The poem features a soldier, presumably Owen, speaking to fellow soldiers and the public regarding those atrocities. Correspondingly, drawing on the themes of innocent death and the barbaric practices of warfare, Owen expresses his remorse towards his fallen comrades and an antagonistic attitude towards the war effort through a solemn tone and specific stylistic devices. The poem is structured as free verse, contributing towards the disorganized and chaotic impression Owen experienced while witnessing these deaths firsthand, enabling the audience to understand the emotional circumstances of demise in the trenches as well. Throughout the poem, Owen routinely personifies the destructive weapons of war, characterizing them as the true instruments of death rather than the soldiers who stand behind them. Owen describes how, “Bullets chirped…Machine-guns chuckled…Gas hissed…” (Owen 3,4,15).
This essay will compare and contrast the way the poets Jessie Pope and Wilfred Owen present war in their poems. Who’s for the game? Was written by Jessie Pope in 1916 during the heart of the First World War. The poem is pro war and is a piece of propaganda that was used to recruit men into the British army. In contrast Dulce et decorum est is an anti war poem and shows the true aspects of war.
The statement translates to “It is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland.” This poem revolves entirely around this specific statement, because it sums up what Owen calls “The old lie” (25). In the context of the poem, Owen argues that this phrase should not be told “to children ardent for some desperate glory” (26). This line is used to promote patriotism in a country’s children and inspire them to take up arms for their country because it will be glorious and fitting. Owen denies that notion, having seen the true horrors of war during his service, and eventually, dying in the war. Owen’s use of the allusion is powerful because it directly rejects a commonly accepted notion and argues that his country’s future generations should not follow it, or be misled into following it.
In ‘On My Songs’ by Wilfred Owen, his ideas about poetry and its importance are voiced throughout the duration of the poem. He does this by using various techniques like metaphors, diction, and personification amongst others. One of the main ideas we can gather from this poem is that he believes that poetry is a form of release. It begins with: ‘Though unseen Poets, many and many a time/ Have answered me as if they knew my woe/…fashioned so their rime…easing the flow/ Of my dumb tears’. In this quote, Owen seems to be paying homage to all the romantic poets (like Keats and Shelly) whose poetry has been able to soothe him and has even often resounded deeply with his situation or with the problems he was going through.
By putting these words together, Owen is using irony by telling that there is a celebration of the young soldiers who were doomed to die in an early age, which is a horrible thing that only can occur during war time. One of the poetic devices that Owen uses in his poem to convey the tragic deaths of the soldiers
Owen was taken out of the war where he began writing poems. He wrote his poems to show both his anger at the cruelty and waste of war. (BBC) Owen used this poem to show the misconception that war is. While people outside of the war thought it was honorable, soldiers like Owen himself, know how cruel and it really is. Through the use of imagery, figurative language, and tone, Owen is able to portray the misconception and cruelty of war.
World War I was a time of great suffering and turmoil resulting in millions of deaths, loss of property and social instability. Europe was devastated after the war: 8 million soldiers died, the culture of every European nation was in jeopardy and governments struggled to maintain stability (Wilde, 2014). Wilfred Owen, a soldier himself, had experienced the dreadfulness of World War Ion a first-hand basis. His poem Dulce Et Decorum Est is an attempt to represent the helplessness and confusion which he and his comrades faced when they were trapped in a gas attack as shown in the lines “Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod.
Discuss Wilfred Owen’s presentation of war in the following two poems Dulce et Decorum est Wilfred Owen vividly and acutely portrays the harsh reality of war straight up from a firsthand experience. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ the title, literally translates into ‘It is sweet and noble’, but this title brings out the ironic aspect of the poem, as the readers are aware that the poem is anything but ‘sweet and noble’. Owen seeks to convince the readers that the horrors of war far outweigh the efforts by the patriots to glamourise war. His main goal is to completely destroy the lies instilled by propaganda and to make sure the readers are aware of what ‘war’ really is about. Through the topics of the poem, his dialect decisions, and differentiating the charming title going before the aggravating substance of the poem, he conveys regard for his perspectives on war while amid in the middle of one himself.
The imagination of the soldiers enduring the life of catastrophic war conveys to the readers. Owen dramatically communicates the readers and exemplifies one man experiencing physical and psychological difficulties. Throughout his poems, the various language devices influences the dehumanization of the soldiers and represents how they were treated as not human beings. Much like his poems, Owen communicate the powerful emotions creating a true reflection of the harsh reality where the soldiers endures the war. His poems are able to make the horrors of warfare come to life while the
It is as if that the stanzas are divided, those stanzas that Thetis expects to see and those of how actually the things are, the first are alleged the reality with a more romanticized way and the other are presented with a rather tough and harsh reality which is as if a battlefield. In this poem, Auden wants to demonstrate his concerns for a contingent war, the poem is written in the period after the Great War which inevitably follows the period of Cold War. In a way, through the poem, Auden tries to make its readers think more reasonable and be aware of the consequences that would have in a possible war. In the last stanza, when Hephaestos reveals to Thetis the whole true about the shield “Hephaestos, hobbled away,... Out in dismay ”, the fact that her son Achilles died during the war(66-68). The descriptions that are provided in the poem, remind the recent events of the war and Auden uses them so as to recall people’s memory and to function as an example to be avoided.