Poets such as McCrae and Brooke were popular at the time for striking a patriotic note. For example Brooke wrote ‘The Soldier’ in honour of the death and sacrifice that cost so many soldiers their lives. 'The Soldier' is a patriotic poem, written on the way to the battle, which is a time when patriotism usually reaches the peak. The speaker, presumably the soldier, shows his eternal love to England, by personifying it as this protective, caring mother like figure. Throughout the sonnet the extended metaphor of England as a mother develops, and it helps Brooke to show his love and patriotism evidently. Compared to other poets such as Faulks and Owen, this is nothing but fantasy and is far from the truth and brutality of war. I believe Brooke in particular wanted to inspire others to believe as he did. Pope wanted to hide the truth from likely soldiers and the British public and she uses teasing, familiar language to create a sense of patriotism in the reader.
Poetry explores small areas of experience deeply and tries to give them universal significance novels such as Birdsong can build characters and explore war experience in more detail. Birdsong begins as a love story so that our knowledge of the character Stephen Wraysford has already been established by the time he enters the war. This creates a deeper sympathy and understanding of the character over a longer period time.
Faulks vividly describes the brutality of trench life during World War One. The main character Stephen Wraysford is portrayed as a working class boy coming from an unstable childhood to enter an unstable adulthood. Faulks shows how Stephen coped with war and slaughter and the novel shows Stephen in love and the heartache many soldiers would have felt as they was away from the ones they loved.
The other main character Jack Firebrace is a working class tunneler with a wife and a dying son back at home. Faulks makes symbolic references on the first encounter of this character in the novel: ‘His back was supported by a wooden cross, his feet against the clay facing towards the enemy’. Jack’s character has the reader’s sympathy right from the start, as he is miles under ground in extremely cramped conditions, just feet away from enemy trenches in a world with very little oxygen. This character can do no wrong and through out the novel he is courageous and a hero such as when he saved Stephens life on one occasion, maybe even being Stephens guardian angel. The link between these two men is literal and symbolic, particularly because of the brutality they endure together. Jack Firebrace is represented as the ordinary soldier who died whilst serving his country. Jack’s character develops throughout the novel. The events Jack faces earns the readers sympathy and respect. Faulks shows us how Jack was a joyful character who was always singing and telling stories and this shows us how he was very popular with the other men. By Faulks building this character to the extent the reader feels as though they know him helps the reader to sympathise how terrible it would be to loose such a man in the war. His death has a major impact on Stephen and also the reader. In a poem such as Owens ‘Disabled’ the reader feels sorry for the young man but the poem does not create the same level of sympathy as the novel.
Michael Weir was another one of Stephen’s comrades and like Jack died at the hands of the Germans. ‘Weir climbed on the fire step to let a ration party go past and a sniper’s bullet entered his head above the eye causing trails of his brain to loop out onto the sandbags.’ Michael Weir was killed because of a kind gesture. He was from a well off family who were oblivious to the horrors of war. Faulks shows men from all social classes and how all of them suffered because of the war. ‘One morning a boy of about nineteen appeared at the end of the ward…the boy, who had clearly not had a bath for some months. His boots seemed glued to his feet. When they finally prized the boys boots off, the smell that came into the ward made the nurse retch into the stone sink beside them.’ This image is repulsive and shows what terrible states some of the soldiers got in to through no fault of their own. The reader later on in the novel discovers that this same boy was first caught up in a chlorine gas attack and then stumbled blindly into a burning house. This scenario is just terrifying and seen as the boy was only a young working class boy it is hard to contemplate how someone of that age would have coped with such situations.
Most of the significant writers of war literature show the horrendous deaths of the soldiers and what experiences they had to deal with. Something I find even more horrifying is the stolen identity of the soldiers. The brave soldiers that fought for their country were nothing more than figures what built up the thousands of deaths during the war. Faulks shows this in Birdsong when a wounded boy enters a ward with a name tag’ Round his neck was a ticket’. Here an injured soldier is being compared to an animal with no identity apart from a brown paper ticket. After battle Stephen describes the men as just ‘humps of khaki’. This was what a young boys life was reduced to, nothing but a number amongst the many thousands of other soldiers.
Various poets have wrote about this such as Thomas Hardy who wrote Drummer Hodge, a poem about a young boy who had gone to war ; been killed and was then just thrown in a foreign grave. ‘They threw Drummer Hodge, to rest unconfined- just as found’. Thomas Hardy wrote this after reading an article in the newspaper about this boy and wrote this poem with the intent to show the message of brutality and lost identity. In Birdsong Stephen writes a letter to Isabelle expressing his deep concern for the waste of lives of ordinary men: ‘These men are boys are grocers and clerks, gardeners and fathers- fathers of small children. A country cannot bear to lose them’. Many writers describe how the war was dehumanising. The writers show how quickly and easily mankind could be reduced to a state lower than animals. Pat Barker, in her novel , reflects on the War's terrible reversal of expectations: Barker describes many terrible situations soldiers face during the war such as how she describes a young soldier who couldn’t eat because every time he did he would vomit uncontrollably. Later on in the novel we discover that the boy in question, whilst at battle he fell head first into the stomach of rotting soldier and when he tried to scream he swallowed the contents. Even though this is a fictional character stories such as these are of true experiences from soldiers and just show how horrifying war was. As mentioned earlier Barker’s novel includes Wilfred Owen and his encounters with Sassoon.
Owens war poetry shows vivid and graphic detail concerning war and all its brutal consequences. His diverse use of instantly understandable imagery and technique is what makes him the most memorable of war poets. Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth", is just one part of the poems that Owen creates for his readers a vision of pity, brutality and tragedy. By using startling imagery and descriptive language, he confronts the reader with the horrors of war, and the reality of the killing fields. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” describes how the soldiers were killed on the Western Front. Owen compares the soldiers deaths to seem as unreconigsed as those of cattle in a slaughter house. He reflects that they are all equivalents of this ceremonial in the sounds of the front line and reactions of relatives at home.
Wilfred Owens’s poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” shows in graphic detail how soldiers suffered during the war. The title of the poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" which is a Latin for sweet and glorious is ironic because to get involved in the war is not at all sweet or glorious. Owen uses a lot of similes and metaphors in this poem to create an awareness to build up an image of the terrors of war to the reader. Owen is describing how psychologically and physically exhausting World War One was for the soldiers that had to endure such a cruel ordeal and not how patriotic and honourable it was as the government liked to show the people back home. Owen describes how the soldiers are physically so tired their bodies have just lost all of their energy ‘ We see the soldiers, fatigued and wounded, returning to base camp: Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge.’ Owen describes a gas attack on the soldiers as they are walking
back to camp. Owen describes the soldiers struggling to get their masks fastened and how one of the soldiers doesn’t get it fastened quickly enough and suffers from the full effects of deadly gas. The way Owen describes the image of the lone soldier dying awakens shows how he wants people who read the poem to the realise how terrifying the war was and how it was such a waste of young men’s lives, and that idea of patriotism and honour is the cause of such young men’s deaths.
Owen’s views about the war influenced his poetic style, encouraging him to write in a more colloquial and ironic styles much like that of Sassoon’s. Many of Owens’s poems show his resentment towards the generals and those at home who have encouraged war. The poem ‘Disabled’ describes Owens’s own experiences in the war through the language he specifically chooses and the imagery he builds up. He shows the thoughts of the soldiers such as the thought of killing, watching your comrades been killed and constantly trying to survive. The precise detail of the emotions, thoughts and sights of the soldier, succeed to drive the full horror home.
Yet at the start of the First World War there was a surge of recruitment poems that captured a similar passion such as Jessie Pope's 'Who's for the Game'. Jesse Pope referred to the army and war as a game "the biggest that's played". Jessie Pope’s attitude towards war incredibly irritates me as she had no idea what the war was like but created poems to encourage young men to join the war effort using guilt as her tool. ‘Who would much rather come back with a crutch than lie low and be out the fun?’ Jessie Pope actually believed that the war was nothing but a game and if you died that was acceptable because at least you joined in. Owen directs a message to Jessie Pope in ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’ and he refers to Pope in this poem as ‘you’ because he wants her to know that this message is directed to her.
Issac Rosenburg shows the brutality of war through the language he uses in ‘Dead Man’s Dump’. Rosenburg describes the battlefield and uses language such as ‘brains splatter’ to show the brutality of war in such a violent way. The poem shows how the soldiers were left in agony and one soldier is left dying waiting for the cart to arrive which he can hear in the distance. By the time the cart reaches him, he is already dead. This sort of situation would have happened on a daily basis to many soldiers and just shows the heartbreaking and painful ways in which the soldiers died.
Graves published his powerful autobiography, Goodbye To All That, which describes life in the trenches on the Western Front. The book describes the ordinary soldier day-to-day life describing there to be lack of blankets, coats or waterproof sheets during terrible weather. He then goes on to tell a story about a boy crying out one morning from No-Mans Land having been laid there since one of the battles. A Lance Corporal named Baxter tried to gather a rescue party but when he couldn’t he went over the top alone. Graves describes how he survived bullets until he is near enemy wires where he tends to the soldiers wounds. ‘He dressed the man’s wounds, gave him a drink of rum and some biscuit that he had with him’. This act of bravery shows how much of heroes the soldiers actually were. Baxter was therefore recommended for the Victoria Cross but was refused because ‘the authorities thought it worth no more than a Distinguished Conduct Medal’. Baxter’s actions I would describe no more than heroic to surrender your own life to save a total stranger and this shows how the soldiers would easily loose faith if someone was not even rewarded for such an honourable deed.
Although the war continued to bring a seemingly infinite numbers of deaths most of the people back home were oblivious to what life on the front was actually like. In the final lines of Part B of Birdsong, one of the soldiers emerges from a tunnel and embraces in the arms of a German soldier ‘For no reason he could tell, he found that he had opened his own arms in turn, and the two men fell upon each other’s shoulders, weeping at the bitter strangeness of their human lives’. This shows how the men will of being in so much horror and physically exhausted that they comfort each other even thought they are enemies. The suffering involved for the soldier is unimaginable as in Birdsong Stephen didn’t speak for years after the war because what he had witnessed change and wounded him for life. Stephen’s only salvation is in the love of Isabelle’s sister.
The poems and other literature I have read show different approaches towards war and issues arising from it. Some of the writers present their work as a chance to show how proud the soldiers were to sacrifice themselves. This is particularly clear in Pope’s ‘Who’s for the game’, Brooke’s ‘Soldier’ and Binyon’s ‘For the Fallen’. All of these writers use rich, patriotic language and minimised the suffering of those who died in battle. Where as other writers wrote refusing to subscribe to the patriotic clap-trap of the early phase and tell a much truer story of the war. Rosenburg, Sassoon and Owen particularly describe the brutality of war. These experiences of war described in the poems wrote by these writers show how many soldiers were left suffering both physically and mentally for years after the war had ended. It is the men who actually experienced war such as Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves who tell the story most truthfully. It is these men that had the courage to write the truth about the brutality of war instead of glorifying like Rupert Brooke and Jessie Pope. All of the war literature I have studied shows the writers own interpretations and experiences of World War One and each one in different ways shows how the war was just a terrible time to have lived through. The poems I have read and the novel Birdsong conjure up images which are reconigsable to those who have never experienced war giving them lasting significance.
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