The Reality of War in Various Poetry

The Reality of War in Various Poetry

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The First World War was unlike any previous was Britain had ever

fought. The horror of both the physical conditions and the reality of

battle moved soldier and officer alike to express their reactions in

verse. The soldiers' shock at the contrast between their experiences

and their previous conceptions of war as described by the propaganda

at home made many soldiers angry and bitter, which is reflected in all

of these poems. The poets intended to shock the complacent and naïve

British public into an awareness of the brutal horrors faced by the

soldiers at the front. The audience's lack of understanding was due to

the propaganda, which had fostered the belief, during previous years

of small colonial wars, that Britain was an indomitable world power.

The country had been brought up to believe 'the Old Lie: Dulce et

decorum est. / Pro patria mori.' It is sweet and honourable to die for

your country. Sassoon, Owen and Rosenberg attempted to dispel this

romanticised illusion of war and to present the British people with

the true horror of what the soldiers in the front line faced.

All eight of the poems describe the horror of both the trenches and

the battlefields although they all emphasise different aspects of the

conditions faced by the soldiers. Owen's 'Exposure' and Sassoon's 'The

Dug- Out' emphasise the cold and boredom of the soldiers. Owen

recounts "the merciless iced winds that knive …" the soldiers in the

front line trenches as described in 'Exposure'. The weather is

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...see you lights!" which means he won't be blind to

which Owen replies "But ours had long died out." This is a stark,

final note on war and the despair that they are experiencing.

The stark harshness of the imagery incorporated in the poems supported

by the poets uses of literary devices succeed in making the poems

powerful anti-war messages. The power of the poetry still affects the

reader today, although perhaps we view it more dispassionately than

the contemporary audience of the day, nevertheless the words and

images still appal. The last lines of "The Sentry" leaves the reader

with a sense of bleakness at the pointless ruination of this young

man's life. Equally the gassed soldier in "Dulce et decorum est"

evokes a hideous image of his agonising end which, like Owen, could

easily haunt your own "smothering dream".