Religion In World War I Poetry

“And the Bishop said: ‘The ways of God are strange!’.” Religion is one of the most noticeable themes that the World War 1 poets use. Death is another prominent subject of the poems written during the war. The home front is another theme in the poems. The loss of innocence is a major theme as well.
Religion is used ironically in Thomas Hardy’s poem “Channel Firing”. The dead wake up to the noises of a gunnery practice thinking that it is Judgment Day. Judgement day, according to Christian belief, is the day when the human world is destroyed and the dead shall rise to receive their assignment from God on eternal bliss or eternal torment. However an angered God tells them “That this is not the judgement-hour”, but instead it is man trying to make

As the dead lay back down, a parson comments that he wishes he had stuck to “Pipes and beer.” It can be inferred that the Parson thinks that all his preaching was useless in the face of the new era. He might as well have lived a life of sin for all the good he did preaching. God himself is disappointed in man it seems. He says to the effect that it’s good it’s not the judgment day because for many men “It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet.” By this it can be inferred that many men belong in Hell for their atrocities and actions. However, it can be questioned that if God finds it so distasteful, why does he allow such atrocities to occur? This question is never answered and the poem ends with the note, “Again the guns disturbed the hour.” In the poem “They” by Siegfried Sassoon religion is used satirically. The beginning of the poem starts with a Bishop trying to give comfort to those who will go to war. He says that the boys who go to war will come back changed because they have fought “In a just cause”. These are

In Sassoon’s “On Passing the New Menin Gate” he writes about the unnecessary death of 54,889 soldiers at the Battle of Ypres in 1917 and the construction of a monument to honor them. He mentions “The unheroic Dead who fed the guns” and he wonders who will change the “foulness of their fate.” It can be conjectured that Sassoon is questioning the reason why the monument is being built when all who could appreciate it are dead. The next two lines question who will speak the truth of these soldiers’ death. “There name liveth for ever” is used sarcastically. Essentially it all breaks down to the question on whether or not death is worth a name on a heap of stone. A name is just a name, meaningless in the entirety of things. A name does not describe the horrors that the man went through before death, it does not tell of who the man was. This is described in the line, “These intolerably nameless names.” These men, who sacrificed their lives, will not be remembered for themselves, but just as a whole to give glory to their deaths. The dead should “Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.” The building of this monument is a crime and degradation to all those who died and if the dead could rise, they would tear it down. What is the meaning of death and is there such a thing as an honorable death are two questions that can be inferred from this poem. Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” has