Comparison of Into Battle and Spring Offensive.

Comparison of Into Battle and Spring Offensive.

Spring Offensive and Into Battle

In the comparison of Into Battle and Spring Offensive, it can be said

that they are two opposing poems. Although both of their themes are

about war, Spring Offensive is a bleak poem compared to Into Battle.

One talks about the adversarial ways of the war whereas the other

talks about the beautifulness of its.

Both poets use 'nature' as a main object in order to describe war. In

the poem of Into Battle the poet uses nature as warmth, something

colorful and lively e.g. "The naked earth is warm with spring" but on

the contrary to this, the poet in the Spring Offensive talks about the

dark, cold, and sad sight of it e.g. "Halted against the shade of a

last hill".

In addition to this, the structures of the poems reflect the poets'

moods. Spring Offensive's broken rhythm resembles grief of a soldier

and Into Battle's half rhymes make the poem sound like a song. Into

Battle seems to encourage people using both patriotism and propaganda

of fighting together. Whereas, Spring Offensive is trying to protect

the soldiers from war and make them realize how nonsense it is.

The people (that seem to be) living in these poems have exactly

opposite thoughts and mood. The soldiers that Spring Offensive talks

about are worried, despondent and blank, while the ones in Into Battle

are singing, as if they are going to a picnic, behaving like the

enemies are the ants which are trying to steal their food. Both of

them include death, but in Into Battle, death is emphasized as if it

is an honor to die. The poet in the Into Battle talks about life in a

pleasant manner. He sees life something colorful and worthwhile to

live. On the contrary, ...

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...ar is) in every stanza. Both of them set the scene before

getting into the main theme. For example, in the first lines Wilfred

Owen explained the location of war before actually setting the main

theme, while Julian Grenfell by using the environment explained the

optimistic side of war.

I prefer Spring Offensive as it is more attractive than Into Battle

because, it talks about the reality rather than the thoughts of an

insane man who loves killing people. In addition, Spring Offensive is

more convincing than Into Battle in a sense that it encourages people

not to go and fight in war, with a strong emphasis by the use of

language e.g. "and instantly the whole sky burned".

Both of the poems are good examples of war poems. However, personally

I enjoyed reading and analyzing Spring Offensive as it talks about the

reality of being a soldier and life at war.