Industrialization Of War Poetry Essay

Industry revolutionized warfare giving birth to machine guns, poison gas, and tanks. This weaponry increased mortality rates but only added to the gruesomeness of deaths. Meanwhile, countries upheld the war with patriotism, nationalism, and a sense of duty; poets spoke out about the truth of warfare and the true horror of battle. War poets reveal the suffering everyday soldiers endured on the battlefield. They depict a bleak, realistic picture that the outside world that did not have firsthand experience of the war would not otherwise have experienced. In their poetry, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen draw attention to the horrific damage of the industrialization of warfare of World War I.

The industrialization of warfare in World War I changed war forever, but its cruelty left a lasting

Owen drew attention to the lie that nationalism and patriotism told directly, but Sassoon did so in a less conventional way. In his poem, “Counter-Attack” Sassoon discusses the sheer number of corpses on the field and the desensitization of death for soldiers. At first, Sassoon describes the horrific scene of soldiers digging into rotting corpses; he portrays this dreadful scene by describing the corpses as “green clumsy legs” and “naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair” (Sassoon). These men were left here to rot, not taken home for a proper burial. Not only this, but surviving soldiers stripped them naked stealing their boots and clothing which were often coveted at this time. Sassoon uses his poetry to bring the horrors of the front to their readers. While the public would have been ignorant of the fact that soldiers would have experienced this, Sassoon brings it to their attention. Poets like Owen and Sassoon contradict common belief of the war at that time by drawing attention to horrors of the war everyday soldiers