Compare the ways in which Owen and Faulks present the experience of war.
These two pieces of writing, one a poem by Wilfred Owen called Dulce et Decorum Est and the other, an extract from the novel, ‘Charlotte Gray’ from the chapter ‘The Last Night’ are both set in the World War I and World War II, respectively. There are many contrasts between these two, even thought they are both showing the horrors and the suffering of war. The poem is written in the first person, which gives the reader a very personal view point and the novel, is written in the third person. This is a very descriptive account of two boys being taken to the concentration camp. The poem is set in the dark trenches and describes the horror of war and how evil and disgraceful it is. Where as in ‘The Last Night’ the setting is at a train station in Paris where the Parisian buses stand “trembling”.
Wilfred Owen describes the experience of war in the first stanza as haunting, bloody and blind. He uses words like “haunting flares” and “blood-shod” this helps us to learn what it would be like to be in the soldiers’ shoes and to see the horrific conditions of the trenches. Owen uses “haunting” in this stanza indicating scary, black, and something that will stay with you forever. Something that will keep coming back and back for all your life like a vivid memory that will never be forgotten. “Haunting flares” would also be considered by the soldiers as a death call because, put yourself in their shoes, it’s dark and you can’t see a thing trying to attack and you duck from enemy fire. If the enemy sent up a flare they could instantly see you and your comrades. They would start to fire and people on your left and right would drop down, dead. He also uses “blood-shod” to give us the image of a person who is covered in blood from head to toe with cut clothes and missing boots, injured from the bullets from the enemies’ guns. A person who is tired and hungry whilst keeled over looking like zombies with pale skin and now sense of humanity or where they are.
