Expressing his love for his country, he said “A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware” In This line, the poet compares England to a mother who gave birth to its people, this proves the fact that the soldier utterly loves his country and is like a son to it, which shows that the country is like a mother who nurtured and raised him. “dust” shows that the soldier considers himself worthless when compared to his country.
However, in “The Effect” and “Counter Attack” the themes of dehumanization and irrationality are anti-war. In “The effect”, the poet describes the horrifying and disturbing battlefield.
The repetition of the phrase “He’d never seen so many dead before” indicates that there were plenty of dead corpses lying in front of the person, which both shocked and astonished him. In this quote imagery was present making that reader imagine the terrifying and disturbing scene that the soldier stood before.
Dehumanization is shown as “Don’t count ‘em; they’re too many. Who’ll buy my nice fresh corpses, two a penny?” These two lines show how the people are dehumanized at war. The poet shows that the people have lost their sanity and feeling of brotherhood during war, the fact that a person was selling two dead bodies of a cost of one penny shows that chaos was everywhere and that humans lost their value during war.
Moving to “Counter-Attack”, here, the poet described war from the soldiers eye, he shows how war is deadly, horrible, and painful by saying “Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out to grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he chocked” and “Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned, bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed” These lines take us to the scene where the soldier is dying slowly and painfully. “knocked” proves that the people where savages during war, “he sank and drowned, bleeding to death” show a very painful scene which is the scene of the soldier covered with his own blood, slowly and painfully dieing.
In conclusion, the poets used different techniques and themes in thier poems to express the two conflicting views about war. I personally think that the poets were successful in using poetic techniques and figurative language to convey their point of view
