Click on "__ comments" at the bottom of this post to publish your comments. Under "Choose an identity", select "Name/URL" and enter your name. First initial and Last name are the best. Sign your post with your real name. I cannot give you credit if I do not know who you are.
Posting requirements are listed on my website page where you likely found this link.
DUE: WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13TH before 11:00 P.M.
In Wilfred Owen’s poems the picture he describes horrific and dark. In Ducle et Decorum Est soldiers walk half dead limping and covered in blood. The only time they get energy is to get away from the poison gas that fills the trenches. The images of watching someone drowning in this gas and hearing the blood gurgle in their lung will haunt the soldiers forever. They get called a hero, but they do not feel like one because they could not save those who died. In Stranger Meeting a soldier is walking through a dark war trench and starts talking to a stranger. From the stranger’s “dead smile” the soldier knew he was in hell even though there were no guns or blood. The soldier had killed the stranger and now they rest in hell forever together. Wilfred Owen’s graphic poems show the hopeless suffering that the soldiers go through that Owen himself went through while fighting in the war.
ReplyDeleteIn Ezra Pound’s writing from Hugh Selwyn Mauberly he also describes war as hell. Whatever the reason people joined this war a lot of them died and the best of them just to be sent to hell. The stanza, “frankness as never before,/disillusions as never told in the old days,/hysterias, trench confessions,/laughter out of dead bellies” sums up the experience of war in a way that is easier to grasp. Pound was not a part of this war, but was affected by the aftermath it had on Westernized civilization. The basic ideas of these poems are that being in the war is torture to watch friends die and not being able to do anything to save them. Once they go home the image in their head is still there eating away at their mind. Then, once they die they go to hell for killing people in that war and in hell they will be joined by their enemies. The author’s general feel of the time is endless misery that will haunt the world forever.
In both of Owen's poems they have a very dark and depressing tone to them. Both of them describe the horrors that soldiers had to go through on the fronts. He describes how they had to suffer through listening to the groans and screams of the soldiers around them being shot and killed or the painful gasps for air as soldiers are trying to survive gases. In his second poem a wounded soldier converses with his enemy about the horrors and realities of war. He states that sooner or later soldiers become content with what they have destroyed, who they have killed, and what they have left unaccounted for. Through these wounded soldier's words, Pound is trying to get across to the public, that after a certain soldiers do what they are told. They set out to kill and win a war. There is no longer that compassion and through these soldier's words Owen seems to point out that the morality of these soldiers is slowly slipping away.
ReplyDeleteThrough reading Pound's poem, readers can feel the anger and frustration that comes through his words. Pound talks about how these soldiers leave their homes to fight for their country. They go through this hell to protect their homeland. The anger and frustration comes in later in the last few lines of the poem. He talks about how what these soldiers have been fighting for was just a bunch of lies compiled together. They come home to a world of lies. Everything that they have been fighting for is no more because of this "botched civilization." He says that what they have been fighting for is nothing because civilization and society is dwindling.
Through all three of these poems we can see the frustration and depression witnessed by these soldiers. They all describe the horror and miser that these soldiers have to go through and they want to get this out to the public so that they can see what they have had to go through while fighting for their country. The misery and horrors that they have witnessed will never allow them to be the same again.
In Dulce et Decorum Eet b y Wilfred Owen, the idea of tiredness due to the war is reflected. However, despite soldiers being exhausted from fighting and death, they continue to march on, and continue to fight, showing patriotism. This is demonstrated in the lines "Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on blood-shod." This, along with the translation of the title (It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country) represents the attitude of patriotism around that time period. There is also a strong sense tiredness of death, and a tiredness of fighting, as represented by this line "His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin."
ReplyDeleteIn Strange Meeting, also by Wilfred Owen, you can see how tired people were of fighting in the war, and dealing with death. He is saying that despite the outcome, everyone would still end up in the same place, and have to deal with the same guilt that comes with killing multiple people, "With at thousand pains that vision's face was grained."
Ezra Pound's poem from High Selwryn Mauberly introduces multiple reasons why people may have joined to fight, ranging from patriotism to fear of weakness or love to slaughter. When soldiers return home after fighting, they find themselves in a distrustful nation. "home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy." He also talks about how an excess of lives were lost due to the war. This is demonstrated perfectly in the last two lines of his poem, "For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books." The two gross of broken statues represent the death, and the dead soldiers fighting for what seems to be a smaller outcome. He is saying more lives then necessary were lost in order to reach the end of the war.
Both authors reflect the general feeling of the time, due to the war, as very sad. The poems show the anti-war sentiment of the time, and how former ideals about the honor of fighting for one's country, as mentioned in "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly," are rediculous when you realize the horrors of war. Both authors describe war as destructive and nightmarish, and In "Strange Meeting," Owen shows that killing a man takes a terrible toll on one's mind and possibly their soul, and being that life is so valuble, he shows how war is the enemy of life. In "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly," Pound tells of the many reasons men go to fight, but tells of what is really in store, and how the sacrifice of lives is nothing comparable to the stupid reason wars start. Owen and Pound both show how terrible war is, and it's rediculous nature, and most importantly, they make the reader re-think the positive aspects of war.
ReplyDeleteIn Wilfred’s first poem he gives the very chilly and frightening description of a man dying of poison gas, it honestly raises the question “Is the pain and torture of death in war honestly as beautiful and romantic as it seems?” The man in the poem is dying very ungracefully and obviously in a pain that no one would want to experience, choking in a sea of gas as though he was actually in the ocean. Many people of the time period were drafted into war instead of going of their own free will so Wilfred’s second poem describes a (most likely dead) soldier who is speaking of the horrors of seeing dead bodies in war, especially about one dead body he is the cause for. He mentions the battlefield littered with dead bodies as hell as many people who were drawn into this world probably did as well.
ReplyDeleteErza’s poem tells of the many emotions pulling one into war and what one feels when he goes to war. “Some for love of slaughter… learning later” “Some in fear, learning love of Slaughter” are the words that struck at me the most, those who go into war hoping to kill without recognition of wrong from the world, although ending up regretting the decision, then there are those who initially fear the killing of others but in their journey learn to love the bloodshed and death around them. Finally his last words for the poem, “for two gross of broken statues, for a thousand battered books”, with this statement he’s saying that in the end what did a person truly gain from the battle, except worthless souvenirs and horrible memories