Vonnegut Poetry Comparison

     The irony in the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” is that it is not sweet and fitting to die for one’s country when you have actually experienced war. Owen is describing how psychologically and physically exhausting World War I was for the soldiers that had to tolerate such a cruel suffering and not how patriotic and honorable it was. It shows the true life of a soldier, lying low, ill, endlessly marching through mud with bloody

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.

There are numerous amounts of similarities between the two poems ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘The Soldier’. Throughout ‘The Soldier’ Brooke revels the fact that fighting in war for the sole purpose of defending ones country is courageous, he supports this act by writing “And think, this heart, all evil shed

Brooke never knew what life was like in the trenches so all of his poems have a positive attitude towards the war.

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.

Owen similarly guides the tone of his writing very carefully, choosing the perfect words and punctuation to emphasize or stress certain aspects that he had in mind to be expressed. Owen also tries to give the poem a serious tone to it by exclaiming, Gas! Gas! Quick boys! But someone still was yelling out and stumbling As under a green sea, I saw him drowning (Gioia 782). He wants the reader to understand what serious obstacles the soldiers had to suffer through. War really was a time of pain and grief, not of glory. This idea is seen in Owens overall style of writing. He is rather honest and blunt about wartime. Basically, he wants his audience to feel the pain of what soldiers of any war had to go through. His final words are, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/ Pro patria mori. (Gioia 783). The translation of those words says, It is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. He just wants everyone to know that it is in deed a lie to believe that war and dying for ones country should be rewarded and glorified.

Since the emergence of written history, many fables regarding war have encompassed a significant portion of prosodic literature. Two of the foremost war poets of the 19th and 20th century—Emily Dickinson and Rupert Brooke—have both written about profound implications of war on society and also upon the human spirit albeit in two very different styles. The book, Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, theorizes through Allie, that Emily Dickinson was indubitably the superior war poet. Furthermore, when we analyze their works as well, we realize the invariable fact that Dickinson’s work delves into war with a much more holistic approach as well. She not only honours the soldiers for their valiant efforts, but also deftly weaves notions of liberty and civilian duty in regards to war as well as compared to Rupert Brooke who carried a romanticized imagery of martyrs within his poetry. In summation, Emily Dickinson is a superior war poet for her incisive analysis of death, and human nature in correspondence to war as compared to the patriotic salvos of Rupert Brooke’s poetry.

Owen uses this stanza as a tool to build-up the story and is able to

In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by

The poem “Soldier” is Brooke’s views on the possible occurrence of his own death in the field and what he feels that foreign country would gain from his death. When viewing his own death Brooke only looks at the thoughts and ways England has provided him with in the course of his life. Towards the end of the poem as if looking at the end of his life he mentions that he feels no anger or feelings of evil or hate toward the enemy or anything else but instead recollects all the wonderful things about his country.

Rupert Brook was the sort of poet that Owen was fighting against because he romanticized the war by making it look like it was noble sacrifice as propaganda was rife for men to be recruited and

Owen personifies death, giving him readily identifiable human characteristics as spitting and coughing, but in a way that accords with the gruesome nature of death since he spits “bullets” and coughs “shrapnel.” What is really striking is that the soldiers welcome death's claim of their lives; they “chorused if he sang aloft” and “whistled while he shaved [them] with his scythe.” Although evoking the death-as-a-reaper conceptualization,

During the time of 1914 and 1918, over nine million people sacrificed there lives in war in order to protect their own countries. Entire cities were demolished and nations were wiped out. Caught in a war that was waged primarily in trenches Owen found it hard to justify all the suffering he witnessed. He began to write poetry that emphasized the

In majority of Owen’s poem, he demonstrates the true image of war and the impact it has on the soldiers rather than masking it with the lies of pride

All three poems have different meanings and all had a different view over war but one thing they share is they all know how brutal war is and what effects it has on the soldiers. At the start of the war everyone was eager and enthusiastic but when the war actually started no one gave the soldiers the credit, there is the patriotic poem by Brooke which keeps repeating England and how it is great to give up your life for England as “she” has given you health and prosperity. However the more somber poem by Owen, which shows us the real truth about the war as he personally, fought in the trenches with his friends and he had seen them die. He would have the horrific true perspective of the war. The Language he uses is so powerful and is also philosophical and full of wonder like futility, Siegfried Sassoon’s poem is also a very honest poem, he tells the truth but he justifies that they are fighting for their country and