I will be comparing the attitudes of two major and influential poets and considering how stylistic features are used to relate these attitudes. The subject of both poems by Siegfried Sassoon and Alfred Lord Tennyson is war.

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Comparison essay

Comparison

In this essay, I will be comparing the attitudes of two major and influential poets and considering how stylistic features are used to relate these attitudes. Whilst the subject of both poems by Siegfried Sassoon and Alfred Lord Tennyson may be war, their attitudes to war differ greatly.

  Sassoon’s masterpiece ‘Memorial Tablet’ is a deep and meaningful poem with examples of powerful and thought provoking emotions. Firstly, the poem is in first person, which gives it a more personal and realistic effect. Also, writing in first person gives the notion that the soldier is talking directly to us – telling us of his experiences during the war and so enables the reader to feel more involved. This technique is very effective in creating emotion, as the poetic device is that he is talking to us from beyond the grave. I think Sassoon used this technique as his experiences in World War One were real and he wanted to convey them with a personal and more realistic approach. The poem includes enjambment in such a way that the pauses fall in the most natural of places, as if the speaker was pausing for a breath and together with the use of an iambic pentameter rhythm, the poem is written as if it was speech. One example of his writing in first person is: “I died in hell – they called it Passchendaele”.

  Another technique used is his metaphorical imagery with the line: “I died in Hell – (they called it Passchendaele)”. This line is a very direct and meaningful way of portraying the living hell that many men had to suffer whilst on the battlefield. It is very effective as the reader is able to picture just how dreadful the experience must have been for the speaker in the poem. Also, images of hell would erupt whilst reading this line, giving feelings of anguish and torment, placing the reader on the World War One battlefields and enabling them to have a fraction of an idea of the suffering the soldiers endured during the war. To his contemporary audience, hell would be a real place, many of the readers of the time still being religious, so they would picture the World War One battlefields as being the worst place imaginable.

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  The use of rhetorical questioning is thought provoking in the last line when he asks: “What greater glory could a man desire?” The use of this sarcastic and ironic question makes the reader question whether or not dying for your country in such hellish conditions is in fact glorious or heroic. The soldier was given a poor and impersonal funeral service simultaneously with numerous other soldiers in the war and gives the impression that his effort wasn’t really appreciated or significant as he says: “‘In proud and glorious memory’ – that’s my due.” As if that simple line was ...

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