Poems of War
Rupert Brooke’s “The Dead” (Brooke p109) tries to convince you that death in battle is sweet and honorable. Compared to Wilfred Owens “Dulce et Decorum est” we read a poem with a completely different opinion about war. It's a gruesome first hand experience of trench warfare. Through the entire poem Rupert Brooke tries to persuade the younger generation of readers in joining the army. He tries to make it seem sensational, and plead to the younger generation by making it come across as heroic. In comparison to Brooks poem Owen describes images related to dying for your nation as cruel, painful and upsetting but Brooke views it as something extremely honorable and something to be proud of. Personally I feel that if you happen to die in the line of battle it is in fact a heroic death. While Brook's poem describes his views of war from an outsiders perspective, Owen's Poem gives an outstanding description of war as he experienced it firsthand.
Brooke sees that laying down your life during the line of duty for your country is honorable and heroic, and while you engage the first stanza you will see that Brooke writes: "the rich dead”(1). Talking about those who went to battle were rich in honor, this is because they were willing to die for their cause and what they believed in. You will read in the third line of the stanza: “But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold” (3). I feel he is trying to persuade the reader that battle is in fact very rewarding, and they will be valued more in death verses when they are alive. It also suggests that the sole reason for living is to become honored from a death in battle.
Looking at the language of the poem you can see many metaphors are created throughout the poem. Within the ...
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...ttempt at humor because thought the whole poem he is basically trying to persuade the complete opposite. Which when compared to Brooks opinion, he feels its glorious to die in battle. The two views of the poets are seen very clearly thought their work and we can see that they are both very different. We can also see from the metaphors used and pictures painted how they contradicted one another. I personally prefer Wilfred Owens “Dulce et Decorum est” because this gave an opinion of someone who was there. It provided more of a firsthand experience and personally I don't like things being sugar coated. I've been in armed conflicts before and while the bullets where flying and motors going off I didn't see sunshine and rainbows in the air. Perhaps if Brook took part in war and was not on the sidelines writing about it we may have read a much different poem from him.
In this poem called “Creatures” by the author Billy Collins there is a literary device called a metaphor when the reader is reading this poem. A metaphor is a comparison of two unlike things without using the words like or as. In lines one (1) through...
As he never actually reached the front line, Brooke’s form of idealistic imagery was fueled by the extensively patriotic propaganda of the time. Death as a theme in ‘The Soldier’ is therefore depicted simply as more of an accepted cost for the country, with Brooke envisioning dying itself, rather grandly as leaving ‘Some corner of a foreign field…forever England.’
In this poem written by Owen, the events of a typical day in the war is detailed and described to show that war is not as glorious and honorable as those back home picture it. The title, meaning 'how sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country', is actually very sarcastic and depicts the feelings of many of those that were fighting. The first stanza sets the scene and show what the soldiers would be feeling at the time. The men's condition at the time was so wretched th...
The stanza comes at the end of the poem after the men labored hard and rucked through difficult terrain. The men were tired and exhausted and being shelled by 5.9 caliber shells. Owen then shifts the scene when someone warns of gas in the air and the chaos that ensues as people try to put on their gas masks. The conflict in the situation is that someone is without a gas mask and left out and the speaker of the poem describes the man choking towards him. In the final stanza, the graphic death of the unfortunate soul is described, and Owen ties it up with how it is a lie that people believe that “it is a sweet and fitting thing to die for your country.” I will explicate the last few lines of the poem by analyzing the point of view, Owen’s utilization of Latin, and the tone.
Evaluating the poem by Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est,” it illustrates a soldier’s view into the world of war. The poem begins by describing how soldiers are “bent double, like old beggars, under sacks.” The people are “coughing like hags” and walking through mud. “Haunting flares we turned our backs”, the men continued marching tired with lost boots. The soldiers are “drunk with fatigue.” The soldiers yell, “Gas! Gas!” The soldiers put...
Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem about World War I. Owen describes the horrors of war he has witnessed first-hand after enlisting in the war. Prior to his encounter with war he was a devote Christian with an affinity towards poetry, and after being swayed by war agitprop he returned home to enlist in the army; Owen was a pacifist and was at his moral threshold once he had to kill a man during the war. The poem goes into detail about what the soldiers had to endure according to Owen, “many had lost their boots / but limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; / drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots” (5-7). Owen’s conclusion to the poem is that “the old Lie; dulce et decorum est / pro patria mori” (27-28), Latin for “it is sweet and right to die for your country,” is not easily told when one has experienced war. In his detailed poem Owen writes about the true terrors of war and that through experience you would probably change your conceived notion about dying for your country.
...t is arguable that the birds fight is also a metaphor, implying the fight exists not only between birds but also in the father’s mind. Finally, the last part confirms the transformation of the parents, from a life-weary attitude to a “moving on” one by contrasting the gloomy and harmonious letter. In addition, readers should consider this changed attitude as a preference of the poet. Within the poem, we would be able to the repetitions of word with same notion. Take the first part of the poem as example, words like death, illness
Both poems used different techniques to stimulate the readers’ evaluation and realisation of the adverse outcomes of war, especially its effects on the soldiers. Sassoon’s poem title gave the reader an immediate conclusion about the contents of the poem of the hardship that the soldier faced, which brought upon his suicide. Whereas Owen’s gave the opposite impression at first, as the Latin saying translates into “it is fitting and honourable to die for your country.”
This essay is anchored on the goal of looking closer and scrutinizing the said poem. It is divided into subheadings for the discussion of the analysis of each of the poem’s stanzas.
Some situations in life cause you to grow up quicker, while others don’t. It is believed that the measure of your life is determined by how many lives you touch. It is not by how much money you make or how many records you collect. Although, can it be measured by how many people you kill? For Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon they think it is. They were both outraged by young soldiers lives lost from the horrors of war. In “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, it was a magnificent but terrible account of War World I soldiers experiencing a gas attack. Unfortunately, in the poem one of the soldiers isn’t able to get the mask on and suffers horribly. Wilfred Owen uses brilliant word choice and rich and raw imagery to reveal his ethics on war. For these reasons I chose “Dulce Es Decorum Est” as my favorite out of the two. I also selected “Dreamers” by Siegfried Sassoon because it explains the minds of soldiers on the battlefield. These soldiers daydream about their homes and family but lack realism of the situation. They reverie that they will remain alive while dead bodies surrounds them. In "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen and "Dreamers" by Siegfried Sassoon both poets use a first-person point of view to portray the harsh reality of war in vivid imagery, but with very different tones.
Throughout history, poets had experimented with different forms of figurative language. Figurative language allows a poet to express his or her meaning within a poem. The beauty of using the various forms of figurative language is the ability to convey deep meaning in a condensed fashion. There are many different figures of speech that a poet can use such as: simile, paradox, metaphor, alliteration, and anaphora. These examples only represent a fraction of the different forms, but are amongst the most well-known. The use of anaphora in a poem, by a poet, is one of the best ways to apply weight or emphasis on a particular segment. Not only does an anaphora place emphasis, but it can also aid in setting the tone, or over all “feel” a reader receives from a poem. Poets such as Walt Whitman, Conrad Aiken, and Frances Osgood provide poems that show how the use of anaphora can effect unity, feeling, and structure of a poem.
is an honor to die. The poet in the Into Battle talks about life in a
... 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.
Throughout history, tragedy and suffering have inspired great works of art and literature; and Poetry is no exception. The Great War spawned an entire new age of poets and poems, all sharing views, opinions or experiences related to World War I. The poets who touched on the topic of World War 1 became known as “War Poets”. One of the most famous of these poets is Wilfred Owen and his famous and highly scrutinized Poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”. Many critics agree that Wilfred Owen’s famous poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” showed an accurate account of wartime conditions and hardships while criticizing the glorification of war, all through his own experiences and hardships.
There is a wealth of imagery in the first two lines alone. The poem begins: