WWI Poems

“The Soldier” “The Soldier” was a nice well written poem by Brooke. His use of pastoral and gothic allowed him to go in more depth with his poem to give the reader imagery. While all this is happening he used the octave to give an obstacle to work around. At the beginning of the poem the voice talks about how if he were to die, then the rest of this poem will tell us what he wants us to remember him by. Like in the movie Troy, Brad Pitt (Achilles) went to “fight” at Troy only to keep his named remembered for the years to come. Which did work and now we get to learn of this great hero. In Brooke’s case he was remembered by his poems and when he died, was remembered by Winston Churchill and he used Brooke’s collection of poems as a recruitment drive for the war. “Dulce et Decorum Est” This poem has many uses of imagery in it. From bombs being launched; to gas poisoning. Owen wrote many of his poems to scare people from the war and tell them what it is really like. Also, I think that Owen tries to use simple phrases to keep them stuck in the readers mind, like “Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori” (LL. 27-28). The word “guttering” on line 16 suggests that the man is choking on poison gas, giving me the feeling that the man is gargling his own blood as he is being carried away to the truck. I envision this like in Pan’s Labyrinth when Ofelia meets the frog and the frog is guttering on its own insides, which then kills it. Nasty it is but, it’s amazing how different genres of movies and poetry can somehow link together. “The Glory of Women” “The Glory of Women” is nothing but irony. There is truth that women thought that the men were their heroes. However, the men thought differently after coming home from war. They thought that there was nothing to be satisfied over. Women didn’t know what war looked like other than hearing stories from friends and their husbands. During WWI women wanted their husbands to go to war and be a hero for their country. Since they didn’t have a T.V they didn’t know how bad it actually would be. As of the 21st century, women don’t want their husband to leave and rather for them to stay home. In the movie “Saving Private Ryan” D-Day was nothing glorious, death of their lovers who they saw as heroes. As women sent loving letters and made socks, they did not know the conditions the men were in. This is why we should be thankful for the heroes who devoted their lives to save others. “Break of Day in the Trenches” Life being compared to rat is one thing we humans wish was not compared to. In Rosenberg’s poem he does. Calling the rat sardonic shows that the rat is giving the voice in the poem a mocking look. The rat is one of two symbols in the poem to subvert pastoral mode in him poem. The other is the poppy as the symbol of the dead man’s blood. The rat has more freedom and can survive on its own, but soldiers had no freedom and had to follow commands. The rat doesn’t have feeling towards one side to another, but since the voice does he would be shot and not the rat. The corpse’s in the bowels of the Earth is a metaphor of bodies in no man’s land. When the character in the poem plucked the poppy out of the ground it is started to die which is ironic because the character knows this and will probably assume his fate, which might come to an end.