Comparing Two War Poems By Wilfred Owen and Maurice Hewlett.

Authors Avatar

Comparing Two War Poems By Wilfred Owen and Maurice Hewlett

        During the first and second world war many young men were forced into the army and the services many leaving their young families or mother’s and sisters. This was a very difficult time for both the men who were leaving to fight and risk their lives and for the women and children they left behind. One of the poems I have picked is in the eyes of a mother and child it is called “For Two Voices” and is written by Hewlett. The mother speaks the true brutality of war and the child sees the glorious and heroic side of war. My second choice was “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Owen. This is a devastating poem written by a man who first wet to war with a heroic vision in his head, just like the one of the child in the other poem by Hewlett, and then after spending a few weeks at war started to write poems of disaster and destruction.

        For Two voices uses much simpler language than Dulce Et Decorum Est. It is told by a child and a mother. It is like they are looking out of a window at the young soldiers marching off to war. It is a very clever structure for the poem. It is set out in speech marks first the child stating a glorious army marching by from an innocent mind and then the mother answering with a much duller, realistic point. This is very true to real life as most young children see what they want to see and can not understand the real truth. The mother however sounds like she is speaking from experience perhaps she has lost one of her loved ones in a previous war or someone close to her has already experience a death in their family. The poem works very well and although it uses simple language and only has one simile it has a very clever.  The layout incorporates both opinions without actually sating who is saying what. The child looks at all the bright exciting things like he sees the general riding on his horse and views him as a brave man who he looks up to and the mother answers by saying “I hear the sound of a child crying”. Here the writer could of replaced child with Wife or Mother but he use child because it wins people’s sympathy because people view children as vulnerable and innocent, making it sound more devastating. Children are often attracted to bright shiny things especially young infants and the boy in the poem when he says “look at the bright spears” he does not see them as a weapon for killing innocent people but as a symbol of the soldiers pride and courage. The mother even thinks it as disrespectful that they are seeing the soldiers off and not in church praying for their loved ones lives, she seems to know the true consequences of war. The mother uses the only simile used in the whole poem:

Join now!

        The leaves are falling like women’s tears

Because this is the only simile it makes more of an impact on the reader. Similes are good because they help the reader to understand the true feelings and emotions that the author is trying to put across. The views are so different that the mother even says to the child

        You are not looking at what I see

Emphasising the whole point in the poem. The child’s opinion shows the result of propaganda and artificial views on war.  The last lines of the poem sums up the mother’s realistic view on war. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay