“He burst out in a sudden strange fury at the two privates.”
In Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, he describes being shot in the neck in a descriptive but to the point kind of way. Orwell describes the experience simply and directly,
“It was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion”, he uses these types of sentences to create a depicted image and feeling of what it is like to be shot in the neck.
“With it a sense of utter weakness a feeling of being stricken up to nothing” he uses powerful descriptive sentences to create a image of what it was like, this sentence depicts an image of that felt he had no energy and that he thought he was going to die.
In Exposure by Wilfred Owen, Owen uses imagery of pain and suffering in the poem to recreate the horrors of battle. The realities of battle are depicted powerfully, through the imagery of the poem,
“Our brains ache”; “like twitching agonies of men” and “worried by silence” these phrases describe the nervous strain of the soldiers in a war situation.
“Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.” Is a good way of describing the spikes on the barbed wire, which surrounds the trenches.
“Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence” gives the reader a good idea of the constant dangers of being in the trenches during the First World War.
In The Making of Me by Robert Westall, a shell-shocked grandfather is given the responsibility of looking after his grandson. At first the grandchild was frightened of his grandfather because of the stories he had heard about his grandfathers violent drunken behaviour.
“When his second child was born dead, he ripped the gas-cooker from the wall and threw it downstairs.” This describes that the war had damaged him, causing him to over-react when he got stressed. The grandfather had been gassed in the trenches in the First World War.
“Unlike anybody else I knew, he had a chest, because he’d been gassed in the trenches. His chest fascinating symphony of noises at the best of times.”
“Once without warning, he clouted me across the ear.” The old man was filled with such remorse that he vowed
“never to do it again till the day he died” after this the child took advantage by making a terrible noise when he jangled a line of pots and pans and other utensils. This caused the grandfather to cower
“in the depths of his chair with his hands over his shell-shocked ears.”
After the grandfather had shown the boy the contents of an old tea chest, which was filled with odd items from his past, and described how they related to his past life they became good friends.
Each of these writers deals with the realities of combat, the horror of warfare, and the effects of war on human beings in different ways. Steven Crane’s In The Upturned Face is written from imagination. It is a fictional story, but the writer must have used his experiences as a war correspondent in his writing. Homage to Catalonia Orwell writes in the first person. He describes how the Spanish Civil War affected him personally. The incident when he was shot in the neck is a graphic example of this. Wilfred Owen’s Exposure deals with the horror of trench warfare in the First World War. He draws on his own experiences in the trenches and writes his poems as if he was at the scene of the action. His work is very descriptive and depicts a vivid picture of the sights, sounds and smells of trench warfare. The Making of Me by Steven Crane deals with the way in which soldiers who have been gassed and shell-shocked cope when they return to normal life.
The language and style used in each piece is different, although the subject matter is closely related. I like the way in which Wilfred Owen describes the
“Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.” This creates an image of the dying soldiers tangled on the barbed wire in no-mans land.
Having read about war, watched films on the subject and having seen war photographs, I think that it is important to find out about war from all of these different extracts. Poems like Wilfred Owen’s Exposure give you the experiences of the horror of trench warfare. I watched the series called Band of Brothers, which gave good visual examples of the terror, hardship and awful loss of life in the Second World War.
I think it is important to read about war, because war is a terrible thing. People on the front line have to endure terrible conditions. They watch many of their friends killed or injured. They often have to live with the effects that war has on the personalities long after the war is over, like in In The Making Of Me. People left at home also suffer in a war when they lose loved ones.
