08/02/2010

Bibi Visser

War is a distressing and harrowing experience. How do you think the poems that you have studied communicate this effectively to the reader?
The poems that we have studied are very different even though they all focus on war. Dulce et Decorum Est. was written during the First World War by Wilfred Owen who fought in the trenches basing his poem on his own experiences. However, Six Young Men was written by Ted Hughes who wrote it 40 years after the war finished and based it on a photograph of six young men taken a short time before they joined a pals regiment. He researched the six young men in the photograph, who fought during the war, to find out what happened to them. I feel that both poets communicate the horrors of war effectively but in very different ways. In the poem Dulce et Decorum est. Owen strongly focuses on irony and the harshness of war. This is shown in the end of the poem as the poet repeats the title and finishes off with Pro Patria Mori. This rounds off the irony of the poem as it rebels against the propaganda by saying that it is sweet and honourable to die for your country, even though the poem clearly contradicts those statements. Showing that death in war is painful as well as a complete waste of life, Owen was also rebelling against patriotic propaganda and the poems of Jessie Pope who urged young men to enlist in her poem The Call. In the poem Six Young Men, Hughes shows us how life can be cut short by war and reminds us that we are all going to die one day, but for these poor men who fought in the war, it would be much sooner that they deserved. In the poem Hughes creates a familiarization between the reader and the soldiers and makes them seem as everyday people informing us of personal details such as, One was ridiculous with cocky pride which makes the reader recognize

08/02/2010

Bibi Visser

themselves as well as revealing their youth and inexperience. Furthermore, he tells us about the men in the photograph on an outing making them seem like ordinary teenagers. Furthermore, Ted Hughes allows us to be drawn into the lives of the six young men but ends every verse with their deaths. For example, Hughes states cocky pride-that one man had but Six months after this picture they were all dead. This reinforces the suddenness of their premature deaths. The simple language creates a strong statement implying that we are all going to die one day, that everything ends in death and we dont know when it will happen. This message is further highlighted as the poet ends every single verse with a similar line such as Forty years rotting in the ground not only, further reminding us of their deaths but the use of the word rotting suggests that their lives have been wasted or just thrown away like rubbish. In a different way to show the agony of death, Owen uses the words guttering, choking, and drowning to help us see how painful the death of a soldier was and to focus in on their excruciating suffering during the gas attacks on their trenches. By using these harsh consonance sounds he makes us visualize the gas on which the soldiers are choking and is slowly eating away at them inside and how painful and disgusting it must have been. Moreover, Owen also uses aposiopesis at the end of a line as if he cant carry on because the memories are too painful for him to continue writing. Like a man in fire or lime is an example of this and it shows how the poet could be having a flashback about the event being described or that he is regretting that he was completely powerless in the situation and wasnt able to save the man who was so desperately calling out for help.

08/02/2010

Bibi Visser

In this poem the appearance of the men at the start is also very effective as it shows how injured and exhausted they already were before the gas attack. But limped on, blood-shod. He uses this metaphor to make us imagine the mens feet shod with blood because they have been walking barefoot and injured through the execrable trenches. Moreover, the word shod is usually associated with horses who have nails driven into their hooves suggesting that the mens feet are torn and badly wounded. On the other hand, the poems do have something in common, besides being about war; they both focus on the frailty of our lives. The poem Dulce et Decorum est. shows how vulnerable soldiers were in WW1 to a gas attack. For example, the soldier who has been affected by a gas attack in the poem suffers from it almost instantly but doesnt die instantly; instead he suffers a long and agonizing death and Owen cant do anything about it, before my helpless sight. However, in the poem Six Young Men it shows how vulnerable all people are and how quick and easily a life can be ended. This is shown when the poet tells us the different ways three of the men died. He says that one died From potting at tin-cans in no mans land, which is a simple and absurd way to die as it was due to a careless moment shooting at cans with his rifle and the next being shot right between the eyes. Overall, both poems are shocking in their intense imagery used to convey war as a distressing and harrowing experience. They both convey the massage in different ways but both are powerful and emotionally disturbing. Both poems created a strong sympathy for the soldiers. They moved me in a way that it made me realize how abruptly a persons life can end and in such a horrifying manner.

08/02/2010

Bibi Visser

I preferred the poem Dulce et Decorum est. because it focused more on the harsh reality of war. Also, it had stronger imagery as it stated ways in which the death made you feel physically sick. It made me realize how horrible WW1 was. Six Young Men wasnt as powerful to me because it didnt create the horror of war so vividly but focused on mans mortality which is something we know about anyway. Even though I thought it was a good poem I was personally less moved by this thought than by the vivid detail of the soldiers suffering in Dulce Et Decorum Est.