Comparing and Contrasting war poems

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Compare and contrast poems by a minimum of 3 war poets who present different views on war. You should refer to at least four poems in your answer.

 During the First World War there were many attitudes towards the war such as pro-war and anti-war. Many people who were all for the war showed great enthusiasm and many men were desperate for glory seeking to be a hero instead of the “One in the stand” as Jesse Pope wrote in her poem ‘Who’s For The Game?’ The main reason for everyone being so open towards the war was the propaganda that was published by Pro-War poets and publishers. That got all the men thinking that if they didn’t join the fight to help their country they would be marked cowards in the eyes of all.

 Another attitude towards war was Anti-War. Most people didn’t turn against war until they were at the front line, in the trenches knee deep in mud, watching close friends die in front of their eyes, even sometimes causing some to commit suicide just to escape the horrors of war.

Some of the soldiers such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon wrote poems to show and inform the people back at home, what the war was really about.

 Jessie Pope was one of those pro-war poets who composed crude recruitment poems for the Daily Mail. One of her most famous poems was ‘Who’s for the Game?’ This poem is a recruiting poem with the aim of encouraging men to volunteer to join the forces. It was written at the beginning of the First World War in 1914 and therefore the true effects of the war had not been experienced yet. Patriotic poetry of this kind was extremely common.

 Jessie Pope compares the war to a ‘game’, implying that there is little danger on the battlefield. She also refers to the war as a sport where a player would return with a minor injury such as a ‘crutch’. Throughout the poem she emphasizes war as being fun and a comradely adventure.

 Within the poem, Pope uses many questions which involve the reader, giving the poem a less formal feel. She persuades the men to join the army by making them feel deceitful and cowardly if they were to ‘lie low’. She also has a friendly manner in her propaganda poem as she refers to the men as ‘lads’. She pressurises the men into joining the forces with her assumption that they’ll ‘come on alright’.

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 The last two lines of the poem ‘Your country is up to her neck in a fight, And she is looking and calling for you’ are very inspiring and appropriate as the personification of Britain and pronouns make the reader feel it is their duty to help Britannia in this war.

 Pope has written this poem in four stanza’s using a, b, a, b rhyming pattern creating a regular rhythm. This makes the poem more memorable. This is also a technique used in children’s poetry and as such makes the war seem less complex than what it really is.

 Although the poem ...

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