The Changing Role of Poetry in the First World War

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Toby Leckie

6th December 2004

GCSE LITERATURE POST-1914 POETRY ESSAY:

The Changing Role of Poetry in the First World War

In this essay I will discuss the changing attitudes of poets during the First World War.  I will select a range of poems that will cover the early days through to the end of the war and explain how the texts were used for different purposes.  I will also show how the language of the poetry went through gradual changes.

Poetry written in 1914-1918 about the war had four basic phases: expectation, experience, protest and finally reflection.  I will cover all four in this essay.

Britain’s entry to the war was forced upon us. The army was sent into action after Germany threatened Belgium, a country we had promised to be allies with, Britain seemed to dive into an unplanned and very vulnerable situation.

The people seemed to have no idea of what was about to happen. The attitude across the country seemed to be one of all the young men going off to fight the enemy, and all of them coming home heroes. There was an attitude that war was a patriotic sacrifice and almost a passage that young men should go through, to come out as civilised, and experienced, human beings. The poets writing at the time, such as Julian Grenfell wrote of the warmth of comradeship and left alone the possibility of actually dying over there. The poems are so airy and warm, speaking of the spring and new beginnings, and even of death being an ultimate honour.

In “Into Battle” Grenfell uses romantic language, opening the first stanza with: “The naked earth is warm with spring,” is hardly the way to describe a war. This was at the beginning of the war and the attitude was very patriotic and an enthusiasm for the men to enlist and go and fight abroad. They were very happy about making themselves available for the war. Soon when they actually came face to face with the war, they realised how wrong they were.  A handful of soldiers just killed themselves.

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The people who were not involved in the war were still excited about it. It was when the soldiers started to come back to Britain with ‘blighty wounds’ (injuries that resulted in the person coming back), that people realised that there was something wrong. The war was only meant to last four months in which the men were supposed to enjoy the benefits of trench life. Instead the fun died down and the pressure of the end and survival grew upon them.  Famous poets, and in fact ordinary privates, started to write the second period of war poems: experience.


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