Also there was a great deal of censorship and propaganda in the wartime media; therefore she couldn’t have had the facts about the military situation in Europe. The British public were lied to throughout the war to keep up the morale and the steady stream of new recruits. Jessie Pope’s poem is geared at making young British men join up to serve their country and protect their family by fighting. Almost everyone was oblivious the horror in the trenches of the western front.
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born on the 18th of March 1893 in Shropshire, his first experimentation in poetry came when he was 17. His application for the University of London was rejected so he travelled to Bordeaux and taught at the Berlitz school of English. His next move took him back to England; at the end of 1915 he enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles his training in the Manchester Regiment (5thBattalion) in June lasted until the end of 1916 he then served as a soldier on the Western Front. In January 1917 he was ordered to hold a flooded out dug out in no man’s land for over two days enduring heavy enemy attack. He was injured in May from shrapnel, later that month his battalion was relieved and he was diagnosed with neurasthenia (shell shock). When he returned to England in June he was sent straight to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh. There he met another patient called Siegfried Sassoon.
Sassoon introduced Wilfred Owen to other scholarly characters such as Robert Graves, Arnold Bennett and H.G. Wells. In the early part of 1918 he wrote the majority of his best work, when he rejoined his regiment he was awarded the military cross for heroism at Amiens. He was tragically killed trying to cross the Sambre Canal on the 4th November 1918 just one week before the day of the armistice.
The poem ‘Who’s for the game?’ was written by Jessie Pope, the title suggest a sports event that needs team members it tells you that the poem is going to be a prolonged metaphor. There is use of slang so that the poem can be understood and appreciated by anybody but especially the working class man who would be the typical military recruit. The phrases ‘sit tight’ and ‘up to her neck’ are prime examples of this, plus the phrase ‘come on lads’ makes the target audience very apparent. There are varied sporting references such as, ‘Who’ll toe the line’ and ‘Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid’. Also there are parts of the poem that incur guilt to the men who hadn’t enlisted; ‘who wants a turn to himself in the show? And who wants a seat in the stand?’ and ‘who thinks he’d rather sit tight?’ this technique makes the reader feel responsible and pushes them to join up and be a part of ‘the game’. The way of rhyming in ‘Who’s for the game?’ is very simple a makes the poem quite light hearted, this is strange due to the solemn subject of war. The thoughts that Jessie Pope has towards the war are apparent from reading this poem; she views the war as very straight forward and simple; join the army, fight, win, then go home. There are some reality points in the text even though they are understated, such as; ‘it won’t be a picnic – not much’, and ‘come back with a crutch’. This second quote is very misleading, Pope is saying that a crutch is the about the worst thing that could happen when over a million Englishmen died fighting for their country.
The poem ‘Anthem for doomed youth’ informs you that it will be negative and dismal from just reading the title. This poem compares the western front to a lavish funeral. There are some references to war being the new religion; ‘no prayers nor bells; nor any mourning save the choirs, - The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;’ the sonnet form that this poem takes on helps project the complicated text. The way that Owen talks about the dead is quite chilling for the reader, he calls the massacred troops cattle due to the terrible way that their lives were wasted. The views of Owen and Pope differ largely due to Owen’s actual involvement in the war and Pope’s inexperience.
‘Dulce et Decorum est’ was another poem written by Wilfred Owen, this poem gives the reader an extremely vivid description of trench fighting and the effect on the average soldier. He does this to grab the reader’s attention with truly graphic and realistic information this also makes the reader want to continue reading.
There is a very easily spotted message in the poem, that war is the most terrifying thing that can be endured, Owen uses metaphors to accomplish putting this message across. He uses the worst things that people know of to show the horror of war, ‘his hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin’. Similes are also used; ‘Obscene as cancer’ this associates peoples worst fears with war, when the reader has finished reading the poem they should feel that war is an exceptionally appalling part of life. The language in this poem is very complex and intricate due to its seriousness; it is addressed to Pope because Owen was infuriated by people like her, who gave the war a phoney image and made it noble to die for. Owen made sure that this poem was especially shocking to prove his point that the war is terrifying and there is no nobility in dying on the western front.
The poet’s views contrast with each other because of their target audience, Pope uses very undemanding language and easy to understand imagery, this helps to influence the typical working class man. The poetry that Owen uses however has complex content, language and imagery to communicate the horrific and harrowing subject of war. This is to create an opportunity for the reader to compose their own thoughts on the war and imagine more terrible things. If I was a soldier on the verge of leaving for the western front I would be extremely anxious after reading Wilfred Owen’s poetry, there would be the extra edge to the fear because I’d know that he’d actually been there. His use of intricate poetry would make me more likely to dream up more horrible war time scenarios, that is exactly how good Owen’s poetry is at conjuring up images. Where Jessie Pope’s altogether two dimensional poetry has not nearly enough gripping language.
