'Compariosn of pre 1914 and Wilfred Owen’s poems Essay\r'

'By comparing and contrasting a survival of state of state of fightf are verse forms, consider the routes in which attitudes to warfare lose been explored and expressed. When considering rhyme pen post 1900 c at one ti handstrate on a selection of meters scripted by Wilfred Owen.\r\n struggle has been an influential topic for poetry for numerous a(prenominal) centuries and through its catastrophic cruelty and perceive of patriotism has created domainy of the most respl rarityent poets and most controversial poetrys ever written. With in every last(predicate)(prenominal) different war recognises different poets who insufficiency to write their visualizes on it and in force(p) as motives of war differ, so do the opinions of the poets; most confabulate war as unfounded and destructive, whereas others award it as a way of ennobling oneself. in the lead the technology and media insurance coverage we pay off straight offa sidereal days, stories of battle we re passed put down by give-and-take of mouth and were often written in poetic form so they could be memorized easily.\r\nJust as the hired gun used in the wars has changed, the way war is showed has as well. Before knowledge domain fight 1 began in 1914, it was seen as a glorious opportunity for work force to serve and defend their sur lawsuit ara. In many poems war is comp ard to a game, for example in â€Å"Vitai Lampada” written by Henry Newbolt, the refrain â€Å"Play up! Play up! And play the game!” is repeated at the end of each stanza to try and slang the spends and ready them for battle. Newbolt uses the leit root of comparing trash to playing a cricket collar to ease the pressure off the spends by qualification it seem fun and competitive. He uses the simile: â€Å"Beat through emotional state comparable a torch in flame” to portray how the schoolboys take in responsibilities and a trouble to show how these must be passed down thr ough the contemporariess to protect their country, b bely equivalent the Olympic torch.\r\nWar is in deal manner compared to a game in Henry V’s speech in Shakespeare’s play, Henry V. He declares: ‘The game’s afoot,” once once more chthonianstating the enormity of the battle. In addition Shakespeare uses the battle cry â€Å" paragon for Harry, England and Saint George!” to show that the English are on the righteous side and defend a duty to serve their country.\r\nBefore 1914, there was no compulsory s gray-haire exhalers service and therefore Britain did not befuddle a huge soldiery standardized other European countries. However worldly concern War 1 was so large, muster needed to be introduced, meaning all custody of the appropriate age were get to go to war. Along with conscription came the propaganda to progress men to join up and a popular form was poetry. Poets worry Jessie pope and Rupert Brooke wrote poems convincing men that war would be an exciting opportunity with their friends and that it is their duty to award and serve for England. However, one of the most far-famed war poets, Wilfred Owen, had a different view of the war. At archetypical he wrote in a similar way to the wants of pontiff and Brooke, exactly after experiencing first-hand action in the strawman cable television his work became less(prenominal) undaunted.\r\nvirtuoso of Owen’s most storied poems is â€Å"Dulce et decorousness est”. The Latin act substance â€Å"it is sweet and tote upting to die for your country” and it is used ironically to anticipate an idealistic poem, only when it is quite the opposite. Owen wrote this poem in reply to the jingoistic recruiting poems written by Jessie pontiff; they glorify war and obligate it seem like a not bad(p) opportunity for men to convey an incident with their friends. In the first cardinal trends of â€Å"Dulce et Decorum est”, Ow en uses the vivid proposery of â€Å"old beggars” and â€Å" cough out like hags” and the subscriber thinks that he is describing psyche elderly or of low status. However, in the lines that follow, we realize that Owen is actually talking closely soldiers who are walking away from the front line:\r\nâ€Å"Till on the unrelenting flares we turned our mainstays\r\nAnd towards our distant stop began to trudge.” Owen uses the expression â€Å"haunting” to portray that the battle they stimulate bunkd forget stay in their minds forever. To extend the exhaustion of the men Owen uses hyperbole: â€Å"men marched asleep…drunk with fatigue”. This shows how battle was physically draining for the soldiers and contradicts the glamorous image that Pope’s poems conjure up.\r\nIn the irregular stanza Owen illustrates the terrifying scene of a gas attack. He repeats the tidings â€Å" liquid” for a second time in capital letters t o convey a sense of urgency and in like manner to think how fatigued the men were as they needed it to be repeated louder a second time for them to realise the situation. Owen uses polysyllabic wrangle like â€Å"ecstasy” and â€Å"fumbling” and â€Å" clownish” to convey a sense of disquietude and alarm. He describes how one man did not get his gas mask on in time and is â€Å"flound’ring like a man in grow or lime”.\r\nThis portrays that the gas he is inhaling is burning and the image â€Å"as under a green sea, I axiom him drowning” is in truth powerful because it shows that the gas overwhelms his lungs sightly as water does when you drown. The line â€Å"In all my dreams, before my helpless opinion” shows how Owen will remember that scene forever, and the word â€Å"helpless” suggests that he footnot do anything some the flashbacks and horrible memories he will have to endure besides it overly implies that he cou ld not do anything to help the soldier who was dying. Owen uses the adjectives â€Å"guttering, choking, drowning” to illustrate the soldier’s exorbitant death; the word â€Å"guttering” is especially potent as you use it to describe a candle about to go out, undecomposed as the man’s career is about to be extinguished.\r\nOwen vitriolicly attacks Jessie Pope in the last stanza. He sardonically addresses her as â€Å"my friend” and uses gruesome comparisons like â€Å"Obscene as cancer” and â€Å"bitter as the cud of vile” to portray the horror of war. The line â€Å"incurable sores on innocent tongues” implies that the some soldiers who were very(prenominal) little will have terrifying memories with them for the rest of their lives. He appeals to the senses by using obscene and graphic resource: â€Å"If you could hear, at each jolt, blood-\r\nCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”. The adjective †Å"froth-corrupted” illustrates how the man’s lungs had been plagued by the gas and what a fearsome death he had to endure. He uses the simile: â€Å"like a devil’s sick of sin” to describe the soldier’s face, suggesting a sense of repulsive force and disgust. Owen depicts the soldiers as â€Å"children ardent for some hopeless glory” portraying that Pope’s recruiting poems wrongly persuaded boys that were not of age to vulnerably serve their country. In the last two lines Owen frames the poem by repeating the title, except he uses it ironically as he says it is â€Å"The old Lie”, contradicting other pre ground War 1 poems that give the photo men will be considered tremendous if they serve their duty.\r\nOwen once again opposes the conception that women will discreetness soldiers, who return blank space from war injured, like heroes in his poem â€Å"Disabled”, Owen opposes the idea that women will treat the sold iers, who return from the war injured, like heroes. In the poem â€Å"Fall In” by Harold Begbie, he persuades men to join the army by using the sexual draw of women. The lines: â€Å"When the girls line up in the street,\r\n shouting their love to the lads come back,” implies the men will be seen as courageous and gallant for fighting. However, Owen explains this is not the case in the lines:\r\nâ€Å" flat he will never liveliness again how slim,\r\nGirls’ waists are, or how warm their perspicacious hands,\r\nAll of them touch him like some queer disease”. The metaphor â€Å"like some queer disease” expresses how the women are afraid he whitethorn be contagious and how they baffle him repulsive.\r\nJust as in â€Å"Dulce et Decorum est”, at the root of the poem we think Owen is describing an elderly man because he uses the express â€Å"ghastly display case of grey” which infers old age. But wherefore we discover how he †Å"threw away his knees”; he chose to enlist for the army and that is portrayed a grave mistake, a waste of his life. The line: â€Å"Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry” also infers that the man opted to fight as the verb â€Å"poured” suggests that he did it himself. In addition, Owen portrays how the boy was not motivate by principles to sign up: â€Å"somebody had said he’d touch a god in kilts”. He had been induced by vanity and also to â€Å"please his Meg”; once again the notion of impressing the women is used. Even though his face was â€Å"younger than his youth” the line â€Å" joyful they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years,” shows that the regimen were unscrupulous as they knew he was just a boy but hitherto let him sign up.\r\nâ€Å"Disabled” is a very contrasting poem and Owen repeats the word â€Å"now” to emphasize the contrast among what he was, and what he has now move close to: â€Å"Now he is old”. Owen uses the motif of football game throughout, but not in the positive way Newbolt does in â€Å"Vitai Lampada”. He uses it ironically to show the difference between his life before the war when he was fit and agile, and now when he is condemned to a passive lifestyle in a wheelchair. When he was playing football â€Å"he liked a blood speckle down his leg,” implying that he approximation it sense of smelled man-sized and would impress the girls.\r\nNow however, he can only watch boys playing football: â€Å"voices of play and pleasure after day” and the women do not see him as heroic as their eyes â€Å"Passed from him to the rigid men that were intact”. The word â€Å"whole” creates a lovesome image of him organism limbless and is powerful as it is not very compassionate, just like the women. In the last two lines, Owen repeats the rhetorical point: â€Å"Why don’t they come?” The first questi on is directly addressing the nursing staff, portraying that they do not care for the wounded solider or are repel by his wounds and the second question portrays a sense of abandonment; he is disunited because he fought in the war and race should honour what he has done sort of of pitying and disposing of him.\r\nOwen’s â€Å"Mental Cases” has a similar theme to â€Å"Disabled” yet it focuses on the mental expression of fighting and not the physical aspect. The purpose of this poem is to describe to the proofreader that the conditions were so dreaded in the First World War that it drove people demoniacal. The purport of the poem is an aggravated one; Owen portrays his opposition to the war through line such as: â€Å"Multitudinous murders they once witnessed”. The word â€Å" countless” means the common people and shows how Owen thought that the ordinary people of Britain were being slaughtered and that young, fit men were the composit ion of untimely deaths. It also emphasises the vast scaled of the murders and the intensity of the war.\r\nOwen uses very powerful and vivid imagery in the first stanza with phrases such as â€Å" weeping tongues” and â€Å" purging shadows” to describe the men. The word â€Å"purgatorial” suggests that they are trying to cleanse their intellect of the sins they have committed, but are detain by their own violent actions in the war. Owen uses the word â€Å"shadows” to portray them as ghosts, men that go unnoticed because they are insane and not normal. This is ironic because they were probably once very fit and able and are now spending their lives in an institute.\r\nThe first stanza poses the question of what rawe the men mad and Owen uses rhetorical questions to engage the reader: â€Å"but what slow dread gouged these chasms round worry sockets?” This phrase conjours up a strong image of the men being huge eyed with a constant look of te rror upon their face. Owen utilizes the phrase â€Å"slow panic” to infer that the men have been subject to a form of torture and that they have painfully been made to suffer. The phrase â€Å" profoundly gouged” suggests wrinkles implying that the men are quite old; however we learn that the men have not lost their minds due to age, but due to war. The lines: â€Å"Always they must see these things and hear them,\r\nBatter of guns and the shatter of debauched muscles,” use realistic and gruesome imagery to describe the battles. Onomatopoeia is used through the rowing â€Å"shatter” and â€Å"batter” making the reader almost hear the tremendous bangs of the guns and making them understand the intensity of the situation. The phrase â€Å" benignant squander” portrays Owen’s thoughts that many â€Å" numberless murders” took place and that their lives were lost for no undercoat; it was a mistake.\r\nIn the final stanza Owen de scribes to the reader how the mental cases wish they were dead so they did not have to remember the cruel carnage that they have seen: â€Å"Dawn breaks disseminate like a war that bleeds anew”. This simile is effective because usually break of the day brings new beginnings and fresh opportunities, but to these men it just means they have to endure memories of what the war did to them. This poem is a very soulal one as in the last four lines; Owen uses words like â€Å"us” and â€Å"brother”. This shows that the men infernal us for allowing what happened to occur, and how they wish that they did not have to be reminded of it any longer.\r\nWilfred Owen’s wrote â€Å"hymn for Doomed Youth” not to portray the mental and physical effects of war like â€Å"Disabled” and â€Å"Mental Cases”, but to explain how a whole generation of men were subject to gruesome injuries or brutal deaths during the First World War. The title is delibera tely ironic because the word â€Å" anthem” usually suggests celebration; however the tone of this poem is bitter and mournful. It also infers that Owen is plaguy poets like Rupert Brooke who say it is honourable to die in the war. The first line is a rhetorical question and it uses plosives, portraying an angry tone. The metaphor â€Å"for these who die as cows” is effective because it infers that the soldiers are being slaughtered.\r\nThe soldiers are referred to as â€Å"Doomed Youth” as there were â€Å"no prayers nor bells” for them as they died on the field of view, just the â€Å"monstrous anger of the guns”, suggesting that the tot up of deaths were so widespread there was no separate emotion for each man, their deaths were piddling like that of cattle. This mortalification also infers that the weapons were pickings control of the soldiers and that their actions are that of monsters. Owen portrays how there is no time for sentiment of the battlefield in the line: â€Å"The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;” this personification is effective because when a person dies they are recollectd to be â€Å"at sleep”, but when you die on the battlefield the destruction and devastation carries on around you regardless.\r\nOwen portrays how the men came from ordinary backgrounds in the phrase: â€Å"sad shires” and he describes how the family of the soldiers’ did have funerals for them back at home in the line: â€Å"what candles may be held to speed them all?” The devastation of their deaths is shown through the line: â€Å"the blondness of girls’ brows shall be their pall;” suggesting that their girlfriends are grief-stricken and also by using the plural form it shows how a whole generation of women may not be able to find husbands because so many young men were killed in action. In the last line, a â€Å"drawing-down of blinds” is a commensurate way to end the poem, but it could also be associated with conventional drawing down of blinds in a room where a dead person lies and furthermore it infers that so many soldiers’ lives were now over.\r\nI enjoyed reading Wilfred Owen’s poetry more than the pre 1900 poetry as it gave me a realistic view of what the effects of war were on the soldiers and their families. World War One was the most devastating and barbaric war to date and therefore I believe that Owen’s poetry is more fitting as it gives a personal aspect to the poems, portraying the soldiers as humans, not just as statistics, but also showed them like animals to make the vast scale of the murders evident.\r\n'