How World War One presented in poetry by Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon Essay

A comparison of the ways in which human race War One is faceed by Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in their metrical composition with keep mum reference to Dulce et decorum est and hymn for luckless early days by Owen and The usual and habitation expatiate by Sassoon.* * *The prototypal ground War retireed a signifi rear endt turning point in poetic usage and history by the revolutionary styles and ideas expressed by the poets. Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon be in each(prenominal) probability two of the most well make don grapple poets and their poesy was slavish in this change. Prior to 1914, much meter was written about state of fights much(prenominal)(prenominal) as the Crimean War in 1854-56 (The Charge of The Light Brigade by Tennyson who says, Honour the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred.) but the great absolute majority of the poets had non experienced state of war run intoshoot-hand. Thus, they reinforced the poetic tradition of glorifying war and death. Both Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, who both fought through most of the First World War, intake their verse in the hope that they can give a to a greater extent realistic popular opinion of war than the pre-twentieth century rime.Both Owen and Sassoon present World War One as un marvellous, in direct contrast to pre-twentieth war poetry such as The Destruction of Sennacherib by Byron. At the actually beginning of Dulce et Decorum est Owen exposits the sol turn overrs as Bent double, like old beggars under(a) sacks. That image is the complete opposite of what we would consider to be a heroic and romantic figure, an attribute that was always given to soldiers in pre-twentieth century poetry. Owen goes on to describe the soldiers as knock-kneed and cough out like hags. Neither of these images can be associated with the glorified, smartly dressed soldier that would be fixed in almost all of the minds of wo hands and children back home. The comparison of t he soldiers to hags is not a idyllic one as hags are often scruffy and dirty. The work forcetion of the coughing portrays the many an(prenominal) illnesses that soldiers suffered from in the trenches.Although both of them present war as unheroic, they do so in real various ways. The style of Owens poetry which is much longer and contains more than than description than that of Sassoons, allows him to expand on the unanalyzable description of the horrors of war that he experienced. In Dulce et Decorum est, he describes in graphic and horrific detail the death of a man who was not able to fit his helmet in time during a gas attack. He implements lecture such as floundring guttering, choking, drowning. The playscript floundring gives the impression of the helplessness of the man.The onomatopoeic effect of these actors line gives an image that adds relaism to the horror of war. This makes it more realistic and moreover, more chilling to read. Owen goes on, in the final sta nza of this poem to describe the dead man in greater detail. His varied use of lecture allows him to create majestic imagery which means that the reader can plan the man. Owen uses phrases such aswatch the white eyes writhing in his faceandthe blood/Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungsThe maiden of these phrases is particularly chilling as it makes the reader take of snakes writhing in his face. This gives the impression of a half-crazed person, driven insane by what he has seen and what he had suffered before expiry. The beginning rhyme of the w is also effective as it emphasises the phrase. Owen wants to present the reality of the First World War and in slowing the reader down, he makes them think about what he is actually describing and change the way in which it was fleecy over before World War One.The second phrase is also shocking and the use of the onomatopoeic word gargling makes it all the more visual and makes the reader feel more chilling. This image of a man choking on his own blood because of gas is very unheroic and it is this that Owen wants to portray the unheroic record of war however brave the soldiers may be. This is in comparison to many pre-twentieth century war poems where they emphasise the heroic disposition of war such as in a speech in Henry V where Henry says that the man who survives the strife will remember with advantages what feats he did that solar day, emphasising the heroic nature of war.Owens second poem, hymn for Doomed Youth also presents World War One as unheroic and unromantic. The very first promissory note of his poem epitomises Owens feeling about the young men sent off to war.What passing bells for those who die as cattle?The use of the word cattle immediately robs all glory from the idea of war as a intact. The simile compares how cattle are slaughtered for meat to soldiers dying for their bucolic. This is a very unheroic comparison and is effective in what it is trying to portray.On the oth er hand, in the two poems by Sassoon that I have elect to discuss, Sassoon does not present World War One as unheroic. His poems, which are terse and concise, deal more with the unfairness of war and protest against the usuals and peremptory officers. However, in The cosmopolitan, Sassoon briefly presents the soldiers in an unheroic way, telling us that Harry and diddley slogged up to Arras, instead of the quick, efficient marching of the soldiers that had been frequently portrayed earlier to the First World War such as is described in The Charge Of The Light Brigade where Tennyson conveys the riders riding quckly by the phrase, Half a league, half a league, half a league onward. The rhythm of these lines envision the quick pace of the soldiers.Sassoons poetry presents the unfairness and inequality among the front-line privates and the generals who sat in comfort behind lines. Sassoon attacks the establishment of the country and the tone of his two poems is very sardonic, ma king fun of the generals in instead a light-hearted way but with a pointed means to his poetry. In The frequent Sassoon presents The General as incompetent and responsible for the deaths many men.Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of em dead,And were cursing his round for incompetent swine.The very furthest line of the poems refers to Harry and Jack who are named in the poem. This makes the generals attitude and incompetence more poignant and personal to the reader.But he did for them both by his plan of attack.This short last line is to the point and cuts right to the quick. Sassoon does not play with words like Owen but presents World War One is his poetry in the most succinct way. The majority of his poems are no longer than troika short stanzas whereas Owens can be eight verses long. However, Sassoons message is just as worthy as Owens is.Base Details is probably Sassoons best poem for attacking the generals as use harsh humour it describes them sitting in luxury hot els while men are starving on the front-line with rationed food. He presents the generals of the First World War as scarlet and fat. Although the poem is short, he describes the generals so effectively that we have an image of the generals in our head which does not conform to what we skill expect, or certainly not what was generally thought of generals before the war. The championship of the poem can be read on different levels the first being the simple meaning of the word as in headquarters, or on another level, the meanings of in short or unworthy. This emphasises their wrongness of the elevated positions that they hold. Sassoons first line seems to sum up all that he is trying to sayIf I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,This one line immediately gives us a humorous image of a general which is almost like those we see in cartoons today of blustering, half inebriated generals sitting in offices wheezing with a pipe in hand. In Base Details Sassoon continues his th eme of their unworthiness by describing the generals table address which according to him, are disgusting. He presents them as guzzling and gulping. These onomatopoeic words give the effect of pigs eating at a trough, peculiarly guzzling. It also conveys them stuffing their faces when the soldiers on the front-line are risking their lives day afterward day with little to eat. We associate these words with animal behaviour and this is and then what Sassoon is trying to present.He also presents the generals as nave and frivolous, spending the war in the best hotels and when their presence was required after a battle they brushed off the importance of war calling it a bit. Sassoons bitterness is also displayed when the general says I used to know his father well. This emphasises his bitterness effectively towards the upper classes and old boy network, angry that whether you survive the war depends on class and connections. This bitterness is built-in to many of his poems and is a lso evident, in a less direct way, in The General.Both Owen and Sassoon present the going of youth in their poems. In Dulce et Decorum est, Owen is bitter towards those who tell children a word which emphasises their youth the old catch ones breath Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori or in English, It is sweet and honourable to die for ones country. The use of the Latin here emphasises the tralatitious nature of war and the patriotism that the Latin evokes in men.The idea of the loss of youth is more evident in Owens second poem, Anthem For Doomed Youth, where the very title shows all that Owen thinks about sending boys off to war. He himself was however twenty-two when he joined the army and olibanum would have known about how terrible it was. The words of the title, Anthem For Doomed Youth has the theme of a funeral and says how not only youth itself is luckless but youth as an idea. Owen also mentions, in the second stanza, the words boys and girls which stresses once ag ain the youth of the soldiers and perhaps of their nurses or their girlfriends.Only Base Details mentions the loss of youth in Sassoons poems saying adjacent the end that youth is stone dead. Taken out of the setting of the poem, this phrase is disturbing the loss of a social unit generation of men and also the loss of innocence of those who survived. In context, the phrase becomes even more disturbing, that more of the fat, drunk generals of sixty, have survived the war, while boys of seventeen have died. The whole line readsAnd when the war is done and youth stone deadThe occasional(a) nature of this line is shocking and represents how Sassoon pictures the generals view of the loss of millions of boys. A whole generation has been lost or affected so badly by the war and the majors would toddle safely home to bed where they could die. The word toddle is very visual and humourously conveys the generals waddling back to England as they are so fat. It also shows their child-like nature and their frivolity. The bitterness that Sassoon feels is clearly evident in this poem. In contrast, The General mentions nothing of the idea of youth but concentrates more on the inept nature of The General. These poems are very different to the nature of those by Rupert Brooke, a young soldier who was killed at the beginning of the war and had experienced little fighting. The first stanza of his poem Peace he describes how rattling(prenominal) it is that he is alive at this time and he can fight for his countryNow God be thanked Who has matched us with his hourHe also describes going to war as swimmers into cleanness leaping, very different to the dirty and horrific conditions that Owen describes.Owen and Sassoon differ very greatly in the complex body part of their poems Owen tends to write longer, more detailed poetry whereas Sassoon writes short and succinct poems. Anthem for Doomed Youth is a sonnet which is traditional style of poetry but the themes that Owen deals with are very modern, contrasting with the style that he has elect to use. However, the rhyme scheme of a sonnet does not always bear on true to its traditional form such as in the last stanza of Anthem for Doomed Youth where it is e.f.f.e.g.g. The rhyme scheme of Sassoons poetry is very simple and direct, which reflects the nature of his poems. He generally uses alternate rhyme, chuck out the last lines where he uses a rhyming couplet such as in Base Details dead and bed. In The General the last three lines have the same rhyme Jack, call for and attack. The rhyming couplet gives emphasis to the end of the poem.Sassoons poetry is short, pithy and succinct, conveying one or several points in maybe two or three short stanzas such as The General, which is only seven lines long compared to Owens poetry which is usually longer. The style of Sassoon is more colloquial, using soldiers slang such as Hes a cheery old card, grunted Harry to Jack. and tends to be more vitriolic such as An d speed glum heroes up the line to death. Conversely, Owen uses descriptive and expand words that convey the atmosphere and images that the poems evoke, such as his unforgettable and shocking description of the dead man in the third stanza of Dulce et Decorum est.Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon present different aspects of World War One Owen, the conditions and horrific deaths of the ordinary soldiers in contrast to Sassoons pointed and bitter attack against the majors. They do this in very different ways and despite Sassoons influence on Owen, their styles are extremely contrasting but no less effective. Their poetry helped mark a radical change in the way war poetry was written and it is their presentation of their themes that effected this shift.