ESSAY ON 3 WAR POEMS
No man wants to go to war and no government wants war but there are many different circumstances that lead to the action of war. Those involved in war will have political and personal views towards it. The
First World War was greeted with great enthusiasm and patriotism; however it was the war in which millions died compared to the wars after. In the past 200 years warfare has changed and with this change the ideas on war have changed too.
Wilfred Owen, Rudyard Kipling and David Roberts are well known war poets. Using a selection of their poems we hope to analyze the two conflicting views on war.
To understand what influenced the poets we need to get an idea of their social and historical background.
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He than counteracts these thoughts and statements by saying “Who stands if freedom falls?” and “Who dies if
England live?” By this I think he means that even if you die during this war you will live on through England and the freedom of mankind so fight because you have nothing to loose.
If you compare this poem to ‘The solider’ written by Rupert Brooke in the same year, you will find that the main view is the same. Both poems try to glorify warfare. I think this is because the poems were written in the early stages of WW1 before most of the blood was spilled, so both poets took the opportunity to recruit more soldiers.
Wilfred Owen was a solider in WW1 and battled at the front most of the war; because of this I feel his view on the war can be trusted.
Wilfred Owens poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ Was first published after the war in 1921 even though it was probably written between the years
1915 and 1918 like his other poems. I think this is because it describes the true horror of warfare so the generals didn’t want it published as it might discourage others from signing up to join the army. The title of the poem is
Even a century long time after his death, Wilfred Owen is still famous for his war poetry written during World War 1. In his poems, Owen uses various language techniques to vividly illustrate the horrendous reality of war. Hence, he communicates his own anti-war feelings, that are embedded beneath his techniques. However, although he is now known as an anti-war poet, for once, he had been a naive boy, who had been pressured by the propaganda and volunteered to fight in war.
However, the result of the War had produced some outstanding poets and Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was a of the war poets who was widely regarded as one of the best poets of the World War One period. He wrote out of his intense personal experience and memory as a soldier and wrote with unrivalled power of the physical, moral and psychological trauma of the First World War . Heavily influenced by Keats and Shelly, a young Owen intrigued to become a poet began to absorb himself in poetry. He did not go into religious life like his mother. Instead, he left for Bordeaux, France to teach English in the Berlitz School after the war had erupted. Although he thought of himself as a `Pacifist', he enlisted in the Artist's Rifles in October 1915 and later in 1917 changed to France. There he began writing poems about his war experiences. Owen finally suffered from shell-shock in the summer of 1917 and was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital and met his friend Siegfried Sassoon, who shared his feelings about the war and who became interested in his work. Reading Sassoon's poems and discussing his work with Sassoon revolutionized Owen's style and conception of poetry .
The Universal Soldier is less of a man or human and more so the idea of every soldier combined as well as the perspective war personified. Throughout the song, the Universal Soldier is referred to as “him” and the songs depict what he is and what he does. The lines 1 and 4 are both representative of the height and age parameters for soldiers in 1961, which supports the idea that he represents all soldiers in war. The lines 22-24 depict him as the armies both Hitler and Caesar have; without both of their armies, they could not have accomplished what they did.
“A Splendid Little War” was an alternative title to the Spanish American War named by Ambassador John Hay to his good friend Theodore Roosevelt. This war was one of the shortest wars of all time, lasting only about four months. Surprisingly, the main cause of death in this war wasn’t by being shot, but by dying of diseases such as Yellow Fever, Malaria and other diseases. Only 9,413 Spaniards were killed by wounds and combat and 53,540 were killed by many diseases. In this “Splendid Little War” America was able to free Spain's overseas empire which included Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The United States was also hungry for foreign good that weren’t available to them in the homeland. After an easy victory over Spain, American was able to control islands in the seas such as Cuba, The Philippines and Guam. After this war, Spain was no longer a world power and the United States was on its way to the top.
Compare how poets present World War 1 in ‘Mametz Wood’ and one other poem you studied
Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is a novel that is a personal view of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Vietnamese soldier. Like the American novel “The things they carried”, this novel brings about the effects of war on people, and especially how it defeats the human capacity for things such as love and hope. Bao Ninh offers this realistic picture of the Vietnam War’s impact on the individual Vietnamese soldier through use of a series of reminiscences or flashbacks, jumping backwards and forwards in time between the events most salient in memory, events which take on a different theme each time they are examined. His main protagonist Kien, who is basically Bao himself, looks back not just at his ten years at
World War One poets Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen both use poetry to examine their differing perspectives surrounding the idea of heroism in war. Brooke’s The Soldier depicts an idealistic, patriotic view towards fighting for his country, whereas Owen’s Dulce et Decorum est demonstrates a realistic view of the senseless horrors of war. Both poets utilise similar poetic techniques of imagery and sound devices to express their contradictory views of the atrocious events of the greatest war that the world had ever seen at that time.
Disparity of power in society is often created in the chaos of wars, in which it leads to abuse in power and loss of identity in individuals. Through the anti-war poem Homecoming by Dawe, responders have discovered and gained an insight on the power of war, which has impacted and led to the degradation of the ‘homecoming’ soldiers in ‘they’re…them’, as an anaphora illustrates the bitter attitude of the persona, merging and exhibiting Dawe’s dismissive perspective of war. The dominance of conflicts has impacted on the soldiers the most as it is denoted in the free verse lines, reflecting the unstructured senseless tragedy of war that stimulated their powerlessness. On the same hand, Dawe continues with his critical view of militarism in confronting
It was the ancient Greek philosopher, Empedocles, who first established the four elements: earth, water, air and fire. He also stated that everything in the world is structured by and rooted in these four elements. However during times of conflict and violence, humans begin to disturb this harmony. When this happens, the elements stop representing life and start representing a form of destruction. Throughout Robert Ross’s journey in The Wars, Timothy Findley exemplifies this theory by displaying the four elements in two diverse ways: benevolent and harmful.
Wilfred Owen was a British poet and soldier during the First World War and was born in 1893. Unfortunately Owen died just before the war ended on the 4th of November 1918 at the young age of 25. He was killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just one week before the war had ended. A telegram from the War Office announcing his death was delivered to his mother's home as her town's church bells were ringing in celebration of the end of the war. He wrote the poem dulce et decorum est in 1917.
It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.
Poems using strong poetic technique and devices are able to create a wide range of emotions from the readers. Wilfred Owen’s poetry effectively uses these poetic techniques and devices to not only create unsettling images about war but to provide his opinion about war itself with the use of themes within his poem. The use of these themes explored Owen’s ideas on the futility of war and can be seen in the poems: Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility and The Next War. The poems provide unsettling images and belief of war through the treatment of death, barbaric nature of war and the futility of war.
Throughout Wilfred Owen’s collection of poems, he unmasks the harsh tragedy of war through the events he experienced. His poems indulge and grasp readers to feel the pain of his words and develop some idea on the tragedy during the war. Tragedy was a common feature during the war, as innocent boys and men had their lives taken away from them in a gunshot. The sad truth of the war that most of the people who experienced and lived during the tragic time, still bare the horrifying images that still live with them now. Owen’s poems give the reader insight to this pain, and help unmask the tragedy of war.
1. Owen was a soldier and a modern poet who was known as anti-war poet.
How is the theme of war portrayed through imagery in the poems Lament by Gillian Clarke and War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy?