It is interesting when discussing WW1 poetry to examine how attitudes to war at the time may have influenced the poets. Before WW1 war was generally viewed as a positive thing. Many young men followed a career in the army and saw it as something of an adventure. The horrors of WW1 changed many people’s attitudes to war, the mechanisation of warfare led to millions of casualties and this resulted into a general realisation that war wasn’t a glorious adventure. Many soldiers wrote powerful poems about the reality of war as they wanted the truth to be known. Wilfred Owen was one of these and one of his poems I’m going to discus is ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’. Nevertheless there were some pro-war poems such as Fall In. The first poem I am going to discuss is by Wilfred Owen. Wilfred Owen was a young man who voluntarily joined the army. He went to war thinking it was an adventure but his views dramatically changed over the course of the war. His views are shown trough many dramatic and tragic poems. He suddenly passed away on the 4th of November 1918, but his legacy still continues to have profound effects on literature. ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ (meaning sweet and proper) is Owen’s most famous poem and one of the most searing war poems ever written. It is a poem about a gas attack that was witnessed by Wilfred Owen, where one of his men suffered an agonising death. Owen wrote this poem to show his contempt for the propaganda lies that said war was a glorious and heroic event. In the first stanza of ‘D.E.D.E’, Owen paints a picture of exhausted and ill soldiers returning to their trenches. He uses similes such as “coughing like hags,” and “We cursed through sludge,” The first quote is a good simile because it describes the poor physical c... ... middle of paper ... ...more poetically alluring for the reader to believe. Although I did find the poem ‘Fall In’ very poetically powerful due the high amount of statements that made the reader feel guilty and its very frequent links to God wanting war, but it focuses away from what war was really like, which lets the poem down. I thought the anti-war poems were better because they fully expressed the true horrors of war and the events that occurred. I also believe that anti-war poems were reliable because the poets were present in the trenches, so they had first had experience of what war was like from a soldier’s point of view. I preferred ’D.E.D.E’ because it was a very poetically powerful poem which showed the true horrors of war. I also enjoyed its many powerful similes because without them the poem would not have created the poignancy of transporting the readers to the trenches.
..., as well as the readers. Stephen Crane’s poem in contrast, uses irony to try and convey the message about the ugliness war brings. Eric Gumalinda’ poem on the other hand, is the one that is sort of off-tangent to the two. This poem in particular, shows the readers a glimpse of what is happening on a damaged person’s mind. It shows the readers a first-hand view on what people during war times could do, and all their intentions.
... a lot of propaganda for people to join the war effort. Poets were describing war as this very noble thing for men to do. Wilfred Owen says that war was not noble at all. He shared his views on war and stayed true to what he believed. He did not follow the masses and write poems about the “great” war.
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” is made up of grotesque diction scattered all across the poem to illustrate the conditions in which soldiers try to retain their humanities both physical and psychological, whereas “Suicide in the Trenches” offers little description of the horrendous physical aspects of war. Right from the get-go, Owen jumps into the brutality of war as he recalls, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,” (Owen). His use of words like beggars, knock-kneed, and ha...
All exceptional poetry displays a good use of figurative language, imagery, and diction. Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" is a powerful antiwar poem which takes place on a battlefield during World War I. Through dramatic use of imagery, metaphors, and diction, he clearly states his theme that war is terrible and horrific.
Through reading this poem several times I decided that the message from the poem is that war is full of horror and there is little or no glory. Methods which I found most effective were Full rhyme and metaphor.
In ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, Owen compares the solders who are men to ugly, old, sick women through the simile “coughing like hags”, highlighting that the men no longer possess strength, masculinity, exceptional physical skills and potency. As a result, the soldiers’ eradicated youth and innocence portrays the dehumanising effect that the soldier’s have faced through their experiences of the war. Additionally, Owen further explores this dehumanising effect through the exaggerated movement of the soldiers in the hyperbolic metaphor “We cursed through sludge”, illustrating the ghastly and gruesome environment made up of a mix of materials such as body parts of other fellow soldiers, blood and mud. The horrendous conditions the soldiers faced for a long period of time had a drastic impact on the soldier’s mental health which in turn lead to post-traumatic stress disorder or shell-shock disorder and lost of potency. Owen also portrays that not only did the war affect a few soldiers, but all the soldiers through the repetition of “all”. Ultimately, it is conveyed that the soldiers had to unwillingly sacrifice their human attributes and was dehumanised as a result of human conflict. Similarly, in ‘The Next War’, Owen
Wilfred Owen is a war poet that went to war at the age of nineteen. He always fantasized of writing poems throughout his adolescence, however not until he endured World War I that his poems ever rose to success. Summarizing all of Owen’s provided poems, the reader moves toward to a conclusion that is somewhat appalling. Seemingly, Owen went through dreadful and unconceivable circumstances in battle. Unfortunately, Owen describes war as Hell on Earth and explains that he had no idea of what war was actually like, until experiencing it. Likewise, Owen states the following in one of his famous war poems: “by his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell”. Moreover, this quote embodies his own perspective on what war was like for himself.
‘Poetry can challenge the reader to think about the world in new ways.’ It provokes the readers to consider events, issues and people with revised understanding and perspectives. The poems Dulce Et Decorum Est (Wilfred Owen, 1917) and Suicide in the Trenches (Siegfried Sassoon, 1917), were composed during World War One and represented the poets’ point of views in regards to the glorification of war and encouraged readers to challenge their perspectives and reflect upon the real consequences behind the fabrications of the glory and pride of fighting for one’s nation.
World War I impacted poetry profoundly. Poets who served in the war were using poetry to share their horrific stories about the hardships they faced. These poets became known as “war poets.” They wrote about the traumatic, life changing experiences that haunted them once the war was over. Intense poems started emerging that portrayed the mental and physical struggles soldiers faced. Two examples of the impact that World War I had on poetry is seen in the poems “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen and “Repression of War Experience” by Siegfried Sassoon.
Although war is often seen as a waste of many lives, poets frequently focus on its effect on individuals. Choose two poems of this kind and show how the poets used individual situations to illustrate the impact of war.
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.
“Dulce et Decorum Est” showing an anti-war side, the poem was originally entitled to Jessie Pope. It shows a tone through out the poem of depression, sadness Owen gets his message across very rapidly and makes the reader feel like they had just experienced the war in the few minutes of reading ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ this is done from the metaphors and magnificent imagery used to show a terrible side of war.
Owen who experienced the war himself writes the truth about war through his poems without dramatizing it. A powerful argument against the complacency of those who believe war to be a glorious patriotic duty is mounted by Owen. He is also succeeded in portraying the reality of the war—the boredom, the helplessness of the people in the war through his writings. Instead of direct description of the anger and frustration of the people due to the devastation of war, Owen euphemistically delivers his messages by painting vivid imaginaries through his tonal, point of view, sentence struct...