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Elements of analyzing a poem
Elements of analyzing a poem
Elements of analyzing a poem
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Rupert Brooke, considered by many scholars to be one of the most divisive poets of the twentieth century, was born on August 3, 1887, in Warwickshire, England. As a child, Brooke attended a prestigious boarding school where he studied Latin and Greek and began to write poetry. In 1906, Brooke won a scholarship to attend King’s College, Cambridge, and was elected president of the Cambridge University Fabian Society, a club that provided a voice for the values of social democracy and socialism. He was also one of the founders of the Marlowe Society drama club and acted in many plays at Cambridge. Following his graduation, Brooke spent most of his time writing poems and touring the world. Described as a neo-pagan because of his fondness towards nature, he often bathed nude in local streams and slept on the ground with his friends. In 1912, Brooke suffered an emotional crisis and confusion about homosexual impulses when he broke up with a woman whom he was in love with, Katherine Cox. He had to spend several months in rehabilitation where he could not write any poetry. Returning to England in 1914 from Tahiti, Brooke, like many other young Englishmen at that time, voluntarily enlisted in World War One. Brooke’s most notable poetry was written during that first year of the Great War, including his famous sonnets, “the Dead” and “The Soldier,” wherein he expressed his devotion to his beloved home country. However, less than a year into the war, Brooke was bitten by a mosquito. The wound became infected, and he eventually died of, sepsis, or blood poisoning. His death was felt throughout Great Britain, prompting even future prime minister Winston Churchill to elegize him, describing Brooke as “all that that one would wish England’s nobl...
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... which appeals to the reader’s sense of patriotism and national pride. Combined with “vivid imagery,” Brooke protrays the sudden deaths with a sense of romanticism or unrealistic feelings, comparing death to the natural world. His use of romanticism is prevalent because he “caught the optimism of the opening months of the war with his wartime poems, published after his death, which expressed an idealism about war that contrasts strongly with poetry published later in the conflict” (“Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)”). Brooke was unable to capture the actual scenes of World War One and only lived one year into the war. His naivety causes him to write unrealistically about death and incorperates this into his frequent theme of death with honor. Brooke, like many pre World War One Georgian poets, utilizes sentimentality and romanticism to appeal to the audience’s emotions.
Since the British during this time believed that they had “refined taste”, there was very little use of explicit words, but instead proper words. However, “During and after World War I, flowery Victorian language was blown apart and replaced by more sinewy and R-rated prose styles.” (articles.latimes.com) In order for poets like Owen and Sasoon to convey their message, they had to use precise, candid language. There refused to soften their language in order to lessen the blow of the meaning of their poems. Sasoon described the English soldiers as “damned” and speaks of the “stenches” in the battlefield. Owens vividly describes soldiers in “Mental Cases” whose “baring teeth… leer like skulls’ teeth wicked,” and how “the sun seems a blood smear” and night becomes blood-black.” (poemhunter.com) Words like damned, leer, blood-black, stenches, and etcetera intensely describe the soldiers’
Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others. Ed. Candace Ward. Mineola, NY:Dover, 1997. 21-22.
The First World War is the first war Australia had been involved in, and consequently, a feeling of excitement and patriotism swept the nation. Some poets took to writing about the glory and romanticism of the war, while others wrote poems as a form of passive resistance and defiance towards the war. [Olsen, 2013] One of the most influential Australian anti-war poets was Dame Mary Gilmore, who wrote poetry that revealed the harsh realities of the war, and questioned its essentiality. It was through the tragic and melancholy scenarios depicted in her poetry that Gilmore was able to inspire pity in readers,
To summarize, Owen uses numerous literary techniques to illustrate his firsthand experience of World War One, and communicates his opinions with a distinguished use of metaphors, similes, personifications, themes, imagery and irony. Owen recognized that the high casualties and unnecessary deaths in World War One were all in fact a metaphor for all death in modern warfare; the well known ‘glory’ of dying for one’s country was simply a lie. Thanks to this, he was successful in making people realize that “The old lie: Dulce Et Decorum Est, Pro Patria Mori”, ‘It is sweet and right to die for one’s country’ is a terrible misunderstanding, and the poem it depicts an irony of death on the modern battlefield. No matter how noble the reasons may be, nothing but misery, heartbreak and agony can come from war.
World War One had an inevitable effect on the lives of many young and naive individuals, including Wilfred Owen, who, like many others, joined the military effort with the belief that he would find honour, wealth and adventure. The optimism which Owen initially had toward the conflict is emphasised in the excerpt, in which he is described as “a young poet…with a romantic view of war common among the young” (narrator), a view which rapidly changed upon reaching the front. Owen presents responders with an overwhelming exploration of human cruelty on other individuals through acts of war and the clash of individual’s opposed feelings influenced by the experiences of human cruelty. This is presented through the horrific nature of war which the
Ultimately, we have two poems which can be compared on the grounds of their subject, but are poles apart regarding their message. The structure of these poems is not what would be typically expected from a war poem, but are structured on the basis of these typical structures in order to create some sense of familiarity. Brooke’s poem expands on this familiarity while Owen attempts to deliberately sabotage it. In regards to content, Brooke shows throughout his perception of the nobility of dying for one’s country, whilst Owen uses all of his poetic techniques to show the opposite.
Although the aftermath of World War I was devastating to many, it did bring the literature world some of the most important work of the modernist era. Many of the writers were directly or indirectly affected by the war and their writing certainly showed this. Each writer’s work shows a view of the war from a different perspective. However, what they most have in common is they way they paint the war in a negative light. T.S. Elliot writes his poem The Wasteland to show the after affects of the war on everyone while Sassoon write They to show the after affects on the soldier. In the essay, these writers and their poems will be discussed to show how they similarly reacted to the event of World War I in reference to the themes of their poems and how differently they use those themes.
Today I’m focusing on Wilfred Owen who is also recognized as the greatest English poet of the First World War. Owen volunteered to fight on 21 October 1915. Like many young men, propaganda had gotten the best of him, but he would soon experience first handedly the true horrors of war. Owen wrote of the disillusionment he, like others, felt at the time. He wrote out of his intense personal experience as a soldier and wrote with unrivalled power about the physical, moral and psychological trauma of the First World War. Nothing could have prepared Owens for the shock of war: for life in the trenches, sickness, death.
World War I impacted poetry profoundly. Poets who served in the war were using poetry to share their horrific stories about the hardships they faced. These poets became known as “war poets.” They wrote about the traumatic, life changing experiences that haunted them once the war was over. Intense poems started emerging that portrayed the mental and physical struggles soldiers faced. Two examples of the impact that World War I had on poetry is seen in the poems “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen and “Repression of War Experience” by Siegfried Sassoon.
George Orwell once wrote “If the war didn’t happen to kill you, it was bound to start you thinking.” He is referring to the impact which World War One had on the United States of America. It affected both those fighting and the home front, including wives and children of war soldiers. The brutality of the war opened an eye for the Americans, which influenced an expression of the horrifying thoughts brought on by the war through the use of literature. Due to World War One, Journalism became more popular, Romanticism moved to the Realism movement, and poetry moved from being metaphorical to being straightforward.
It is evident that the socio-cultural context in which Wilfred Owen operated had a powerful impact upon his poetic motivation and the messages he conveyed through his work. Before exploring Wilfred Owen’s work we first must understand the society that Wilfred Owen lived in, to be able to really understand appreciate his poems and their impact on society. At the time in which he operated, Britain’s public opinion on warfare and conflicts were astonishingly positive, especially in the early stages of WW1. These false perception on war led the vast majority of male citizens to perceive war recruitment as an opportunity to set off on ‘terrific adventures’ and earn immense amounts of honour for their families and nation. Government propaganda meant that soldiers believed that they were gathering fame and fortune in the name of Great Britain. This cruel and false perception of warfare which in turn led to a steady rate of volunteers for the war and included Wilfred Owen himself. The men who did not go and fight for their nations were perceived by society as cowards as
Consequently, Owen conveys so many deep emotions to the reader that it feels as if one is really in the battle. The reader would be overwhelmed with the detailed descriptions of the war and about its pain and destruction that it has caused. On the other hand, the reader would have felt that Brookes poem was shallow and bias.
The poetic techniques used in Wilfred Owen’s war poetry sweep the reader from the surface of knowing to the essence of truly appreciating his ideas. Through sonnets, Para rhymes, ironic titles, voices and strong imagery, not only is the reader able to comprehend to the futility and the horrors of the Great War, but also they can almost physically and mentally empathise with those who fought. Through the three poems examined, it is evident that Owen goes to great effort to describe the conditions and thoughts of the First World War, thus his works are considered an invaluable asset to the modern literature.
During World War I, many poems were written on the horrors both heard of and encountered first hand. Some poets, like William Butler Yeats, did not experience the war by themselves yet still choose to write about it; others, like Wilfred Owen, were part of the dreadful war and were urged by their memories to start writing (Academy of American Poets). Both were part of the modernist movement, of which Yeats is often regarded as one of the founders. Modernism was a movement that outstretched literature and poetry, yet provided a new amount of freedom for war poets, as it allowed them to express themselves in the modernist fashion of free forms and room for criticism on the modern world (Matterson).
Dylan Thomas was born in 1914 of intellectual parents both being literature professors. Long before he could read, his father would recite poetry from classic authors. Many of his poems can be traced to the illustrated style of D.H Lawrence. The imagery he provides of disparity and death in many of his poems. In the span of Dylan’s life, he witnessed both Great Wars. The first war may have been the main topic of discussion by his parents at childhood. And later at service in the air defense over London. Because of his determined health Thomas was not able to enroll in an active combat role during World War II. Thomas life’s experiences played a major role in influencing his writing...