Futility Of War

The overall message in this poem is a drill sergeant educating young soldiers and preparing them for the harsh reality of war. He is not playing ‘Mr. nice guy’, he is being tough and strict to give the soldiers no easy way out.

The Soldier is one of numerous poems written at the beginning of war (before ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’) to attract naive young men who believed enrolling in war would be an exciting adventure allowing them to travel the world. Brooke welcomes death in his sonnet and expresses that he feels privileged to have been raised in England, believing it was a blessing.

Literature and poetry are a reflection of society. The words are reflected in numerous feelings that we can almost touch and can be deeply felt in its reach. Most poets expressed their perception and emotion through their writings. Unfortunately the art and poetry describes one of the worst things that human can do to one another. The legalized murder called "war." Hence, this type of self-reflection called "poetry" has help create new fundamental ideas and values towards our society. In this essay, I will discuss the issue of the "War Poetry" during the "Great War" along with comparing and contrasting two talented renowned poets; Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967).

The poem starts with similar word choices as ‘The Soldier’ but written in the perspective of the mother. The mother tells his son that when he dies he will be in a place of ‘quietness’ and free from the ‘loss and bloodshed’. This reinforces the fact that the battlefield was full of horrors and death. The poem then moves onto how ‘men may rest themselves and dream of nought’ explaining that the soldiers do not have to fear for their lives after their death. This illustrates how they feared for their lives and had negative connotations.

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

In war ,many terrible tragedies occur, leaving many people scarred and in grief and who can never forget the nightmare of war.This paper will discuss“ In, Flanders fields by John Mccrae’s,Dulce et Decorum EST by Wilfred Owen and I sing of Olaf glad and big by ee cummings.This paper will be discussing the different points of views that poets have about war and how it shapes our own opinion ,of it because none of us have experienced war firsthand and have only heard about the nightmare from those who have survived and lived to tell us their story.

Many war pieces express a distinct sense of truth, hatred, and anger that can be found in the style, tone, and imagery they possess. Incredible images are created in ones mind as war writings are read and heard. Works written by such writers as Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Tim OBrien really reach out to the audience by way of the authors choice of words and images that they use in their writing. These talented writers create very touching and heart-felt images as they write about the true occurrences, problems, feelings and emotions that soldiers encountered throughout times of war. It is by way of these

As America find herself in today’s “War on Terrorism,” one can easily find a number of similarities between today’s situation and the war in Vietnam. As the Taliban steadily loses control and power over Afghanistan, it becomes exceedingly important to discuss potential replacement governments. Afghanistan is, like Vietnam in the 50’s and 60’s, a very volatile country full of a variety of people speaking different dialects and practicing different religions. It is very important, then, that the government that is installed is one that is capable of maintaining some type of control or authority over its diverse people.

The first of Sassoon poems “In an Underground Dressing Station” is about the pain and suffering there was during the time. There is a reason the author did not specify what country this man belonged to. This poem was about one person, but no matter what country they were fighting for, so many people went through this pain. The next poem “Battalion-Relief” also showed how even in these beautiful towns, they faced the terror of artillery and heard distant gun fire everywhere they marched. The soldiers were stuck in this extended nightmare with nothing to do but following order to their almost inevitable demise.

Good morning, Mr Colyer and fellow classmates. Today I am going to discuss and analyse how societal attitudes to war have changed over time. First, we must explore the idea of a hero. What is a hero? It is a concept that has evolved over time to conform to the ideas and thoughts of the authors that have existed and written over the centuries. The concept has constantly changed and shaped it to fit their views, and left us with an amalgamation of ideas and thoughts and viewpoints on what heroism actually is. The differences in views are clearly shown in the two contrasting poems that were made in time periods only a few hundred years apart. King Henry V’s ‘Once more unto the breach’ speech in famous playwright Shakespeare’s play ‘Henry V’, portrays war as noble and illustrious, while Wilfred Owen, a soldier and poet in World War One, describes the war in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ as senseless and inhumane, writing 318 years later.

Catch 22 is defined as a regulation holding that in order to be grounded for insanity, a pilot must ask to be grounded but any pilot who asks to be grounded must be sane since sane people would never want to fly bombing missions. Catch 22 is a paradox that prevents a logical reaction with a logical reason while destroying itself, which is precisely what happens to Yossarian and the rest of the soldiers. All they want to do is live while those who control their future think of them as mere pawns for their promotion, no one cares for the politics. That is the point of the book, to expose the horrific and meaningless side of war and the dehumanization that is the result of the power of the bureaucracy.

At the beginning of Humanities Core in fall quarter, my understanding of war was primarily centered around soldiers and how killing others permanently scarred them, often leading to post-traumatic stress disorder. Being a Cognitive Sciences major, I am naturally interested in how extreme situations such as war affect people’s psychology. However, my focus drifted in an entirely new direction, towards civilians in wartime (See: Tags), as the year progressed and my view of war became more complex.

When faced with the countless problems of war including death, disease, sorrow, and loss, soldiers develop and intense bond between one another as they seek support in one another. A brotherhood is formed among these soldiers who rely on one another for protection and companionship amid a time in their lives where they are faced with the constant threat of death and violence everyday of their lives. But what happens to them after the war? In After the War, poet brings awareness to how the war-torn soldier attempts to reestablish their self in a society they have been isolated from for so many years through use of free verse and repetitive phrases, which further reinforces the theme throughout the poem.

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.

The poet Siegfried Sassoon saw that war was destructive and it should not happen because it was a waste of human life, Sassoon described the horror of war unsparingly, also, his poems were often based on actual incidents. Wilfred Owen focused his poetry on the particulars of war and the men involved: dirt, muddle, boredom etc, Owen often wrote about the horror of war and the dignity of men. He deeply felt a sense of the appalling wastefulness of war, casualties and the human spirit. The similarities between these two poets are they both tried to record realistic horrors of the war; to have it stopped. They were both angry at the war’s brutality, they were also showed very compassionate studies of the circumstances of fighting men.