Alliteration is well used in both poems; it establishes rhythm and helps support the tone of the poem. Despite this similarity each poem is also structured very differently. The soldier is measured and paced almost gently. It is also structred as a sonnet, this is a strange structure to use for a war poem and yet also reflects well what Brooks was trying to achieve which was to enhance and glorify war. Converesly Owen’s Dulce, is more irregular and has a lot of movement and different sentence and stanza lengths. The imagery and language throughout the poem, relating to the subject, intesifies, perhaps to show how naturaly war will always get worse. This is a good representative of Owen’s personal views of the conflict. The fact that the poem has varied stanza lengths suggests that that there is much information that do not fit properly in the poem; thinking about how horrible the imagery is already this really increases the horror felt when reading the poem.
There is an abrupt change of pace at the beginning of the second stanza through the exclamation of “Gas! GAS! Quick boys!”, this is an example of direct speech. Their effect on the reader is to almost shock you awake after the soporific and sleepy first stanza and it hooks the reader into the rush and disorder which is portrayed. Owen, contrary to the traditional English picture of a glorified death that is shown in ‘The Soldier’, shows the man who could not fit his gas mask on in time as being just another soldier, a 'someone'. He was nothing special in that he died for his country, he did not die fighting the evil enemy in hand to hand combat, or saving the lives of his fellow soldiers, rather he died because he was too slow to put a gas mask on.
In the third stanza there are only two lines. I feel that these two lines perfectly encapsulate the overall tone of the poem; an abject feeling of horror and helplessness. ‘He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning’ this quote shows how war has consumed his life. Owen is now half talking about the present, half about the past. He is evoking the man who died slowly and painfully in front of him, and also his post-traumatic flashbacks to this moment. Owen addresses himself directly as “me” which also creates a bond on a more personal level with the readers by experiencing it with him. Unlike Dulce et Decorum est, The Soldier has little chronology or rhythm, it is based on ideas and beliefs rather than experiences and this is communicated well through the almost childlike quality parts of the poem put forth. The use of the word “if” in first stanza downplay how likely it is to die and show that Brooke, despite his good intentions, fails to appreciate the true horrors of war such as is shown in “Dulce”.
To build on tone, Owen uses harsh, sibilant and hissing sounds which provide and caustic edge; “sludge…trudge…devils sick of sin…smothering”, whereas Brooke more often uses softer words with euphonic undertones; “foreign-field…made aware…laughter”. Brook’s use of such appealing imagery served to attract young men to enrol. Many enlisted, as poems such as ‘The Solder’ captured their optimistic and naïve attitude. Unlike Owen, Brooke welcomes patriotic death in the sonnet and shows that he feels privileged to have been brought up in England, expanding on patriotism and convincing young men that they would be remembered as better than themselves simply because they were ones “whom, England bore, shaped, made aware”.
One of the main reasons why these poems, whilst talking about the same thing, are so different is because Rupert Brooke never saw or participated in any conflict as he died before they reached the battlefield. Thus, ‘The Soldier’ reflects the high expectations many soldiers like him held of war, naïve about what to expect apart from the glory men were told about when they signed up to fight. In contrast ‘Dulce et Decorum’ was written through by a man who had lived through and experienced all the horrors of the war and unlike Rupert Brooke, had fought in the awful conditions soldiers had to live in. Owen’s attitude to war was shown throughout the poem – how he believed it was not glorious at all but the opposite. This attitude is summed up by the declaration at the end of the last stanza; ‘The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.’ It is sweet and fitting to die for ones country.
