Vitai Lampada and Charge of the Light Brigade are similar in many ways. They both support young men when they fight honourably and valiantly in battle. They take a very patriotic view of conflict. The ideas these poems try to convey is that you fight and possibly die for self-respect, for the regiment, for your country and for national pride.
Social, Historical and Cultural Background to the First World War:
In 1914 the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. Austria Hungary blamed Serbia and declared war, both countries allies became involved and soon the whole of Europe was involved. Thousands and thousands of young british men signed up to fight and were greatly encouraged to by the government through various means. The men where encouraged to join up with friends, neighbours and work colleagues who they live with so they wont just be serving with strangers. There was a downside to this however, an entire towns men could be wiped out in one attack which would be devastating to the town, having all their men killed in a single day. At first the men of England where very confident about the war they where all sure it would all be over by Christmas and really didn’t understand the years of trench warfare hell that lay ahead of them. For many men it was a great opportunity they thought they would just be popping over to France or Belgium which were both very exotic at the time seeing as not many people had been abroad, they would earn themselves a few war medals which would have not only been a very honourable award but would help them find work after the war and earn the Kings Shilling the pay was not at all bad for the soldiers especially young men. Propaganda was sent out by the government. The most common type was recruitment posters these posters tried many different methods of attempting to recruit the young men. Atrocity propaganda attempted to incite hatred towards the germans making men want to join up and fight because of their hatred. A lot of the content of these posters was either untrue or grossly over-exaggerated. Another method used by the propaganda agencies was guilting men into joining the war one famous example is a poster of a man with his two children. The little girl asks her father “what did you do in the great war daddy.” Judging from the look on his face he did nothing in the great war and it is a shameful secret he will have to carry with him for the rest of his life. The young men believed it was extremely honourable to be fighting in the war. They did it for self-respect, family pride and out of patriotism.
Another method of recruitment used was poems. These poems glorified and glamorized war. They talked about the honour of fighting for your country and the exciting adventure of war. One of these poems is “Fall In” by Harold Begbie, Begbie uses a variety of different scenarios to try and convince the young men to join the first being the idea that girls will be impressed by your part in the war. Begbie says if you don’t go the girls will go with the men who went to war and “cut you dead” if you did not fight. The second scenario is the idea that your future children will be curious as to what you did in the great war similar to the recruitment poster. When you cook up some half baked excuse as to why you didn’t fight in the war, your children will look up at you with disappointment and know you “funked.” The third scenario is even further in the future you are an old man sitting by the fire while his pals reminisce about the fight, he asks if you will cower in the corner or stand up and proudly say you went and “thank god” that you did. Finally he asks what you will be doing while your brothers “stand to the tryants blow”. Will you be at the pub or playing football, do you not care about fighting for good or if your country falls? He is calling these men that don’t go to war cowardly, he says they will be rejected, humiliated and mocked for being so useless and cowardly. Throughout the poem “Where will you look sonny” is continuously repeated and forces the men to consider and justify why they are sitting at home while England is at war. Who’s for the game by Jessie Pope compares the war to a game making it feel playful and safe far from the harsh realities of trench warfare. She calls the game of war “the biggest thats played” like it is some kind of huge sport. Pope criticizes those that “sit tight” back home while other men are out their fighting for their country and having the time of their life too and praises the men that are up for giving the country a hand. In the third stanza she asks who would rather “come back with a crutch, than lie low” acting as if its a simple game of rugby where the worst that can happen is you break a leg, not once does she even mention the possibility of death or the realities of war its all just a game. Pope refers to England as a woman who is “looking and calling for you” again convincing young men to enlist into the war.
The second genre of poems that came after the outbreak of the First World War were poems that maintained the patriotic and heroic image of war yet acknowledged the possibility that it was dangerous and you could die. The Volunteer by Herbert Asquith starts with “here lies a clerk” meaning the man is dead it then describes his pre war life, where he was a young clerk working in the City of London. His job is menial and boring he had no excitement in his life, just doing the same thing day in day out. He used to fantasize about the battles of old horsemen charging heroically. Asquith says these fantasies have “been satisfied” by fighting and dying in the great war. Although the man died he was content he felt he had served his purpose honorably he wants no recompense for his death because he is happy to have fought and died on the battlefield. These poems still glamorize war and show it as something wonderful and heroic but they incorporate death aswell but do not show death as something negative. They retain the feeling that fighting for your country is honorable and if need be you will die for you country it good and great thing to die for your country. “The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke is a deeply patriotic poem that explores the possibilities of death. Brooke explores the possibilities that he might die in future battle which turned out to be prophetic because Brooke did die fighting in a far off foreign country soon after writing the poem which makes it very poignant. Brookes sees himself as an example of English youth born, bred and taught in the heart of England. English through and through. He believes that little patch of land he falls down to die in is “forever England” that little patch of land will always be a small part of England no matter where it is. That little patch of land “gives ....... back the thoughts England given.” These poems are very similar to the poems of Pope and Begbie with their depiction of the battlefield as a place for heroes but what sets them apart from these previous poems is the acceptance of death while the prior poems did not mention death at all; these do. Death is not something to be feared. It is a part of the battle and if you die you die but you can rest peacefully knowing you served a purpose and supported your Queen and country.
Sigfried Sassoon is one of the most well know poets of the First World War his strong criticism of the war is reflected in his angry and bitter poems. “Suicide in the Trench’s” is one Sassoon’s most well known poems and reflects his anger at the loss of young innocent life. The first verse describes a content, easy-going young man. His experience so far in life has been a limited education followed by honest hard work on the land. We can imagine that he was a reliable if carefree young farm worker. The first verse is sunny, bright and cheerful and the second verse is set in winter when its dark cold and miserable. In the second stanza the same "soldier boy" is described as "cowed and glum." He is so cold, helpless and miserable that he would rather take his own life than go on fighting in the trenches. The line no one spoke of him again reminds the reader that he was just one of many such young recruits. We also suspect that Sassoon feels guilt at this waste of young life. Sassoon invites the reader to think seriously about the message behind his poem he criticises the people back home who rejoice and celebrate "when soldier lads march by" and calls them smug-faced because, as far as Sassoon is concerned the experience of the trenches is "hell". In “The General” Sassoon writes about two young men marching their way up to the front line when they encounter a General who is cheerful and upbeat hollering “Good-morning; good-morning!” to the lads he goes on to write that “the soldiers he smiled at most of ‘em dead” he is criticizing the senior military generals who send these young men into the front line to die without a care in the world. He goes as far as to call the military Generals “swine” he believed they where completely incompetent and wasteful with human life. The first and only sentence of the second stanza “But he did for them both by his plan of attack” puts the blame squarely on the General’s poor and incompetent battle plans. Sassoon is quite vicious, in his poems you can tell the anger he feels about the war which leads to his bitter and sarcastic style of writing.
Wilfred Owen is generally considered to be the greatest poet of the First World War his poems were not malicious and angry like Sassoon’s they were just filled with a deep sorrow for the loss of young lives in an war he deemed pointless. Owen’s poem Anthem for Doomed Youth was written while he was recovering from shell shock in a Scottish hospital. It starts with a rhetorical question "what passing-bells for those who die as cattle?" meaning where is the ceremony for those who have fallen how are they remembered and refers to them like animals simply cattle doing what they are told. He uses alliteration to have the effect of onomatopoeia when describing the sound of rifle fire in "stuttering rifles rapid rattle." He compares the continous roar of guns on the battlefield as the prayers that would have been said in a real funeral. Owen writes there is no choir for the dead only the “demented choirs of wailing shells.” The shells are describes as demented because of the insane sounds they make throughout the night. The boys have no candles to help them up to heaven only the glisten of shells and flares in their empty lifeless eyes. There is no pall to cover their coffins with only the wives, girlfriends and mothers sad expressions. The only flowers they get are “the tenderness of patient minds” kind thoughts from people back home. Finally the closest these young soldiers get to the respectful drawing down of blinds is the setting of the sun over the trenches. Ducle et Decorum Est begins with a group of utterly exhausted soldiers leaving the trenches for a well deserved rest. They are “bent double” with exhaustion these soldiers don’t look like the young valiant warriors which may have been the image in many new recruits minds. They look like “old beggars” and instead of a smart uniform with polished buttons it looks like they are wearing “sacks”. They are so tired they “march asleep” only half conscious of what is going on around them. In the second stanza Owen describes a gas attack there is an “ecstasy of fumbling” as the men struggle to fit their masks on in time before the deadly gas takes them. But one man is too slow the gas surrounds he looks as if he is under a “green sea” and slowly drowning. Owen’s description of the gas attack is particularly vivid he shows the fear as you attempt to fit your mask on in time and the fate of those who don’t. In the next stanza Owen talks of how he dreamt about that man “guttering, choking and drowning” right before his eyes he is haunted by the experience. In the fourth and final stanza Owen describes how if you could stride behind the wagon that they threw this poor soul into and see his “white eyes writhing in his face” and if at every bump you could hear “the blood come gargling from his froth corrupted lungs” then you would not repeat the old lie Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori with so much enthusiasm. This last stanza is squarely aimed at Jessie Pope and the other pro war propagandists who talked of the glory and the honour of the war. If they had seen the reality they would not be so quick to praise this terrible conflict. Owen’s poems are very gentle. He is not filled with rage and anger but are filled with regret at the horror and loss of life the war has lead to.
For hundreds of years leading up to the First World War, war had been regarded as honourable right from the Roman periods up to the Victorians but during the course of the the first world war something changed. At the start the poetry still maintained the belief that recruitment poems talked of honour and even fun and adventure not even acknowledging any negative effects of the war. Then came poets such as Rupert Brooke who still believed in the honour of fighting for their countries and were very patriotic, but they also showed a possibility of death in their poems. Then to Owen and Sassoon who were completely anti-war. Yhey despised the entire war and this is shown in their poems they don’t build up an image of some great and brilliant battlefield they simply tell the hellish reality of war. Poetry of a period is a great way to understand the society and mind frame of that time as the poetry slowly changed so did people attitudes.
