Wilfred Owen
Owen was born on 18th March 1893 in Shropshire. Already displaying a keen interest in the arts, Owen's earliest experiments in poetry began at the age of 17. During the latter part of 1914 and early 1915 Owen became increasingly aware of the magnitude of the War and he returned to England in September 1915 to enlist in the Artists' Rifles a month later. He received his commission to the Manchester Regiment (5th Battalion) in June 1916, and spent the rest of the year training in England.
In January 1917 he was posted to France and saw his first action in which he and his men were forced to hold a flooded dug-out in no-man's land for fifty hours whilst under heavy bombardment. In March he was injured with concussion but returned to the front-line in April. In May he was caught in a shell-explosion and when his battalion was eventually relieved he was diagnosed as having shell-shock. He was evacuated to England and on June 26th he arrived at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh. The period in Craiglockhart, and the early part of 1918, was when he wrote many of the poems for which he is remembered today. In June 1918 he rejoined his regiment at Scarborough and then in August he returned to France. He was awarded the Military Cross for bravery at Amiens, but was killed on the 4th November whilst attempting to lead his men across the Sambre canal at Ors. The news of his death reached his parents on November 11th 1918, the day of the armistice.
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And Floundering like a man in fire or lime. -
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori
Dulce et Decorum Est uses extremely graphic imagery to convey the reality of War as seen through the eyes of the poet. At the beginning of the poem the troops were portrayed as ‘drunk with fatigue‘. It paints a vivid image of large numbers of soldiers dragging themselves through the mud tired beyond anything one can imagine. He talks about them limping on ‘blood-shod’ because many had lost their boots. It paints a dark and miserable picture of what the soldiers had to endure.
He describes the moment a soldier has been gassed. The use of the words ‘guttering‘, ‘choking‘, and ‘drowning’ show exactly what the man is suffering. The fact that the gassed man was ‘flung’ into the wagon reveals the urgency to continue on with fighting. The only thing they can do is toss him into a wagon and carry on. Still he relates that with every jolt you could hear ‘the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs‘. The graphic images displayed here are dramatic and would be hard to forget for anyone reading an account of them.
In Latin, the phrase ‘Dulce et decorum est pro partria mori’ means: ‘It is sweet and becoming to die for one's country.’ Owen calls this a lie by using his skill with words to convey graphic images to have the reader feel disgusted at what war is capable of. This poem is very effective as an anti-war poem, making war seem horrific, just as the author presumably wanted it to.
The Soldier vs Dulce et Decorum Est
These two poems are as different as they could be. The Soldier is almost pro- war and would tend towards encouraging men to sign up and fight for their country and rejoice in the honour and glory of war. It is essentially a call to arms.
Dulce et Decorum Est is painting the most graphic picture of the horrors of war and is inviting the reader to feel disgust at what the soldiers are going through and to feel pity for them. It is almost angry in its tone and at the very end the latin words used are turned around to urge those reading it not to believe in them and so it is in essence an anti-war poem.
Dr. John McCrae
Canadian poet John McCrae [1872-1918] was a medical officer in both the Boer War and World War I. A year into the latter war he published in Punch magazine, on December 8, 1915, the sole work by which he would be remembered. This sonnet commemorates the deaths of thousands of young men who died in Flanders during the gruelling battles there. It created a great sensation, and was used widely as a recruiting tool, inspiring other young men to join the Army. Legend has it that he was inspired by seeing the blood-red poppies blooming in the fields where many friends had died. In 1918 McCrae died at the age of 40, from pneumonia.
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
During the war In Flanders Field was interpreted primarily as a pro-war poem. By using terms such as ‘Take up our quarrel with the foe' and ‘The torch; be yours to hold it high.’ he is clearly indicating to others to continue where the fallen soldiers had left off in fighting against the enemy. In fact he goes on to emphasise this with the lines ‘If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep.’
By using the lighter touches invoking nature by talking of larks still bravely singing and of the poppies growing amongst the buried this is a far less gruesome way of still conveying the awfulness of death in the War.
The poem still sounds like a call to arms even though it talks of the death of brave soldiers.
The Soldier vs Dulce et Decorum Est vs In Flanders Field
In Flanders Field has a similar romantic flavour to The Soldier in that it talks of death and bravery and uses imagery of poppies and larks. Instead of images of guns and explosions there is almost a kind of peace evoked from is words. However, it still manages to touch a nerve in respect of the loss of lives and from that point of view there are similarities to Dulce et Decorum Est. It seems to sit somewhere between those two poems both in its message and its tone. Over all though it sounds more like a call to arms than an anti-war poem.
VERA BRITTAIN
Vera Brittain (1893-1970) was born in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, England. She is remembered mainly for her autobiography Testament of Youth, published in 1933. It remains the best-known book of a woman's World War I experience, heartbreaking in its account of love and loss. Despite a sheltered upbringing and the Victorian conventions of women not being expected to have any intellectual aspirations, she nevertheless went to Oxford in 1914.
At about that time she met her brother Edward's friend Roland Leighton and they fell in love. At the outbreak of World War I, Roland was called to the front, followed by Edward and his two friends, Geoffrey Thurlow and Victor Richardson. She left Oxford to volunteer as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (V.A.D.) nurse, first in England and then in Malta and France. While Roland was on leave from France, they became engaged but he was killed by a sniper's bullet in December 1915. His death was followed by Thurlow’s and Richardson’s deaths in 1917. The final blow was her brother Edward's death in action in June 1918.
She eventually returned to Oxford but instead of reading English she decided to read history and, as she says in Testament of Youth, "It's my job, now, to find out all about it and try to prevent it, in so far as one person can, from happening to other people in the days to come". After graduation she married and had two children, one of whom is the former labour politician, Shirley Williams.
Perhaps
(To R A L)
Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of You.
Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet
Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.
Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.
But though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago.
Perhaps is clearly a very personal poem talking of Vera Brittain’s loss of the man she loved and had hoped to marry. It is clearly both romantic in tone as well as emotional, and one can sense her pain at the loss. There is a lot of reference to nature which clearly indicates the romantic side of her feelings and where her thoughts are in terms of her memories of the man she had lost. It is as if she sees no joy of life without him which is probably true since she was no doubt grieving for him for quite some time after his death.
She dwells repeatedly on this loss by the use of these phrases ‘although bereft of you’, ‘though you have passed away’, ‘although you are not there’ and the ultimate statement which is clearly true, ‘Again, because my heart for loss of you was broken, long ago.’
This is a post-war poem which no doubt touched the hearts of many who had lost sons, husbands and fathers.
The Soldier vs. Dulce et Decorum Est vs. In Flanders Field vs. Perhaps
Perhaps sits very comfortably at the end of these 4 poems as a testimony to the aftermath of War and those who are left behind to deal with the emotions of loss and to try to understand what it was all about. It is neither pro or anti War because it only addresses the poet’s feelings of personal loss. It has similarities in tone to both The Soldier and In Flanders Fields because of its romantic nature. It is not at all alike Dulce et Decorum Est since that is purely relating to the horrors of War and Vera Brittain doesn’t directly discuss the issue of war in her poem at all and unless the reader knew she had lost someone in WW1 she might have been writing about the loss of anyone close to her who had died under any circumstance.
My Favourite Poem
I prefer Perhaps of all the poems because it is beautifully written and is very touching. When I read the poem for the first time I was genuinely affected by what she said and the way she said it. I could see the imagery in her words and feel her pain at the loss of her fiancée. It is a sad poem but the words themselves are very beautiful.
