The proclaimed poetess of the Islamic State Ahlam al Nasr, and Wilfred Owen a respected WWI veteran and revered poet (Wikipedia 2016) (Creswell and Haykel 2015). Two drastically different people, but yet their works aren’t all that different. Each poet born in a different time, however, their work draws some staggering similarities. Each author represents the depressing side of the conflict in their essay, but I believe that they are both patriotic towards their own causes and could even represent a few of the same morale traits through their work. The poetess of the Islamic State is describing a very gruesome scene of slaughter and death in her first poem presented in the article Battle Lines. Whereas almost with the same dark emotion Owen …show more content…
Both are ardent patriots of their cause as al-Nasr continuously backs the actions of this Islamic State, and Owens, who is the well-known author of Dulce et Decorum Est which literally translates to something of the effect of how sweet it is to die for your country. Owens and al-Nasr I believe both share an ardent devotion to their cause, which in Owens case is fighting for his country and al-Nasr’s is fighting for the Islamic State. This I believe is the main cause that almost all people fight. Patriotism and duty to their cause. They both create a sullen poem that describes the darkest feelings of conflict, both poems have some religious undertones. Furthermore, both describe a sullen mood toward death and destruction. They both create a patriotic feeling throughout their poems, even though death is the main characteristic of their poems they highlight the patriotism associated with these deaths. The poems talk death in their own way. One talks of hosing the streets as blood runs down them (Haykel and Creswell 2). Meanwhile, the other references so much death that the church bell doesn’t ring to identify each death (Owens 1). These similarities throughout the poem lead me to believe that they both hold some of the same views even though written over a hundred years apart, and by poets that hold drastically different views in the public eye. One a British Patriot and the other a terrorist sympathizer, both patriots of their
Wilfred Owen and Bruce Dawe both experienced war, however they were involved in two different conflicts. Owen was an English soldier and anti-war poet who died a hero in conflict one week before World War I ended. This demonstrates success for the country itself and the veterans being seen as heroes. Contrastingly, Dawe was a university educated anti-war poet from Australia who joined the air force during the Vietnam War. This was controversial for both soldiers and people from the country being conflicted about their involvement in the war.
How Wilfred Owen Uses Language and Imagery in His Poetry to Communicate his Attitudes of War
The famous works written in 1917 by poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon cast aside the conventional inspiration for content, patriotism, and delve into the horrific journey that is war. Two poems in particular, Sassoon’s “Suicide in the Trenches” and Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, speak boldly against life in the trenches in efforts of evading the lies and illusions of a clean and righteous war. In doing so, readers are presented with tales that conjure up powerful and far-from-picturesque images that harbor the ability to shake the very core of a human through impactful language as crafted by these poets. While both poems allow the reader to come to the same conclusion that war is not clean, their approaches differ and therefore create a difference in weight of impact. Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is more impactful in that the gruesome imagery is more explicitly defined through dark, evoking diction, and the message of the poem is satirically approached through the strategic title to target a specific audience, while Siegfried Sassoon’s “Suicide in the Trenches” offers a similar message, but is presented in a fashion that relies on heavy contrast of tone to convey the resentful message.
World War One had an inevitable effect on the lives of many young and naive individuals, including Wilfred Owen, who, like many others, joined the military effort with the belief that he would find honour, wealth and adventure. The optimism which Owen initially had toward the conflict is emphasised in the excerpt, in which he is described as “a young poet…with a romantic view of war common among the young” (narrator), a view which rapidly changed upon reaching the front. Owen presents responders with an overwhelming exploration of human cruelty on other individuals through acts of war and the clash of individual’s opposed feelings influenced by the experiences of human cruelty. This is presented through the horrific nature of war which the
The Soldier by Rupert Brooke, and Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen are two poems which were written during the First World War, and both being written about this conflict, they share the same theme of war poetry. However, the two poems deal very differently with the subject of war, resulting in two very different pieces of writing.
Human conflict is a violent confrontation between groups of people due to differences in values and beliefs. During World War I, poet and soldier, Wilfred Owen, faced the harsh realities of human conflict, dying at a young age of 25, only six days before the war ended. Owen’s personal encounters during war had a profound influence on his life as reflected in the poems and letters he wrote before his passing. In using a variety of poetic devices to write about the suffering and brutality of war, vividly captured in his poems ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, Owen effectively conveys his own perspective about human conflict. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ depicts the horrific scenes on the battlefield and a grotesque death from drowning
As a poet, Wilfred Owens wants to show the effects of warfare from the viewpoint of a soldier during a War. Owens uses his own experience as a fighter to capture the reader’s attention and get across his point. He often uses graphic imagery and words to depict his thoughts about war. Wilfred Owens, poems, “Dulce et Decorum est” and “Anthem for doomed youth” talk blatantly about the effects of warfare on the soldiers, their loved ones, and those who make an ultimate sacrifice by making a statement about the efficacy of war.
... Instead of idealizing war in a romantic way, war poets such as Wilfred Owen aimed to expose gruesome truths about these wars and how they impacted lives. It points a finger and criticizes the governments and authorities that wage these wars but don’t fight in them themselves but rather watch as lives are lost. It exposes propaganda for what it is, a tool for brainwashing. It puts into question the notion of dying for ones country to be noble, honourable and admirable.
I am going to compare and contrast the two poems ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen and ‘War Photographer’ by Carol Ann Duffy. They both give a view of war. Owen gives first hand experiences he witnessed whilst fighting in World War One and where he unfortunately died one week before the war came to an end. Carol Ann Duffy may be writing about the feelings of her personal friends who were war photographers, showing some of the horrors they witnessed.
It is evident that the socio-cultural context in which Wilfred Owen operated had a powerful impact upon his poetic motivation and the messages he conveyed through his work. Before exploring Wilfred Owen’s work we first must understand the society that Wilfred Owen lived in, to be able to really understand appreciate his poems and their impact on society. At the time in which he operated, Britain’s public opinion on warfare and conflicts were astonishingly positive, especially in the early stages of WW1. These false perception on war led the vast majority of male citizens to perceive war recruitment as an opportunity to set off on ‘terrific adventures’ and earn immense amounts of honour for their families and nation. Government propaganda meant that soldiers believed that they were gathering fame and fortune in the name of Great Britain. This cruel and false perception of warfare which in turn led to a steady rate of volunteers for the war and included Wilfred Owen himself. The men who did not go and fight for their nations were perceived by society as cowards as
To draw into the poet’s world, the poet must draw relations between them, including the reader, making them feel what the poet feels, thinking what the poet thinks. Wilfred Owen does this very creatively and very effectively, in both of his poems, Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori and Anthem of Doomed Youth, who is seen as an idol to many people today, as a great war poet, who expresses his ideas that makes the reader feel involved in the moment, feeling everything that he does. His poems describe the horror of war, and the consequences of it, which is not beneficial for either side. He feels sorrow and anger towards the war and its victims, making the reader also feel the same.
Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” makes the reader acutely aware of the impact of war. The speaker’s experiences with war are vivid and terrible. Through the themes of the poem, his language choices, and contrasting the pleasant title preceding the disturbing content of the poem, he brings attention to his views on war while during the midst of one himself. Owen uses symbolism in form and language to illustrate the horrors the speaker and his comrades go through; and the way he describes the soldiers, as though they are distorted and damaged, parallels how the speaker’s mind is violated and haunted by war.
The two poems I will be comparing and contrasting are ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen along with ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Wilfred Owen wrote his poem in the duration of the World War one, the poem was first published in the 1920’s. Owens imagery shown in the poem is repulsive and presenting an ugly side of war, the language used by the poet is fierce. On the other hand Lord Tennyson wrote the poem at some point in the Battle of Balaclava in the 1854 however, Lord Tennyson has a diverse vision on war due to not understanding how war was, his imagery demonstrates a calm slow story explaining how he thought war would be. Both poems are similar however they tell there stories in different ways.
The poetic techniques used in Wilfred Owen’s war poetry sweep the reader from the surface of knowing to the essence of truly appreciating his ideas. Through sonnets, Para rhymes, ironic titles, voices and strong imagery, not only is the reader able to comprehend to the futility and the horrors of the Great War, but also they can almost physically and mentally empathise with those who fought. Through the three poems examined, it is evident that Owen goes to great effort to describe the conditions and thoughts of the First World War, thus his works are considered an invaluable asset to the modern literature.
Wilfred Owen wrote about the distilled pity of war from his first-hand experience. Owen concisely features the carnage and destruction of war in both the poems, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Strange Meeting’ Owen uses these poems document the psychological and physical debilitation of war. In ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, Owen uses a various amount of literary techniques to visually depict the cruel and grotesque death from the mustard gas whereas ‘Strange Meeting’, portrays the speaker in conversation with a dead soldier that he is presumably responsible for killing, symbolically which emphasises the effect of the wartime trauma. Wilfred Owen’s poetry effectively highlights the carnage and destruction of war to educate the audience on the disillusionment of war.