‘ But someone still was yelling out and stumbling and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.’
This phrase tells us that the people died in horrific ways. ‘Like a man in fire or lime’, which burns.
‘Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.’
Owen describes when he was watching the man die. He says he was drowning. The gas was like the sea, because of its green tint of colour. The word ‘drowning’ carries on the metaphor ‘flound’ring’, which is struggling in water.
Owen says how watching the man die was like being in a dream, ‘In all my dreams, before my helpless sight.’
Owen describes how the man was helpless and that his life was being taken away.
‘Guttering, choking, drowning,’ guttering is when a candle flame dies down. Owen makes it sound as if the mans life was being extinguished.
Owen then feels angry and upset about how the people at home, especially women nag the men to go to war, and if they don’t go they are considered cowards.
Owen expresses this by saying,
’ If in some smothering dreams you too could pace behind the wagon that they flung him in.’
Owen describes how the mans lungs were rotting, like cancer killing him. ‘Corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer.’
The mans lungs were corrupted just like the people back in England, who’s lives were being corrupted by the affects of war.
‘Incurable sores on innocent tongues,’ here Owen tells us about the man whose tongue was covered with sores due to the gas. The man was also ‘innocent’. Not going to war because he wanted to but to fight for his country.
Owen is also referring to the people in England who were lying, they didn’t have innocent tongues.
At the end of the poem Owen talks about how the soldiers were really only children who thought they’d get the glory they wanted out of war and that they didn’t deserve to die.
The ‘Old Lie’ they told, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est, Pro Patria mori’ – it is a sweet and seemly (glorious) thing to die for your country, but to Owen it never really was!
The poem ‘Exposure’ concentrates on the dreadful conditions the men at war endured. This is different to the first poem because
It talks about death and what being at war was like and this poem compares the war to weather.
Owen uses half rhymes, so they are unexpected, like the weather.
‘We only know war lasts, rain socks, and clouds sag stormy. Dawn missing in the east her melancholy army’.
‘Stormy’ and ‘army’ are the words that half rhyme because they vaguely sound alike.
Owen explains that there was not only the enemy across no-mans land but the wind was also their enemy.
‘In the merciless iced east winds that knive us,’ this shows exactly how awful and cold the wind was. As it hit them it was like their enemy throwing knives at them.
Owen describes how quiet it was. ‘Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous.’
Owen uses here good alliteration and sibilants. There are 6 S’s in this sentence. All the words are quiet words making it a quiet sentence and that’s exactly what its meant to be.
He says how in the silence he can ‘hear the mad tugging on the wire.’ It was the wind tugging on the wire.
‘Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles’, Owen uses an interesting simile here. He is describing the barbed wire to brambles. As the wind tugs on the barbed wire it reminds him of the men who got caught on it and are left to die.
As the dawn begins, all Owen knows is that ‘rain soaks and clouds sag stormy.’
The clouds are like the dawn’s army. The grey clouds again bringing snow. Owen uses personification. Describing the snow clouds to an army. ‘Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army’.
‘Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence,’ here Owen uses sibilants again. He is describing the snow to bullets flying through the air.
He then uses alliteration (F’s). ‘Flowing flakes that flock’. He is describing the snow to a flock of sheep.
Owen says how the snow was like hands smothering their faces. This is like the part in the first poem when the thoughts of the man dying was smothering Owen’s dreams, making them more like nightmares.
Owen also tells us that he has ‘forgotten dreams.’ He is talking about the dreams he had a home.
As it gets colder they begin to hallucinate. They dream of better days; of a warm fire with glowing fire embers. ‘Crusted dark-red jewels.’
‘For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs.’
Owen is saying that the men are innocent, just like in the first poem and that the rest of the world is the opposite because they’re in control of what happening.
‘Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed.’
Owen is saying that he has left his house behind but at the same time feels that he’s been forced out of home and made to come to war. He feels that life is just death. ‘We turn back to our dying.’
Owen describes how at war he is fighting to protect his life. His family, food, home, wife etc. ‘Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn; nor even suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.’
This is a patriotic view.
Owen says how spring must come though the power of God.
‘For God’s invincible spring our love is made afraid.’ Owen is afraid that spring won’t come. That he won’t see it because he’ll be dead.
Owen at the end of the poem is very pessimistic. He wants to know if God’s love is dying of if he is losing hope in God.
He describes how as night comes the frost will ‘fasten on this mud and us’.
He describes how the men who died due to the cold are buried, but their faces are not recognisable due to the weather at war. This is not how Owen wants to die.
The last poem ‘Perhaps’ by Vera Brittain is very different from the two poems Wilfred Owen wrote.
In her poem, Vera Brittain focuses our attention on the grief and pain she feels, at the loss of her fiancé.
Vera Brittain lists a number of consequences of having lost her loved one in the poem. Some of them are, ‘perhaps some day the sun will shine again’. She can’t see the sun shining any longer.
‘Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay’, she can’t see spring being a symbol of new life and happiness.
‘The white May-blossoms sweet’, they never seem sweet to her anymore since he has passed away.
Vera Brittain mentions every season except winter. This is because to her the world, at present seems like winter. Winter is cold, grey and miserable, which is how she feels. Her heart is cold and grey and she feels miserable.
The other three seasons are all bright and of good things. Spring is a symbol of new life, summer things flourish and autumn is the time of harvest. Too her winter only means death.
In the future she hopes that things will be good, that she will some day come to terms with her lost. She will be able to see things as she used to. ‘And I shall see that the skies are blue,’ she hopes that someday in the future she will see blue skies again.
‘And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,’ she hopes she will find this and all the other things how they used to before her loved one died.
Wilfred Owen and Vera Brittain both have views of what the war was like.
Wilfred Owen didn’t like the war because innocent people were killed and men often forced to go. He also went through all the extreme conditions of being on the battlefield. He saw death in his face and had to cope with it. His consequence was that he was aged by the experience of war.
Vera Brittain disliked the war because it was not just those fighting how got hurt it was also those back home that got hurt. Many of them losing loved ones, which aged them while caught up in their misery.
I think that the views of both poets are quite different but are the truth about what war really is and brings. It is a waste of time and most important, life!
