It is a poem that conveys a message about the brutalities and horrors of war to an ill-informed and complacent audience in England. The length of the poem is short, but powerful and wrought with vivid imagery, griping the reader’s attention from the beginning to the end. The poem focuses on the horrifying death of a solder in WWI who falls victim to gas warfare because he fails to attach his gas mask quick enough. Wilfred Owens, a war veteran himself, uses the story of the soldier to expose the harsh truths of war. With his effective use of imagery, diction and irony, Wellford Owens strips away the glory of war and reveals the horror of what it was really like to fight in WWI.
Peace by Rupert Brooke What attitudes to war does the poem have and how is it written? 'Peace' By Rupert Brooke is a sonnet written at the beginning of the first world war. The poem's attitude to war is clear; it is very positive and patriotic. The whole poem has a celebratory tone even from the first line, where Brooke talks about how his generation is lucky to have the opportunity to fight in the first world war, and ultimately to protect England. (This to him is the ultimate honour, and he believes that the men of England should protect their country at all costs, even if it should result in death.)
The poem uses a question and answer structure which satirizes the uber-patriotic notion that it is noble to die (or, in this case, to become an amputee, a blind man, or a mad man) for one's country. Using three abbca quintains, Sassoon's speaker contrasts a soldier's injuries against the cold sympathies of able-bodied "people." He pits the wounded soldier against uncaring civilians in three post-war scenarios. Each raises the question: "does it matter?" The presumptive question is existential: does a soldier's quality of life matter after he is forever maimed in war?
Dulce Et Decorum Est Wifred Owen’s war poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is poem in which there is incident vividly in a scene. Wilfred Owen expreses how it is so sweet and honourable to die for your country but also disagrees with this. Owen uses great word choice and through this technique this cause emotional and also dramatic stanza’s which include death. ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ tells us of the horrors and traumatizing effects of World War I. Wilfred Owen achieves this by using descriptive language to tell us of the terrible state of the weary soldiers and trench life. He then goes on to describe the horrific and deadly gas attack that takes the soldiers by surprise.
By using a sonnet for the structure of his poem, Wilfred Owen introduces a touch of irony. The conventional function for a sonnet is love, but this poem has a sort of anti-love, or rather, a love that turns bad. The young male population have so much patriotic love, and are so eager to serve, but this love turns sour. They spend time rotting in the wastes of the trenches, only to be mown down in the blink of an eye by a machine-gun. Not only are their lives wasted, gone without the holy rite of a funeral, but the lives of their loved ones at home are also ruined.
Owen wrote this poem to express his feelings about war and ‘the pity of war’, which he speaks about in the preface to his collection of poems published posthumously in 1920. When Owen says ‘the pity of war’ he is trying to address to the reader the horrors of the war and sympathise with the victims of war. Owen conveys ‘the pity of war’ throughout all of his poems by making them gloomy and adverse, often decorating his poems with horrific imagery and condemnation, which in turn made them unfavorable to the patriotic British person. ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ is dramatic monologue while also being an elegiacal poem, a poem meant to reflect on the lives lost at the western front during the first world war and impugn the conditions that the soldiers had to brave through everyday. Owen makes this piece an elegy by portraying the battlefield as hell ‘like a man in fire or lime’ or terrible enough to make the devil feel sick ‘like a devils sick of sin’ in order to make people realise that war will only achieve loss and sadness and convey the sadness and fear the soldiers had to face every day.
Although both 'Disabled' and 'The Charge of the Light Brigade ´ are about battle and the death of soldiers, they both portray the experience of war in very different ways. Alfred Lord Tennyson, born 1809, writes about the Crimean war during 1854-6. The Charge of the Light Brigade tells us of the glory of war, despite the fact that, because of an error of judgement ('Someone had blundered'. Blundered meaning to make a careless mistake)six hundred soldiers were sent to their death. On the other hand, Disabled shows the horror of senseless death in the trenches.
Dulce et decorum est is a poem by Wilfred Owen written during world war I, while he was in the trenches. The title is the first part of a quotation by Horace’s Odes: “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori” that means “It’s sweet and honourable to die for your country” but the whole poem aims at contradicting the title. His style is experimental in fact he uses the free verse. In the first stanza Owen describes the subject, that are the soldiers, through similies such as “Old beggars” and “Hags” because he wants to show us anti-heroic figures, going against the propaganda that encourages young men to go fighting and dying for their country preaching the ideals of nationalism, glory and courage. Owen describes us horrible and degraded scenes of the real life in war and he adds emphasis using allitterations: of the b in the first line Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, of the kn in the second, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, of the m in the fifth, Men marched asleep.
Critical Essay "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owenis a powerful poem that describes a soldiers life in the trenches in World War One. In this essay I will discuss the different techniques Owen uses to describe his duration in the war. The poem title "Dulce Est Decorum Est" is a rough translation of "It is sweet and fitting to die for your country." The title suggests how soldiers would die a glorious death by fighting for king and country. However if you read deeper in to the text you find that Owen is criticising the term because his poem shows the exact opposite.
“Floundering like a man in fire or lime” The literal images depict the horror of death in war, abolishing the romantic notions of war set up previously by jingoistic poets of the time, such as Jesse Pope. Owen goes on to further confront these patriotic views in the final four lines of the poem. “My friend you would not tell with such high zest, to children ardent for some desperate glory, The Old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est, Pro patria mori.” This sardonic address to the aggressive nationalist views of the era causes a strong reaction in readers as they realize the truth about war – how horrific and desolate the scene actually is. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” explores another aspect of a soldier’s life in World War One. Death is corrupt and vile, and the soldiers must suffer all by themselves.