Comparing and Contrasting the works
of Owen and Sassoon
Wilfred Own and Siegfried Owen where victims of the war which did survive the war, but mentally they were experiencing a very emotional breakdown. Neither of the poets are anti-war per se, but they do portray a negative attitude towards their involvement in war. They share mutual feelings towards their hardships, and each use their own perspective, style and method of illustrating the grotesque brutality of the battlefield for the British people who stayed at home.
The language used in poetry is very important as the message is sent through it depending on who the poet intended the audience to be. Owen uses a more complex choice of words, with many personification, similes and metaphors throughout his work. “Monstrous anger of the guns” and “The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells” are both from Anthem of a Doomed Youth, and it displays how his selections of words are having a strong negative connotation as the audience reads it. He intends to shown the horrors and cruelty of war through bringing weapons to a human level, yet making them seem inhuman and diabolical. On the contrary, Sassoon is known for his simplicity, yet effective language. Most of his poems, including Survivors, How To Die, and They are straight to the point. His intention is to deliberately use colloquial language in order to view the gruesome horrendous reality of war to a larger audience. This is because the British, including Sassoon before going to war, thought that war was associated with pride, honour and courage, but the truth is far beyond what people perceive, which has drawn thousands and millions of soldiers in metal hospitals from the aftermaths of it.
