Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est, Tim OBrien's The Things They Carried, and Siegfried Sassoon's Suicide in the Trenches

Wilfred Owen's war poems central features include the wastage involved with war, horrors of war and the physical effects of war. These features are seen in the poems "Dulce Et Decorum Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth" here Owen engages with the reader appealing to the readers empathy that is felt towards the soldier. These poems interact to explore the experiences of the soldiers on the battlefields including the realities of using gas as a weapon in war and help to highlight the incorrect glorification of war. This continuous interaction invites the reader to connect with the poems to develop a more thorough

The Solider by Rupert Brooke and Dulce et decorum Est by Wilfred Owen, are two poems written during the time of World War One (WW1). Both poems are an example of each authors’ perception on war, Owens being about the spiteful reality and Brookes about the glory of dying one’s country. Although they are two very different perspectives both are based around the horrors of war and the unimaginable amount of deaths that WW1 had caused.

The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.

Over the years, the wars throughout history have provided magical but traumatic contributions to art forms of all types. From the writings of Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five", to the poetry of Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen, they have influenced many of the modern forms of art that we see and study today. These works have been deconstructed and analysed in many different ways, but the work of Brooke and Owen continue to be controversial due to the subject matter. Commonly, popular poets and artists stray away from the topics of death and tragedy, but Brooke and Owen confront it in a realistic, in-your-face fashion. Some of the key differences between these two unique poets is the way that they approach the subjects of war-related death

War is a terrible event. When it ignites, it is like an unquenchable fire consuming the countries involved and the people who fight for them. Everyone is affected in some way. The men will go off to fight for their country. The women are constantly worried about their loved one’s whereabouts and the children constantly miss their fathers. The elderly are also affected they see their sons coming home in body bags, in some instances for a fight that is not their own. And then there are the soldiers and how they have been negatively affected by living through it. Respectively, the two literary works that were written by former soldiers of World War 1 and the Vietnam War include the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen and the short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien came as a result of the authors’ personal backgrounds relating to war, the effect of the technology of that time period, and their mentality of perceiving war.

Going to war has always been an honorable act done by brave men, but it hardly ever ends on a positive note. Writers have used literature to show how harsh war can be on these courageous men. Many authors use imagery, irony, and structure to protest war, and show readers the real meaning behind it. Imagery can show insight on how deadly war is. In “Attack” by Siegfried Sassoon, Sassoon shows how war negatively affects men, saying even the bravest veterans “have faces, masked with fear” (9).

In this essay, I will discuss how Tim O’Brien’s works “The Things They Carried” and “If I Die in a Combat Zone” reveal the individual human stories that are lost in war. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien reveals the war stories of Alpha Company and shows how human each soldier is. In “If I Die in a Combat Zone” O’Brien tells his story with clarity, little of the dreamlike quality of “Things They Carried” is in this earlier work, which uses more blunt language that doesn’t hold back. In “If I Die” O’Brien reveals his own personal journey through war and what he experienced. O’Brien’s works prove a point that men, humans fight wars, not ideas. Phil Klay’s novel “Redeployment” is another novel that attempts to humanize soldiers in war. “Redeployment” is an anthology series, each chapter attempts to let us in the head of a new character – set in Afghanistan or in the United States – that is struggling with the current troubles of war. With the help of Phil Klay’s novel I will show how O’Brien’s works illustrate and highlight each story that make a war.

Finally, O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” depicts a soldier at war, both literally and mentally. All three

The specific works I am intending to analyze is Siegfried Sassoon’s WWI poetry “They”, “The Rear-Guard’, “The General”, and “Glory of Women”. The argument I will make about these works is Sassoon’s public protest to show the realities of war and explain his tactics on doing so. Sassoon “attack[ed] the old men of the army, Church, and the government” because he believed they were responsible for the miseries and murders of the young soldiers during WWI. I intent to make the argument both cultural and historical. Example ideas or paragraphs for this paper include the poems “They” and “The Rear-Guard” play a role in the protest by illustrating the damaging aftermath of injury or death. These poems also portrays what it was like during the war

Throughout the poem, Owen makes clear two major tones. Anger and Disgust. To establish this point, the poet says “ Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge” (lines 2 & 3). This reveals how the poet was angry about being in the war because he wasn’t experiencing the romanticism of war he was experiencing suffering of fighting. An additional example is when Owen adds “ But limped on, blood shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots” (lines 6-8). These lines imply Owen’s disgusted tone towards the war because the soldiers were worked to death. However the title has a completely different tone. The translated title states “ It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” This is a huge contrast to the rest of the poem because all the poet describes is the horror of being in the war, when the title puts a glorified image in your mind that serving is heroic and honorable. For instance, Owen states “ My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, the old Lie: Dulce et decorum

The First World War was a time of great loss of life and bloodshed. Wilfred Owen, a soldier fighting with the British Army, wrote the poem Dulce et Decorum est to describe, possibly to the public, the horrific consequences of taking part and fighting in the war. During the poem, he describes the aftermath of a poison gas attack, and the injuries sustained by a soldier whom had inhaled the deadly substance. Owen uses gruesome imagery to vividly show in verse the horrible death the soldier faces, in the trenches of France. The poem Dulce et Decorum est is widely regarded as one of the greatest war poems ever written, and is a fine example of an anti-war protest in the form of poetry.

Siegfried Sassoon; perfect gentleman, decorated war hero and recklessly brave. Before the nations collided, he was a small-time poet, he had the passion but lacked the inspiration. He had often stated how he was “worried that his life was being wasted on sport and minor poetry”. It was the outbreak of the First World War that sparked his inventiveness for writing “meaningful poetry”. I discovered how Sassoon’s vigorous descriptions of his experiences, and how his poems all have interesting elements to them because he was a soldier facing these situations as a reality. The ideas derived from Sassoon’s own encounters with the frenzied battle are brought to life 100 years later due to Sassoon’s intuitive descriptions and detailed memoirs. Many

His experiences with the brutality and reality of war influenced his work heavily as he had suffered from PTSD, and watching his squad mates die in front of him. Owen had created famous poems in his attendance at the military hospital, the ones that will be focused on is ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Mental

Siegfried Sassoon was an influential man that lead the people to the revelation of the war’s heinous truth. His genius use of literature epitomised the reflection of his critical view of the war. Siegfried Sassoon declares “I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.” and thus, he begins his personal attack against war through the power of literature. He deprecated his distaste for war by discussing the destructive nature of war which, deeply involves the true conditions and outcomes of war for the land and people. He even challenged the traditional romanticised view of war. The poems that he wrote such as ‘Attack’, ‘The