Compare and contrast the portrayal of feelings of soldiers of the first world war, in Pat Barkers, 'The Ghost Road' and various poems from "The poems of Wilfred Owen'.

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Emma Finnegan: Center number: 20005 Candidate number: 8067 Compare and contrast the portrayal of feelings of soldiers of the first world war, in Pat Barkers, ‘The Ghost Road’ and various poems from “The poems of Wilfred Owen’. In both ‘The Ghost Road’ and ‘The Poems of Wilfred Owen’, one sees the brutal effects of the First World War through the experiences of those directly involved, the soldiers. They suffered immensely, from shell shock, paralysis and also loneliness and homesickness. In Pat Barkers ‘The Ghost Road’ she concentrates mainly on two characters experiences, whilst Wilfred Owen portrays the feelings and experiences of the soldiers as a whole. By comparing and contrasting both of these textual sources, it is the intention to discover the true effects of the war and to question how much the portrayals of the war differ. In the novel ‘The ghost road’ by Pat Barker, it begins with Billy Prior  at the seaside in Bradford. He is watching people as they walk passed, he notices what he thinks to be a soldiers wife, this is because it says ‘Married, but the war, whether by widowing her or simply by taking her husband away,’ this show how soldiers wives are lone, and have no independence as they have to live with there parents. The wives of the soldiers are like the soldiers in away; this is because
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they are trapped like the soldiers yet they are trapped in a war that seems to them like its never going to be over. Prior is getting ready to go back on the front line, because he fells it was his duty. Prior like Owen also had shell shock ‘ shell-shock, yes’. This is one of the major things during the war that affected soldiers; it would stay with them forever and influence the rest of there life. As in Wilfred Owens poem ‘Mental cases’ it shows how many soldiers were victims of the First World War therefore resulted in ...

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