Comparison Essay

Descriptiveness in a horrific scene can either make or break its affect of the readers. In this case, the portrayals in the poem Dulce Et Decorum Est are helpful in understanding and enjoying the story. The vagueness in The Wars makes the story much harder to picture in your mind and furthermore much harder to enjoy. It might be to save the reader from reading about the hardships of war but regardless; it makes the story boring by lacking action and adventure: “There’s no good picture of this except the one you can make in your minds.” (Findley, 69) The vagueness makes the story much more boring and creates the idea that the scene must be imagined in order to understand, as opposed to reading the book and being able to identify the scene from the words on the pages. Some things in the novel were left as loose ends throughout the novel without being thoroughly explained and understandable to the reader. An example of this is when after a day of work, Robert has a harder time than usual getting home, but the reason for why this is, is unknown: “The distance Robert [has] to go [is] just about a quarter of a mile…this time it [takes] him over an hour.” (Pg. #) In the quote above, the reader is left blind as to why the journey took Robert so much longer than it originally would have. The lack of explanation showed here makes the story less interesting because of the lack of detail and much more complicated since the reader needs to interpret the story on his/her own. The descriptiveness shown in Dulce et Decorum Est brings the reader in and makes the story much more enchanting. Owen wrote the first about his life experiences in the wartime and so his descriptiveness helps his audience truly understand and step into his shoes...

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...ad of it being to describe the landscape or the set up in a room, it is to accentuate the war scene and to help the reader understand the story to the fullest extent. Wilfred Owen uses many adjectives to create a picture in one’s mind of exactly what he is going through:

“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shot. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.” (Owen)

In the above quote, Owen is able to portray the scene with words that bring the story to life and provoke the reader to continue. Whether or not the story is enchanting, the imagery can bring it to an entirely new level of interest. Dulce Et Decorum Est succeeds in it’s use of imagery however in The Wars, imagery is often placed in strange places, taking away from the story’s detail and depth.