Referring in detail to at least two poems: What Makes Wilfred Owen a Great War Poet?

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Referring in detail to at least two poems:

What Makes Wilfred Owen a Great War Poet?

Commencing the First World War in 1914, conscription had not yet been established, but the government were leaning heavily on the media to endeavour and recruit volunteers into the army. This was done by propaganda. Poetry and posters were the two most prominent in persuading men to fight for their country. But it was poetry which encouraged the “war fever”; poetry in which war was described as valiant and noble, and how it was an honourable thing to be able to fight for your country. An example was Jessie Pope who wrote Who’s for the Game: a writer whom Owen was predominantly against. His poems he wrote partially in retaliation against propaganda, and with the intention of exposing “the old lie”. By this, he recapitulated his own experiences in the war, which were ghastly and did not show men in war as gallant and heroic. His poems also seemed therapeutic; a way of release, but the main intention it seems was to expose the truth about war.

Owen illustrates his poetry with such vivid descriptions and realism, particularly in Dulce et Decorum est, so as to paint a realistic image of World War I in the reader’s mind, especially in the fourth and final verse, where Owen vividly describes the horrific image of a soldier dead from gas, and he brings the reader right up close to the face of the dead soldier. By doing this, he makes it very personal for the reader. The face of a human is what shows their emotions, and what shows identity. In the poem The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Tennyson, which describes the charge of British cavalry against Russian soldiers, the whole six hundred British were slaughtered, yet not once does Tennyson pick out one soldier, or individualises this. This is what Owen does in “Dulce et Decorum est”: he individualises the soldier who has died. Another feature of this last verse is that it shows people that the war they thought would be glorious and noble is not at all that. At the end, it seems as if he is trying to make the reader feel guilty (especially after reading about the gassed soldier) by ever believing that war is an honourable thing:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory

The old lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori

With this, Owen asks that after knowing what war is really like (as opposed to glorious and noble), would you still tell your children if they asked that war is a wonderful and honourable thing? He therefore intends to make the reader feel guilty for this.

In a war, when many people die, their deaths are recorded mostly as a statistic. Here in the last verse of Dulce et Decorum est, Owen picks out one dead individual to the reader. The dead one’s face is described so vividly, so as to stand out most to the reader. One’s face is what gives one identity, what shows emotion and other human characteristics. Owen purposely focuses in particularly on the face, as to give maximum emotional impact; especially a face so mutilated by the gas which would be a huge shock to one’s morals. With “Obscene as cancer”, Owen is comparing this image, something he knows, to something readers at home know of well. By doing this, Owen also shows how horrifically real the war was, by comparing it to something equally horrifically real, and much closer to home.

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At the beginning of the second line in Dulce et Decorum est, Owen uses an interesting phrase: “knock-kneed”. In this phrase can be extracted quite a few different meanings, mostly centred on Owen’s excellent use of language which brings such strong realism into his poems. It could possibly be a simple phrase in soldiers’ slang, which ties in with the realism. Poetically speaking, he uses alliteration and onomatopoeia to give the idea of knees buckling and knocking together. Knocking together with what? It could have merely been the weather, as the soldiers were cold, muddy and wet, but it also ...

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