Choose two of the poems you have studied and consider the views of war presented by each poet. How does each poet feel about war and how does each convey these feelings?

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Choose two of the poems you have studied and consider the views of war presented by each poet. How does each poet feel about war and how does each convey these feelings?

My selected poems are ‘The Soldier’ by Rupert Brooke and ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ by Wilfred Owen. Both war poems but conveying their different feelings and presenting their views of war in radically different ways.

The poets have polarized views of war with Rupert Brooke writing his poem in a romanticized and patriotic way referring to the possibility of death as a noble cause, for England the land that gave him life. This is at odds to how Wilfred Owen views the reality and horror of war.

The poets choice of title ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ which translated means ‘It is lovely and honourable to die for your country’ which in its self is irony, misleads you to think that the poem is going to be about how blissful it is to die for your country and how proud you should be, when the reality is so different.
The title ‘The Soldier’ is also very misleading. The title suggests it’s going to be about a solider at war and facing death when in fact it’s about the glorification and pride or the author Brookes at the thought of serving his country.

‘Dulce et decorum est’ is a poem about Soldiers in 1st world war. The poet Wilfred Owen has created and described images in great detail. He creates the horrific images of war and the soldier’s pain.

The poem begins,
             
‘Bent double. Like old beggars under sacks’

Which instantly has great impact on my feelings and creates the image of the young soldier’s hunched backed in pain and agony carrying enormous packs, walking slowly and haggard like old women. The pain that the soldiers are feeling is shown
               
‘Knock-kneed, coughing like old hags, we cursed through sludge’
implying that the soldiers were cold and afraid and feeling very ill. The poet used the word ‘
cursed’ trying to describe the way they walked, as if the soldier’s didn’t want to be there. The rest of the stanza continues to describe the men and the things they saw and sounds they heard:

                ‘ Drunk with fatigue, deaf even to the hoots
                  Of Gas-shells dropping softly behind’

The use of the word ‘Drunk’ is trying to emphasise that the soldier’s were acting oblivious to the happenings around them as if they weren’t conscious and even deaf to the sounds of bombs.
                               In the second stanza the poet portrays  ‘
an ecstasy of fumbling’ meaning he creates a huge panic of all the men trying to apply their gas masks in time and illustrates the image of one soldier who didn’t get his mask on in time.
         
‘Gas! Gas! Quick boys – An ecstasy of fumbling,
          Fitting the clumsy helmets’
This is the only quote of one of the men saying something and adds to the image of the rush they were in. The adjective ‘clumsy’ is used trying to describe how awkward the helmets were to put on, and how much of a hassle they were to put on.
One of the men in this poem didn’t get his mask on in time and was left by the rest in pain, screaming and becoming weak:
     
 ‘But someone was still yelling out and stumbling’
The word someone is used there because Owen is trying to show the man as being ‘just’ another soldier. He was nothing special in that he died for his country but no one remembers him as a hero, just one of the thousands of men who died.
Owen then says how the ‘someone’ was yelling out for help, for a soldier to come and rescue him and help him out of the gas but he was left to die.
       
 ‘As under a Green sea I saw him drowning’ 
The soldier has compared the dying soldier in the gas to him drowning in a green sea which creates the image of the soldier struggling for air, surrounded by the thick green gas and panicking.
The poet is left haunted by this Image of the Soldier:
       
‘In all my dreams, before my helpless sight
        He plunges at me, guttering, chocking, drowning’
By using ‘in all my dreams’ Owen is pointing out that even for those who escaped the shelling  and the gas the images of death and the young man dying will forever be on his mind.
The poet has used three adjectives trying to describe the image in detail of the dying soldier the way he dived at the poet short of breath struggling to stay alive but drowned in the gas.
The poet was helpless, as he is in his dream, unable to help the soldier, unable to do anything to prevent his pain.
 This is so emotional because while reading it I imagine being Owen and not being able to do anything to ease the pain of the helpless man.
                       The last stanza creates a heart felt sorrow it is very illustrated. Even though there are no pictures the poet creates the images by describing in great detail. Owen writes how the dying men were ‘flung’ onto the back of a wagon, this shows that being at war is neither glorious honourable or respectful, in the way they treated their dead, he was a hero but without recognition.
     
‘And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
      His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin’
They saw the pain in the soldiers eyes ‘white eyes writhing’ they were twisting in agony  and his face hung, so weak unable to lift It up. He was ‘like a devil’s sick of sin’ he was fed up with doing wrong, tired of being at war.

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The poem then continues to describe what Owen heard:

               ‘If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

                Come gargling from the froth- corrupted lungs’
This tells the story of how his fellow soldier met his death through inhaling the deadly mustard gas a gut wrenching and agonising way to be taken in a inglorious death.

These two lines had great impact on my feelings leaving me feeling ill after reading them.
I could visualise the image of the young soldier with the blood ...

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