Owen’s presentation of war and soldiers in ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and ‘Disabled’ Essay

When World War 1 broke out in 1914, most of Britain rejoiced. T present was a festinate to join the army and many young men did as they decided it was their patriotic duty to fight for their mother kingdom. Many also join the army because they thought the war would be an adventure and because war was being glorified and made into an exciting game at that metre. Being a soldier gave you a higher status and a public respect. These ideas were reflected in many early war rimes such as Rupert Brookes The Soldier and Jessie Popes Whos for the Game?In the numbers the The Soldier Brooke gives war a clean, sanitized and idealistic look, such as making England seem the perfect drift and associating England with only good names (For example peace and friends laughter.) Brooke also makes war sound romantic as he makes it sound dashing and glorious wish well a cavalry charge and he then omits all the actual fighting and getting wounded, gassed, shot, maimed or injured. The poem is most being a hero and being taken to heaven.Patriotism is reflected in the poem as Brooke makes it sound as if you are English and you die for England, you are precious Englands richer dust is contained in you and when you die you make the land where you have fallen part of England. There is a repetition of England and whenever England is mentioned good things are said about it. There is also the implication that God is on Englands side, this is shown in the poem as Brooke makes the endorser think that our soldiers are being blessed by God. For example blest by suns of home. Brooke also suggests that it is your patriotic duty to go and fight for the country that bore, shaped and made you aware and gave you life.You must repay her by fighting Englands enemies. England is also personified as a mother because war was a call to mans protective instinct and possibly to his chivalry. As the war progressed the views about the war changed as well. More people stopped thinking that the war was g lorious and exciting and they began to realise just how deadly and formidable war was. They also realised the cost of war was damaging to the country, non just economically moreover also through by the huge rime of the dead and wounded. People began to wonder whether the consecrate of these men was worth the benefits of the war and whether there was even any point to the war. The war poems written at that time began to show this contrast. The early, nave poems of Brooke and Pope contrast with the experienced poems of Owen. The ideas that they had on war were clearly different.In the poem Dulce et Decorum Est Owen provides the ratifier with a realistic exhibit of the war in the trenches and the soldiers fighting in the war. Owen gives the reader the perils of that the soldier faced e trulyday, (for example dangers of fighting and being shot or gassed,). Owen uses very physical and natural imagery to describe what happens (For example Bent double, alike old beggars under sack s, knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed throughout the sludge. and Men marched asleep.Many had lost their boots but limped on, blood shod, all went lame all blind drunk with fatigue.) As you can see even from these couple of lines in the poem Owen uses physical explanation to help the reader visualise what is happening and what it was like to be out there. There is some very graphic imagery in the poem, (For exampleFlound beleaguer like a man on fire or lime Dim under a green sea I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me guttering, choking, and drowning). Also in the poem there is some more graphic description about how what happened to this deplorable soldier after he got gassed (white eyes writhing in his face, his hanging face, like a devils sick of sin, at every jolt, the blood enter gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs).Owen also in the poem places the reader in the actual experience (For example If in some smothering dreams y ou too could pace behind the police wagon we flung him in.) By recreating a specific moment in the poem, the gas attack Owen lets the reader enter and be part of the poem. Owen does non just place the reader in the experience he also directly addresses the reader by using words like my friends and you in the poem (For example If you could hear. My friend, you would not.) There is also reader involvement in the Old Lie at the end of the poem as Owen says with certainty that if you could see what it was like here you would not tell the children the Old Lie?The tone of the poem is very bitter and angry and in some parts there is a very sarcastic and negative attitude In the lines If in some smothering dream you too could pace the words if and you suggest that he is angry because the word if suggests that the reader doesnt know just how bad it was out there and the word you separates the reader from Owen and suggests that the reader is safe at home. There are ironical moments in the p oem as the title of the poem is ironic. The last lines contradict the title of the poem Dulce et Decorum Est which means that it is sweet and right to die for your country. This is a sarcastic comment in the poem as Owen was trying to show the reader that it was not right to die for your country.Owen also wrote another poem called Disabled which contrast with Dulce et as in Dulce et Owen is describing the realities of war while in Disabled Owen is writing about the results or aftermath of the war for one feature badly wounded soldier. The poem is not as physically or graphically descriptive as Dulce et was Disabled is more reflective and sorrowful, (for example straightway he will never feel again how girls waists are, or how warm their subtle hands) There is quieter language used in Disabled, for example not as loud or shocking words were used by Owen in Disabled unlike Dulce et The poem shows how he lost his youth, future, limbs, hope and his rule life and how knows he has to live in hospitals waiting for death doing things that only the rules consider wise. The young man fought for his country and was wounded for it but he is not treated like a hero. He is shoved into a hospital like a diseased man and Owen stresses his bitterness about how he is treated in the poem.(for example All of them touch him like some queer disease) Owen focuses on one normal young man but this man represents millions of others like him and it showed the reader that their brother, husband, father could be facing or could be soon facing the consequences of fighting for your country like this young man did. It also lets the reader understand the perils of war on a personal level.In the poem there is a question being asked to the reader although not directly, and the question asked is whether the sacrifice of millions of young mens futures, lives, hopes and dreams was worth the countries involvement in the war, and again as in Dulce et Owens answer is no, that it is not right to t hrow your future away for the country or for your country to expect this from you. The poem therefore shares some of Dulce et bitterness and anger at the war. I can wonder aspects of Brookes poem after reading Owens as Brooke was an idealistic even romantic man and he was obsessed with war and also Brooke was a patriot and I admire him as he was not hesitant to sign for the army and these character points are reflected in his poem. Brooke was however nave and inexperienced so he genuinely didnt know fully about war and this too is reflected in his poem.