Who 's For The Game?

Passage: “War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also a mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” P.76

Kurt Vonnegut is able to put a man’s face on war in his short story, “All the King’s Horse ”, and he exemplifies that in a time of war, the most forgotten effect on nations is the amount of innocent lives lost in meaningless battle due to unjust rulers fighting each other against a nation’s will. As Americans, we are oblivious to the fact that we have people fighting every day for our country. In addition, we ignore the fact that we do a lot of collateral damage and hurt innocent people unintentionally in order to get what we want. Vonnegut shows the reader in Pi Ying’s own sadistic way of demonstrating how he feels about war brings attention to the point that war, while unruly and cruel, is nothing

One is to think of war as one of the most honorable and noble services that a man can attend to for his country, it is seen as one of the most heroic ways to die for the best cause. The idea of this is stripped down and made a complete mockery of throughout both of Wilfred Owen’s poems “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. Through his use of quickly shifting tones, horrific descriptive and emotive language and paradoxical metaphors, Owen contradicts the use of war and amount of glamour given towards the idea of it.

This quote in the first chapter of the book sets the overall tone. The author Tim O’Brien uses his language through out the book in an extremely straightforward manner. He does not sugar coat the way going to war and being in a war is. He does not use stories of heroes,

Against the idea of conquering the enemy, the soldiers are saying, “We have learned who our enemies are – the lice, some of our officers, and Death.” Against the idea of war’s comradeship, a scene in which soldiers fight each other like animals over a crust of bread is created.

The theme of seeking peace, yet only finding war flows through the first part of the verse with painful variations drawn from browbeaten living. With a sense of whiplash, after expecting more verbal imagery of enslavement and persecution, the vocalist gains confidence as he reveals his personal war machine at the end of the verse. Maybe the vocalist mirrors a description of Walter Raushcenbusch’s social gospel. “Audiences who are estranged from the Church and who would listen to theological terminology with frank scorn, will listen with absorbed interest to religious thought when it is linked with their own social problems.” Maybe those “shackled in the chains of international gain” as well as allies hearing these lyrics will heed the message within, as it comes from the streets rather than someone without experience and no

“War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” —O’Brien, page 76

The author contradicted himself while describing war. He claimed, “ War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is

Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem made of four stanzas in an a, b, a, b rhyme scheme. There is hardly any rhythm to the entire poem, although Owen makes it sound like it is in iambic pentameter in some lines. Every stanza has a different amount of lines, ranging from two to twelve. To convey the poem’s purpose, Owen uses an unconventional poem style and horrid, graphic images of the frontlines to convey the unbearable circumstances that many young soldiers went through in World War I. Not only did these men have to partake in such painful duties, but these duties contrasted with the view of the war made by the populace of the mainland country. Many of these people are pro-war and would never see the battlefield themselves. Owen’s use of word choice, imagery, metaphors, exaggeration, and the contrast between the young, war-deteriorated soldiers and populace’s favorable view of war creates Owen’s own unfavorable view of the war to readers.

In the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, it is very tragic and full of anti-war thoughts. In “Who’s for the Game?” by Jessie Pope, the author is pro-war because she talks about feeling the rush in war. The poems are very different from each other and both have a lot of good points. The mood and tone are very different and the author's ideas differ. They are both going to give you a different side on the war, weather you should or shouldn't go to war.

This sentence makes the war seem less violent, gruesome and horrible than it actually is. This sentence might also remind the readers of a school sport, and maybe they would have got a couple of injuries every now and then however nobody really cared and in a month or so you probably be perfectly healthy. One of the most effective sentences Pope has used in this poem is:

It is intended to inform readers of the real outcomes of war, and how they effect the soldiers that fight in them. The last lines grab the readers' attentions,

Conversely, Pope adopts a colloquial, sing-song-like tone in an effort to inaccurately characterize war as simple and effortless. Her application of the word “laddie” throughout her poem The Call communicates the informal and conversational presentation of the topic, for the word is often used in everyday, casual settings. Such a careful choice of language demonstrates her subtle downplay of the seriousness of war, for choosing to converse in such an informal manner when discussing a subject of this magnitude highlights her intention to equate war to the everyday connotation of her word choice. In addition, it allows her to appeal to her audience on a personal level. Rather than merely posing questions to her audience every other line, Pope chooses to address them personally with the inclusion of “my laddie”. Perhaps this intimate acknowledgment contributed to her poem’s success in persuading men to enlist. Likewise, the entirety of The Call exhibits her deliberate illustration of war as a sport or game, specifically in lines such as, “Who longs to charge and shoot” and “Who’s keen on getting fit” (Pope 11,13). These understated comparisons accentuate her sing-song-like tone, for they are consistently followed by rhetorical questions that challenge a reader’s loyalty and commitment. This rhythm Pope develops in The Call results in a forced steady read, much like that of nursery rhymes. Although indistinct, the rhythmic similarities between nursery rhymes and The Call

“Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen takes its title from the Latin phrase that means “It is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country”. Quite often the barbaric nature of war is over romanticized and the author uses this title satirically to mock the public’s deluded view of war. The poem graphically describes the hell soldiers have to endure in their everyday battle for survival. These are tragedies of war that only veterans can fully understand and Wilfred Owen tries to enlighten the general public of these tragedies through imagery and similes throughout his poem.

Wilfred Owen poems ‘The Sentry’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ contain a myriad of both shocking and realistic war experiences on a microscopic level. Wilfred Owen a company officer talks about his egregious exposure to war and how war contaminates life and existence of humans. In both poems the 1st stanza implies the threats and life in war, which then springboards us to the physical effect of one specific soldier and the thirds stanza he relives the inescapable experience and ends the poem with a bleak, ironic statement. ‘The Sentry’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ have many similarities; they highlight the price paid by soldiers and relentlessly unveil the full scale of war 's horrors. There are two types of prices paid by soldiers due to war; one deprives humans of their sanity whereas one consumes the breath which makes us human.