Compare and contrast the presentation of war and the poets' attitudes towards war in "Who's for the game?" by Jessie Pope and "Dulce et Decorum est" by Wilfred Owen.

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Khalid Attia                English Coursework

War Poetry

        Compare and contrast the presentation of war and the poets’ attitudes towards war in “Who’s for the game?” by Jessie Pope and “Dulce et Decorum est” by Wilfred Owen.  (900-1500 Words).

        During and before the First World War, between the year 1914 and 1918, there were many recruitment banners, recruitment poems, and many other ways to encourage young men to go to war.  When the war began in August 1914, Britain relied only on a small professional force, unlike most other European and Global countries that had very large conscript armies.  During this time, young men had huge official and unofficial social pressures on their shoulders until conscription was enforced in Britain midway through the First World War in the year 1916.

        Streets became full of war recruitment posters and banners, and nearly all newspapers gave space for many war recruitment poems.  One poem by Harold Begbie called Fall In, which first appeared in the Daily Chronicle on 31 August 1914, just a short while after the start of the war, became hugely popular.  It was then published in many other newspapers, like other poems, and encouraged many young men to conscript.  It became so popular that it was even set to music and sung in music halls.  Posters and badges were also made, which were related to the poem and wrote, ‘Sing the Song!  Wear the Badge!  Play the March!’  The reason why this poem became so popular is because it related to the reader, it was very colloquial, using the word “sonny” and talking about how girls will think the men are heroes when they go to war.  

These recruitment poems began to make war very appealing to the young men as it gave them false but delighting and very appealing details about war.  This is how Britain’s army was relatively large even before conscription was enforced.

Jessie Pope was one of these poets who made war seem very exciting, more like a game or a spectacle rather than a war.  She was very good at what she did as she made the poem relate to the average person, her poem is neatly organised with four stanzas, each containing four lines and all with the same rhyme scheme, her poem is very colloquial and simple to understand and therefore relates to everyone and she also makes war seem appealing and enjoyable.

After the First World War however, there were many soldier poets who began to write poems that were unappealing, disencouraging, and mainly very negative towards war, as they had experienced it for themselves.  One of the more famous of these poets is Wilfred Owen.  He despised Jessie Pope and other poets who gave a false image of war and made it seem enjoyable and exciting, more like a game, whereas Owen saw the war from a first hand perspective, rather than from the relative safety of the Home Front and it wasn’t how Pope described it.

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Already in the title, Jessie Pope makes war seem like a game, “Who’s for the Game?”  It is a question directed to the readers, in a sense, asking them if they’re ‘up to the challenge’.  Her four stanzas are very neatly organized, each containing four lines.  This precise organization is how Jessie Pope pictures war, although imprecise, it is a pull factor for the reader, encouraging them to join the war.  She makes war seem like a game, more specifically, a game of rugby, “the red crashing game of a fight”.  Rugby is a men’s game, which used to be ...

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