"Comparing Jessie Pope's Who's for the game and Wilfred Owens Dulce Est Decorum"

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English homework: “Comparing Jessie Owens’s Who’s for the game and Wilfred Owens Dulce Est Decorum”

   In Jessie Pope’s ‘Who’s for the Game?’ the presentation of war is quite different to what you might expect. 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 and therefore the true disastrous effects of the war had not been experienced. Those left behind, women, children and exempt men, were often unaware of the true horror of the war and instead were seduced by a romantic ideal.

   She writes in a more conversational manner, which makes the poem more memorable and persuasive to readers. She compares the war to a ‘game’, implying that there is little danger on the battlefield. She also refers to the war as a sport such as rugby where a player’s injuries would only result with the player returning on crutches because that is the most awful thing that could happen. Within the poem, Pope uses many rhetorical questions, which involve the reader more and together with the use of everyday language give the poem a less than formal feel for example:

Join now!

‘Who’ll give his country a hand’?

   She persuades the men to join the army by making them feel deceitful and cowardly if they were to

‘ Than lie low and be out of the fun’

                       Or

‘Take a seat in the stand’?

   She also has a friendly manner in her propaganda poem as she refers to the men as ‘lads’. She persuades the men into joining the forces with her assumption that they’ll

‘But you’ll come on alrite’.

   She makes ...

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