Your home, your country. Standing tall through the test of time. But how far would you go to make ensure that happens? Would you even go as far to fight in its wars? Today we will look a two author’s perspectives on war, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Who’s for the Game”. Each will give differing views on the intense seriousness, and pride for war and its debated morals.
“Who’s for the Game” by Jessie Pope, presents a light and excited tone towards supporting your country via war. This patriotic view is first presented by discussing war as if it were a game. This is shown in the first line; “Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played”. This presents a persuasive tone towards the simplicity and playfulness of war. It then goes on to push and persuade its
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It displays a darker tone from the point of view of a soldier in the midst of the battlefield. It first depicts a bleak and depressing scene of war. “And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots but limped on, blood-shod.” This shows that the author does not support war, and is using descriptive language to persuade the reader. It goes on to describe a situation where the death of a soldier is witnessed; “But someone still was yelling out and stumbling and flound’ring like a man in fir or lime... As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.” This dark mood shows the seriousness of war, and how the author wants to demonstrate the dangers of war. The author then concludes the poem with the line, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”. In doing so he call this the “Old lie”, implying that the statement, translating to “It is sweet and right to die for your country.” Is completely false, and that it is not right to go as far as to die for your nation. This piece is trying to depict the harsh realities of war, and goes so far as to shoot down patriotic beliefs supporting
Woods, Chris. "Games Without Frontiers, War Without Tears." Cover Story. New Statesman. N.p., 18 June 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, it becomes very apparent that some of the soldiers do not feel as if World War I was their fight, when comrades begin discussing the origin of war. One comrade, Albert states that a war is initiated by “one country badly offending the other” (204). This lead to a discussion over why the soldiers are fighting when truly it is one person or a small group of people that are directly offended by an opposing group in a similar position of power. Therefore, why must they discover the true horrors of war while simultaneously putting their lives on the line, when the ones who began the predicament, propelled false advertisement with propagandas that romanticized and glorified war don’t have to live as if the next second may be their
Vivid imagery is one way with which writers protest war. Crane uses imagery to glorify, and shortly thereafter demean and undercut war, through the use of imagery, by placing positive and negative images of war close to eachother. “Blazing flag of the regiment,” and “the great battle God,” are placed before “A field where a thousand corpses lie.” (A) These lines’ purposes are to put images into the reader’s head, of how great war may appear, and then displaying that there are too many casualties involved with it. In Dulce Et Decorum Est, a man is described dyin...
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
In Chris Hedges’ War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, we hear firsthand accounts of the horrors of war, the devastation it brings, and the countless lives affected by this manmade construct. Hedges solemnly recounts the destruction that he has seen, in armed conflicts spanning the globe, over the course of his fifteen years as a war correspondent. His recollection of these events, however, does not end with merely showcasing the death and ruin that war causes, but rather, the conveyance of a much deeper message—war is a drug.
Trapp, James. The art of war: a new translation. New York: Chartwell Books, 2012. Print.
In contrast, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ gives us the complete opposite. It takes away the lie that describes the war as a place of pleasure and vividness. When in reality it is a...
Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” and E. E. Cummings’, “next to of course god america i” are poems that critique patriotic propaganda. Both poems use words and images to effectively depict the influence that patriotic propaganda has on war. “Dulce et Decorum Est” uses descriptive words to create realistic images of the horrors soldiers are faced with during combat, whereas “next to of course god america i” uses sarcasm to inform readers that the abuse of propaganda can be used to manipulate others. The attitudes they convey are quite similar; both suggest that propaganda is a lie; it is not sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. It is ingrained in soldier’s minds that to die for ones country is a great and honourable sacrifice.
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.
Carl von Clausewitz, “What is War?” On War. Edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, 89. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976.
...g it into: “Dulce- No-Decorum - No Pro patria mori”. The contrasting tones throughout the poem also emphasise the finality of the soldiers’ deaths.
This opening paragraph is a simple, poetic version of the main theme behind All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The point of the story is to show that war is not romantic, glorious, or fantastic. In fact, those words could not be further from the truth. War is a disgusting competition of human instinct, fought by the wrong people. It brings out the worst in everyone; it destroys their compassion, honesty, and ideals. The beginning chapters of All Quiet on the Western Front are devoted to showing that warfare hardens soldiers against true emotions. Their main priority is survival, second is comfort, followed by gain.
As an example, the author warns us that in a certain section of the poem, war can be horrific, "His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin". Moreover this line of the poem points out difficulties that the men face throughout battle. Equally important, in "Dulce et Decorum Est" it states that, "Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, but limped on, blood-shed". Although some may think it's important to fight for your country Wilfred Owen, the author of this poem, believes that men should not be forced to fight for their country. On the contrary, in the poem titled "Who's for the Game" by Jessie Pope he has a positive perspective on war and what it consists
Both Stephen Crane's "Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War Is Kind" and Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" use vivid images, diction rich with connotation, similes, and metaphors to portray the irony between the idealized glory of war and the lurid reality of war. However, by looking at the different ways these elements are used in each poem, it is clear that the speakers in the two poems are soldiers who come from opposite ends of the spectrum of military ranks. One speaker is an officer and the other is a foot soldier. Each of the speakers/soldiers is dealing with the repercussions from his own realities of the horror of war based on his duty during the battle.
The simple definition of war is a state of armed competition, conflict, or hostility between different nations or groups; however war differs drastically in the eyes of naive children or experienced soldiers. Whether one is a young boy or a soldier, war is never as easy to understand as the definition. comprehend. There will inevitably be an event or circumstance where one is befuddled by the horror of war. For a young boy, it may occur when war first breaks out in his country, such as in “Song of Becoming.” Yet, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” it took a man dying in front of a soldier's face for the soldier to realize how awful war truly is. Both “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” are poems about people experiencing the monstrosity of war for the first time. One is told from the perspective of young boys who were stripped of their joyful innocence and forced to experience war first hand. The other is from the perspective of a soldier, reflecting on the death of one of his fellow soldiers and realizing that there is nothing he can do to save him. While “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” both focus on the theme of the loss of innocence, “Song of Becoming” illustrates how war affects the lives of young boys, whereas “Dulce et Decorum Est” depicts the affect on an experienced soldier.