War Poetry Comparison

In this essay, I have decided to analyse two poems by the war poet Wilfred Owen, taken from his writings on the First World War and a poem by Jessie Pope. Both of Wilfred Owen’s poems ('Dulce et Decorum Est' and 'Anthem for Doomed Youth') portray Owen's bitter feelings towards the war, but do so in different ways. On the other hand, Pope’s poem (‘Who’s For the Game?’) takes a pro-war stance. As the poems are so fundamentally different in their approach to the topic it is not surprising that the rhyming schemes and language employed are also vastly different.

Owen developed many of his poetic techniques at Craig Lockhart Military Hospital, where he spent much of the war as an injured soldier, but it was only through the influence of fellow soldier and poet, Siegfried Sassoon, that he began capturing his experiences of the war in the form of poetry. Many would argue that it was while writing his war poems that Owen felt most able to express his ideas on paper, and he certainly was one of the greatest war poets to have ever lived.

Probably his most famous poem, 'Dulce et Decorum Est', is a fine example of his narrative, first-person poems, written through his own eyes and based on his own experiences and

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This capitalises on the sexist attitude of the era where men were expected to take care of and protect their women. The vivid imagery in both makes the reader think, whilst Owen's imagination can run wild. Those left behind, women, children and exempt men, were often unaware of the true horror of the war and instead were seduced by a romantic ideal. The 'thick green light', the 'white eyes', and the 'haunting flares', just some of the keywords that Owen uses to enable him to create the intense imagery that he achieves in this poem. The fact that the 'cattle' he speaks of aren't actually getting proper burials, just horrific mass burials, if any, just shows how Owen's irony in giving them their only real burial, only highlights the huge, and, in Owen's opinion, crazy sacrifice that the soldiers gave.

So these two poems of Wilfred Owen are not completely contrasting, but are very different in many ways, and even if those differences are extremely subtle, without them the poems would never be able to fulfil their purpose.

‘As under a green sea, I saw him drowning,’

'Anthem for Doomed Youth', however, uses real, physical objects, linked in with heavily descriptive words, as a different way of representing the action.

On the other hand, 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' is much less of a visual poem, and all to do with Owen's subtle use of loud words, full of noise and body.

Dulce et Decorum Est is a poem full of visual objects that Owen describes very graphically, and it is these visual aids that helps the reader look at the poem in a far more intimate, empathetic way. In this movement, the first and fourth lines rhyme, as do the second and third, and it ends on a couplet. ’

In 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' Owen again asks questions of the reader, in order to make them think more about the poem, but this time, the questions are deliberately easy to answer, and perhaps rhetorical, as Owen goes on to answer them in graphic detail, just to drive home how obviously stupid the war actually was.

‘Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. Although this creates less imagery in the poem, we can still visualise the scenes captured in the poem by imagining the sounds Owen describes at great length.

‘Who would much rather come back with a crutch

Then lie low and be out of the fun?’

She also has a friendly manner in her propaganda poem as she refers to the men as ‘lads’.

Approximate Word count = 2540
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)

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