Jessie Pope also makes out that if you don’t join up then you will have to sit back and watch the 'game' go past I think she shows this quite well in these two quotes "And who thinks he'd rather sit tight?" also "And who wants a seat in the stand?" she uses these quotes as a mocking approach to getting people to sign up.
She doesn’t really say anything about how bad it is at war or what it is like to get injured at war but when she does she makes it seem as if it isn't anything much to pay for fighting for your country "Who would rather come back with a crutch
Than lie low and be out of the fun?" she makes it out to be that a crutch is nothing more then a hanky but really a crutch would have stopped most people from working as they were mostly miners, fishers and farmers. She avoids using words like disabled as this would have probably put most people off signing up.
Jessie Pope was quite innocent of war and the horrors of war as were most people in 1914. No one would be getting TV broadcasts of what was happening at the front line. She is also very patriotic in the last paragraph of the poem "Come along, lads - but you'll come on all right -
For there's only one course to peruse,
Your countries is up to her neck in a fight," Every one would have felt very British and this would have been very important to them.
Herbert Asquith
In 1914, most British men had forgot what it was like to fight in a war as the only people that had been involved in a war would have been trained specialists that would have fought in south Africa. Young men were rest less as to us the Edwardian era seemed glorious but to people that lived in that time it would have seemed stuffy and dull also shame full with its strikes, suffragette riots, and its extremes of wealth and poverty.
The Volunteer
In the poem 'The Volunteer', Herbert Asquith rights about how boring the mans life was before he went to war such as "Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent toiling at ledgers in a city grey,". He also shows that the clerk before he was enrolled dreamed about fighting with swords and horsemen I think this shows that most people used to think that fighting was the same as what it was like before he shows this here
"Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes
The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
And horsemen,"
This poem also runs very musically very much like Jessie Popes it also a very uplifting poem as it talks about how going to fight has satisfied he clerks dreams "And now those waiting dreams are satisfied;" he also talks about that even when he dies he will be content with his life as he went to fight this is show here "His lance is broken; but he lies content"
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen was born in Shropshire and went to school at Shrewbury and Liverpool. He was encouraged to right poems by his devoted mother. He could not afford to go to university so he moved to France to teach English. He wrote a draft of war poem that was very different to his later work. He then returned to fight for his country telling his mother 'I now do most intensely want to fight. In spring 1917 he took part in the attack on Germany. When a huge shell burst near him and gave him shell shock. This completely changed his views on war and started to right poems about what war was really like.
Dulce et Decorum Est
In he original manuscript of Dulce et Decorum Est you can clearly see that this poem was originally being directly written to Jessie Pope but for reasons unknown he changed it to the more ironic Dulce et Decorum Est. This comes from a Roman poet called Horace who actually wrote 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' which roughly translates to 'it is sweet and right to die for your country'. This way it wouldn't be so directly aimed at Jessie Pope.
In this poem the style of writing was very different. The type of words that are used are very dirty and dismal they paint worn down picture of old men even though they may have not even be older enough to sign up. This I feel is show really well hear;
"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through
Sludge,"
In the second section the people in this poem get attacked by gas she use's some strange comparisons such as
"And flound'ring like a man on fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning."
In the last section his writhing contains some hideous comparisons such as
"like a devil's sick of sin;
if you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud"
He also uses the technique alliteration to at the beginning of he poem were he is writing "Knocked-kneed"
Exposure
Wilfred Owen Describes how dismal and dead it was to be on the font line in the winter. in his poem he talks about how your body feels as if it has turned to ice and how your body aches he shows this here "Our brains ache," he also uses metaphors to describe things like "in the merciless iced winds that knive us …" He also describes in quite a bit of detail what it would be like to go to war and to be stuck in the trenches in winter “Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,
Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.”
Disabled
In this poem Wilfred Owen describes what it is really like in war. Also what it is like to be injured in war and go to hospital for days on end. I think he does this really well in this poem he uses horrifically graphic horror. For example “And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey, legless, sewn short at the elbow.” Also there is “Now he will never feel again how slim girls’ waists are. Or how warm their subtle hands; All of them touch him like some queer disease.” As you can see from the last quotes that also that you get injured permanently you could never get any girl again and that you will probably be treated as if you have an unusual disease. He also describes how he used to be young he would like to have blood down his leg so that girls would try and make it better but now they just pass him by. He also says how he lied so that he would be able to join the army here “Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.” Also that people had said he would look good in a Kilt here “Some one had said he’d look a god in kilts,”
Conclusion
The poem that had the greatest effect on me had to be disabled because it really brought out what it would be like to be disabled and to have come back from war with no legs. I also think he managed to describe how people would treat him really well to.
