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Comparing S The Sentry And William Blake's A War Song To Englishmen

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Wilfred Owen’s The Sentry and William Blake’s A War Song to Englishmen have dissimilar tones. A War Song to Englishmen has a positive, emotive tone that gives the reader the impression that this is coming from a government-run media. This is evidenced by the rhythm of the poem. Each line is an iambic-pentameter and there is a repetition of the word prepare throughout the poem as well as each stanza ending with the phrase “Prepare, prepare!”. The iambic-pentameter and repetition throughout the poem gives A War Song to Englishmen a chant-like tone furthering the image of a state media. The image is added to by the abundance of emotive language such as “glorious victory” and “Be worthy of our cause”. Which furthers the image in the readers mind of a media encouraging the population to go to war. The Sentry give a completely different tone, consisting of constant suffering and fear. Wilfred Owen details this suffering through vivid imagery and detailed description his experience; “Kept slush waist high, that rising by the hour,” and “…air remained stank old and sour”. The vivid imagery allows the reader to envisage a typical World War I trench, causing the later suffering to be more vivid. Through description of what other senses are feeling, Owen has causes the reader to imagine further the atrocities of trench life. This has the impact of the reader empathising with the trench men and imagining themselves in the situation. The tones of The Sentry and A War Song to Englishmen

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