Summary Of Who's For The Game Poem By Jessie Pope

Poem commentary 'Who's for the game'

Do you want to participate in a game called war? This is the question 'Who’s for the game' is written by Jessie Pope focusses on, war in the form of games. This piece is written during the first World War in 1916 and was originally published in the daily mail. The daily mail is a tabloid newspaper aimed at blue coloured workers. Jessie pope was pro-war and quite jingoistic. the poem wants the men to participate in the war and to make sure this happens, pope compares the war to a game to make them more excited. this is one of the reasons this poem is persuasive by forcing the men to join the war. Other significant elements that will be focussed on are the tone, the literary devices used and the rhyme scheme.

The speaker’s tone in this poem is conversational and light-hearted. This can be seen in the sentence "and who says he’d rather sit tight" in the first stanza and in "come along, lads". By doing this, 'who's for the game' refers directly to the audience and the use of "lads" also makes it more colloquial. Pope used this to speak directly to the young men reading the daily mail to motivate them in joining the war. The effect upon the reader is

the feeling that it speaks directly to them and is meant for them personally causing them to feel more motivated. This leaves the reader with the overall impression that it is a personal task to join the army.

The author also chose to use a large amount of rhetorical questions.

This can be seen in all the stanza except for the last one. ‘who’ll give his country a hand?’ is an example of this. this sentence is used so it seems like if they do not participate in the war, nobody will. The use of rhetorical questions involves the audience by making sure they have to think about the question. This also causes the reader to remember it and not to forget after reading it once. Especially young men like to participate in games and by asking "who's for the game?" it makes them feel like they are missing out on a lot of amusement they would otherwise get from the game. This is especially effective for the audience at who it is aimed as they would like to participate in these kinds of

"games".

The rhyme scheme is not the usual as we would expect. Most of the time it follows an ABAB scheme with different end rhymes. The only time it does not follow this scheme is at the sentence "come along, lads -" which breaks the rhyme. After this, the rhyme continues in the same ABAB scheme. This scheme makes it almost sound like the soldiers marching forward with every end of the line. The one sentence breaking the scheme might mean that once in a while they have to stop marching to fight or that once in a while somebody dies who they have to take care of. The regularity of the rhyme scheme causes us to think the war is also straight-forward and that there is not as much bloodshed as there might actually be. It causes the poem to be easy to read and convinces the reader to participate in the war.

To conclude, this poem causes the audience to want to join the war by the tone he uses, light-hearted and conversational, the involvement of the audience by asking rhetorical questions and by using an expected rhyme scheme with one line which can be seen as unexpected. Pope wants the audience to participate in the war and for us to stand up for what we believe is right and feel patriotic towards our own country.