This is the first line of the second stanza. Alliteration is used because Sassoon thinks that because he has already used alliteration so he might as well carry on with it. Also Sassoon might want to keep up a pattern, the first line of every stanza he may want to use alliteration again like he did. In the fist line of the first stanza.
In the poem ‘Glory of Women’ alliteration is also used. But it is not in a pattern. Alliteration is used in different parts of the poem:
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‘…When hells last horror breaks them, and they run, trampling the terrible corpses - blind with blood…’
Alliteration is used in these two sentences- Sassoon doesn’t use it in different parts he can put alliteration together. At the start of the sentence ‘h’ (and ‘s’) is used then it is ‘t’ and it finishes with ‘b’. This makes the sentence more interesting because different words are used in the sentence, which actually go together (the words).
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‘…By tales of dirt and danger…’
In this sentence the ‘d’ goes quite well and alliteration is used quite well.
I am going to describe how the words that Sassoon has used affect the poem. The contrast between ‘you’ and ‘we’ divides the men and women. ‘Heroes’, ‘decorations’ and ‘chivalry’ are what women like, but it doesn’t express the horrors of war, which they do not see, ‘love’, ‘worship’ and ‘believe’ are also connected with the idealistic women. For the men it’s words like ‘wounded’ and ‘disgrace’. ‘You make us shells’, not only are the women making munitions but their false hopes in the soldiers make them ‘shells’ of who they used to be before the war. The sonnet that has been formed is ironic (since sonnets are love poems). Though the women love, the soldiers are dying in the trenches. Overall, the poem expresses a soldier’s disgust at overly idealistic women on the home front, which don’t know what it’s like and support the war blindly.
In the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ alliteration is used all over the poem, it turns up anywhere, there is no specific pattern. I do not think that Wilfred Owen knew where he was placing his alliteration sentences, because most of the alliteration is at the end paragraph of the poem. Here is the alliteration (at the last stanza):
- ‘…If in some smothering dreams you too could pace…And watch the white eyes writhing in his face…His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin…Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest. To children ardent for some desperate glory…The Old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est…’
As you can see most of the alliteration works well with poem, because the words go together with the sentence. But there isn’t a repetition of alliteration at the first few paragraphs you can see alliteration quite rarely. I don’t think Wilfred Owen concentrated on alliteration as much because maybe it didn’t appeal to him, he may have concentrated on different aspects of the language.
The second aspect of the language I am going to describe is Assonance. This is the repetition of vowel sounds. Here are some of the examples of assonance in ‘The Kiss’:
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‘…He spins and burns and loves the air, and splits a skull to win my praise…’
As you can see the vowel letter(s) is ‘a’ (‘o’ and ‘e’). I don’t think assonance really works here because it is only a repetition of the same word.
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‘…But up the nobly marching days…’
From this there are four vowel letters (‘u’, ‘e’, ‘o’, ‘a’). It is like a pair of vowels except there is a group of three. The first vowel letter is ‘u’ and it is in ‘but’ and ‘up’. The next vowels are odd and they are ‘e’, ‘o’ and ‘i’ these are in ‘the’, ‘nobly’ and ‘marching’. The final pair is ‘a’ and this is ‘marching days’. As you can see assonance here occurs in pairs, I think Siegfried Sassoon had to find words, which had the same pair of vowels within the two words. The one’s that he couldn’t find pairs for; Siegfried Sassoon gave an other vowel letter to go with it.
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‘…She glitters naked cold and fair…’
Assonance is also attempted in this sentence, again it is also in pairs but there is one vowel, which Siegfried Sassoon couldn’t find a match for and that is ‘o’ which is in ‘cold’. The rest of the pairs are ‘e’ in ‘she glitters naked’. The ‘a’ being in ‘naked…and fair’.
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‘…The body where he sets his heel…’
The repetition in this sentence is ‘e’. The odd vowel letters are ‘i’ and ‘o’. I think using the vowel letter ‘e’ Siegfried Sassoon is probably trying to make the words rhyme.
Using assonance it achieves the lyrics of the poem because you see more of the vowel sounds and it makes the sentence interesting.
Assonance is used in the ‘Glory of Women’. Here are examples of them:
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‘…You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave…’
As you can see the main letter vowels are ‘e’ and ‘o’. They occur frequently for example the letter ‘o’ appears in the first two words ‘you love’ then at the end of the sentence it reappears in ‘home on’. This is the same for ‘e’ it starts at ‘(you) love’ then reappears at ‘when we’re heroes home…leave’.
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‘…You worship decorations; you believe…’
As you can see the repeated vowel letters are ‘o’ (at the start) and ‘e’ (at the end). These vowel letters give the same structure of the word for example when you say the words with ‘o’ it gives the mouth structure and your mouth rhymes with the word.
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‘…While you are knitting socks to send your son…’
In this sentence the vowel letters are in pairs but some of them are mixed up. For example in the word ‘while’ the vowel letter is ‘e’, the vowel letters pair is in the word ‘are’. Also one pair of vowel letters, which are placed together, is at the end- ‘your son’ the two ‘o’ are paired up. But Siegfried Sassoon also has sentences in the poem where there are different vowel letters. Here is one of them:
In this sentence the vowel letters are not the same and are not paired up. Using assonance in ‘Glory of Women’ Siegfried Sassoon brings out the poem and tries to make a point. Also by making the vowel letters go together the words sort of rhyme and make the poem good to read.
Assonance is rarely used in ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ I don’t think Owen took it seriously because he thought it wouldn’t affect the poem. But I have caught a few examples of assonance and these are:
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‘…Like a man in fire or lime…’
As you can see the words which have assonance in them look alike e.g. the second letter of the word has the vowel ‘i’ also it ends with the letter ‘e’. This makes the word look like it rhymes and it sort of make it stick out.
Here assonance is ‘e’, it makes the sentence stand out because there are so many of the letter ‘e’. But assonance doesn’t really affect the poem.
The third aspect in the language I am going to talk about is onomatopoeia. This is when words sound like the sound they are describing. This technical aspect of the language goes well with the poem because the words Siegfried Sassoon is describing goes perfect with the poem. This is the good section that Siegfried Sassoon has achieved well on. Here are some of these examples in ‘The Kiss’ (Onomatopoeia occurs in every stanza):
- ‘…He spins and burns and loves the air…’
This is an attempt of onomatopoeia because it is trying to describe the sound of the bullet as it is fired. The bullet creates a hissing noise.
- ‘…She glitters naked cold and fair…’
This sentence is describing ‘Sister Steel’ (the bayonet). This phrase is not really onomatopoeia but it is describing something. The sentence is describing how the bayonet, in this case named Sister Steel, is described like a goddess. How the bayonet glitters in the cold, frosty sun. This sentence is quite clever because Siegfried Sassoon uses ‘she’ in terms of the bayonet.
- ‘…Quail from your downward darting kiss…’
This is in the third stanza. It is mainly describing the bayonet, stabbing someone with it. To put this in an elegant way Siegfried Sassoon using ‘darting kiss’ as a nice and pleasant way. The ‘darting kiss’ also meaning the kiss of death. So these two words also have two meanings.
Here are examples of onomatopoeia in ‘Glory of Women’:
- ‘… You make us shells, you listen with delight…’
This is in the fifth line of the poem; it is talking about bombs exploding. Siegfried Sassoon is talking about how women listen to the bombs that are being exploded and the way the brag about their men fighting in the war and listening to how their men are fighting.
This was the only example I could find in the poem because Siegfried Sassoon doesn’t really use onomatopoeia in this poem because he is not really describing sounds, but describing women’s thoughts about the war. The example above is not really an attempt of onomatopoeia, but sort of is because of the way he is describing the bombs being exploded and women listening and cheering.
Onomatopoeia also occurs in ‘Dulce et Decorum est.’. The first stanza sets the scene. The soldiers are limping back from the front, an appalling picture expressed through simile and metaphor. Such is the men’s wretched condition that they can be compared to old beggars, hags. Yet they were quite young. Barely awake from the lack of sleep, their once smart uniforms resembling sacks, they cannot walk straight as their blood-caked feet try to negotiate the mud. ‘Blood shod’ seems an unpleasant image- we mainly think of horses shod not men. Physically and mentally they are crushed. Wilfred Owen uses words that set up ripples of meaning beyond the literal and exploit ambiguity. ‘Distant rest’- what kind of rest? For some the permanent kind? ‘Coughing’ finds an echo later in the poem, while gas shells dropping softly suggests a menace stealthy and devilish. In line eight the rhythm slackens as a particularly dramatic moment approaches.
In the second stanza the action focuses on one man who couldn’t get his gas helmet on in time. Following the officer’s command in line nine, ‘ecstasy’ (of fumbling) seems a strange world until it is realise that medically it means a morbid state of nerves in which the mind is occupied solely with one idea. In lines twelve to fourteen I consists of a powerful underwater metaphor, with succumbing to poison gas being compared to drowning. ‘Floundering’ is what they’re already doing (in the mud) but here it takes on more gruesome implications as Wilfred Owen introduces himself in the action through witnessing his comrade dying in agony.
In the third stanza, it describes about the aftermath. From straight description Wilfred Owen looks back from a new perspective in the light of a recurring nightmare. Those haunting flares in stanza one foreshadowed a more terrible haunting in which a friend, dying, ‘plunges at me’ before ‘my helpless sight’, an image Wilfred Owen will not forget
Another aspect again marks stanza four. Wilfred Owen attacks those people at home who uphold the war’s continuance unaware of its realities. If only they might experience Wilfred Owens own ‘smothering dreams’ which replicate in small measure the victims sufferings. Those sufferings Wilfred Owen goes on to describe in sickening detail.
The ‘you’ whom he addresses in line seventeen can imply people in general but also perhaps, one person in particular, the ‘my friend’ identified as Jessie Pope, children’s fiction writer and versifier whose patriotic poems epitomised the glorification of war that Wilfred Owen so despised. Imagine, he says, the urgency, the panic that causes a dying man to be ‘flung’ into a wagon, the ‘writhing’ that denotes an especially virulent kind of pain. Hell seems close at hand with the curious simile ‘like a devils sick of sin’. There is no gentle stretcher-bearing here but agony intensified. Wilfred Owens imagery is enough to sear the heart and mind.
There are echoes everywhere in Wilfred Owen and with ‘bitter as cud’ we are back with ‘those who die as cattle’. ‘Innocent’ tongues? Absolutely, though some tongues were anything but innocent in Wilfred Owens opinion. Jessie Pope (she was children’s fiction writer and versifier whose patriotic poems epitomised the glorification of war that Owen so despised) for one perhaps, his appeal to whom as ‘my friend’ is doubtless ironic, and whose adopted creed, the sweetness and meetness of dying for one’s country he denounces as a lie which children should never be exposed to.
The third aspect of I am going to describe is simile and metaphor. A simile is a comparison using ‘like’ or ‘as’. A metaphor is when one thing is said to be another.
Simile and metaphor is not used most of the time in ‘The Kiss’. There are no similes but mainly metaphors. Here are some examples of them:
- ‘…Brother Lead and Sister Steel…’
This is in the first stanza it is describing the bullet and bayonet. The bullet being Brother Lead and the bayonet being Sister Steel. The metaphor works so well with this because Siegfried Sassoon is so wrapped up in this propaganda world that he actually accepts a materialistic object into his life. The way he describes the bullet and bayonet and actually treats them like God and accepts them into his life.
This sentence is saying that justice is blind. Sassoon is talking about the statue in London, the woman holding the scales and has a blind-fold over her eyes.
These are my examples of metaphor. I couldn’t find any examples of simile. The way Sassoon uses the metaphors are in a unique way because they really blend with the poem.
Simile and metaphor is also used in ‘Glory of Women’ here are some examples of them:
- ‘…You worship decorations…’
This is in the third line. Siegfried Sassoon is trying to explain that women brag about how their son or husband got a medal for fighting in the war. They don’t care about the hurting or suffering of others but only the fact that the man in the household has a medal which they can brag about. But what is the honour of fighting and killing others? This is what Siegfried Sassoon is trying to explain.
- ‘…You crown our distant ardours while we fight…’
This is in the seventh line of the poem. In this phrase Siegfried Sassoon is describing when the men go and fight the women speak highly of them like they are warrior leaders and great achievements in life. But when they are at home women complain about them. So mainly it is saying how women brag about men fighting in the cold, harsh, terrible war.
- ‘…You can’t believe that British troops ‘retire’…’
This phrase is in the ninth sentence. Siegfried Sassoon is quite clever in this sentence because he is describing how he thinks women react when British troops ‘retreat’. Instead of using this word Siegfried Sassoon uses ‘retire’ because this is much calm and sort of pleasant. It is sort of euthanasia because Siegfried Sassoon is using a more appealing word for something, which is not nice. Siegfried Sassoon is so angry that he wants to explicit his full emotions but cannot just in the event that he is labelled a traitor and is sentenced to death etc. So to show what he means he writes down what women think and say when they hear that British troops retreat.
- ‘…That chivalry redeems the wars disgrace…’
This sentence that Siegfried Sassoon accounts is describing the code of honour. Siegfried Sassoon is giving the example of the knight who will protect the weak and innocent but it doesn’t make up for the disgrace of war. It is like a code of honour to help the weak and innocent.
My final aspect of this poem I am going to talk about is the structures of the poem. The first poem I am going to describe about the structure is ‘The Kiss’:
The final aspect of this essay I will be discussing about is my opinion on the poems. The first poem I am going to describe is ’The Kiss’ this poem is a very obsessed poem. It mainly is talking about how obsessed Siegfried Sassoon was to his bayonete and rifle.