator makes them feel terrible.
When one is bent over, he or she is neither lying down nor standing up. This implies that the soldiers have become so disillusioned that they find themselves in a state of purgatorial numbness. Similarly, the word “double” adds to the idea of being in two places or mindsets at once and builds on the idea of wanting to be in two places at the same time. Owen suggests that on one hand, the soldiers want to be there, fighting for their country, yet on the other hand, war is so traumatic that they would rather be anywhere but in battle. Moreover, Owen says that the soldiers are like "old beggars"; this is peculiar at first, since most of the soldiers were very young when they enlisted.
The soldiers that were fighting at war were dehumanised in many ways. Owen portrays this in his poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. During the war, soldiers were forced to go and fight for their country inorder to be labelled as ‘real men’. Due to the mistreatment, other teenage boys were suffering as they knew their time would eventually come to face their doom. “what passing-bells… for these who witnessed it”.
For Owen, the anguish brought about by war is manifest within the wretched psychological state of the soldiers embroiled in conflict. Owen depicts a view of the war that is undeniably bleak, illustrating a conflict that ensnares its combatants within a vacillating state of dull monotony and high tension. Within “Dulce et Decorum Est”, the reaction of simply “turning their backs” evidenced by the soldiers trudging in the “sludge” in response to the “flares” of the artillery, conveys a sense of their mental desensitization in the face of the repetitive nature of war. Rather than a more natural response of surprise and even alarm, these soldiers exhibit a startling boredom and disconnection from their reality. Here the descriptors “blind” and “deaf” – conditions that affect them “all” – are particularly apt; it is as if their mental faculties have been entirely dulled by a sordid routine of “coughing”, “fatigue” and the abrupt interjections of “Five-nines” dropping a knell of death behind them.