Compare and Contrast the four poems ‘For the Fallen’, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, ‘The Soldier’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ All of these four poems are war poems but are written from different perspectives. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ and ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ are both written by Wilfred Owen, a soldier on the front line. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ portrays, using metaphors, how the soldiers’ deaths go without a funeral fit for such heroes. ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ is literally about a gas attack on some English soldiers , but metaphorically it is an ironic poem which pokes fun at the phrase ‘It is right and proper to die for one’s country.’ ‘For the Fallen’ is written by Laurence Binyon, a man too old to fight for his country. The subject of ‘For the Fallen’ is an elegy reminding us how many men died so that we may live.
Soldiers frequently got injured and lots of them died in battles or of illness in the deplorable conditions of the army. The poem is indignantly ironic about the war and emphasizes the bitter aftermath. 'The Soldier' focuses on the glory of sacrifice for one’s country, not mentioning the process of sacrifice, i.e. being injured and dying. Brooke writes about the dead soldier instead of one that has survived.
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. Religion and its betrayal during the war is also emphasized by Wilfred Owen in ‘Anthem for doomed youth.’ He shows how the belief in religion did nothing to dampen the grim realities of war and he even begins to question his own beliefs. Another way Owen feels he has been betrayed is through the way society treated those soldiers who had suffered both mental and physical injuries. They were labelled as cowards and looked down upon. This is best shown in the poem ‘Disabled.’ Owen was ultimately driven by the betrayal of the authorities, religion and society and he used his horrifying experiences of the war to exemplify this betrayal.
Nothing should be sugar coded because many lives were lost and many individuals suffered a great deal and everyone should understand why. In McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Field” he explains life before and after war. There was once a time when they experience the feeling of love and the enjoyment of life, but now they lay dead looking back at the life they had to give up to fight in war. Those who have died have passed the torch to the next generation of soldiers. This proved that the peace treaty didn’t solve the problem and a new war would occur.
“what passing-bells… for these who witnessed it”. Through the use of alliteration, soldiers were dehumanised and their parents had no loved ones to comfort them and mourn for them. Moreover, due to the enormous amount of soldiers dying they “didn’t have enough bells” to mourn all their children which depicts such a tragic loss on a huge scale. Owen puts forward the things the soldiers had to go through and how that resulted in their death or illnesses after being dehumanised and if they survived, when they returned home from the war. The feeling of paranoia and depression has caused the decrease of the soldiers’ emotional wellbeing.
This creates a sense of disappointment and unappreciation he feels towards how his country have handled these situations. In the third stanza he talks about what has all this fighting won us, and at what cost. He tells us about the struggles that the people will never forget the sorrow all this fighting has brought them . “the trench is dug within our hearts, and mothers, children, brothers , sisters, torn apart.” This brings a different perspective, saying maybe this isn’t what the people want. The cost for
Wilfred Owen was an active soldier during WWI, who used his horrific experiences during the war to write his poems. His poems stemmed from his views on war, as he believed that although war was sometimes necessary, it was futile and evil. Two of his poems, ‘Exposure’ and ‘Disabled’ both reveal the price paid by soldiers during WWI. ‘Exposure’ examines the more psychological effects on the soldiers and is written from the view of the soldiers on the front line, ‘Disabled’ shows the aftermath and repercussion of fighting in WWI and the physical damage it caused. The first word in ‘Exposure’ is ‘our’ and is written in first person plural, showing the reader that Owen wanted to convey the plight of the universal soldier and how they all suffered the same fate, no matter their side.
Anthem For Doomed Youth is a sonnet written by Wilfred Owen about the realities of war. Wilfred Owen was a soldier during WW1 and therefore understands fully the true experiences of war. He was against war and was appalled by the effects of war on people and their families. The purpose of the poem is to inform the public of the true realities of war and how young men where dying needlessly. This was because during war times the media would tell the public that the war going great and that the men where doing just fine, but this obviously just wasn’t true.
The poet is saying that people should not talk about war as enthusiastically as it gives the impression that war is glorious. Furthermore, he says that the idea that ’it is sweet and right’ to die for your country is entirely untrue. Through this, we are able to form the opinion that war is not okay because it is a serious thing that carries many negative consequences. In Wilfred Owen’s poem Dolce et Decorum est, the use of similes conveys the harsh reality of war on soldiers as it changes them dramatically and kills the majority of them. In the first two lines of the poem, Owen uses the similes “Bent double like old beggars under sacks, knocked kneed, coughing like hags” to paint a grim picture in readers minds of how the soldiers were.
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’