Monday 17 December 2007

essay of war. Manuel Becerril

These Two poems discuss about war. The theme of the first poem called “dulce est decorum est” explains how war affects people and how soldiers suffer. In the other hand, the second poem “The Soldier” expresses how people should give their lifes for their country. The poem persuades the reader to believe that war is a heroic act of victory. The other poem instead shows that war is one of the worse acts mankind could do. These contrasting opinions are formed through the experience of the poets.

Rupert Brooke, the author of “the soldier” wrote this poem in 1914, before the war began properly. Rupert Brook was born as a rich person, in the upper classes, and it’s famous for his idealistic war poems. Brooke was killed one year after he wrote this poem (1915) by an insect bite.
Wilfred Owen, the author of “dulce est decorum est” worked as a teacher and was part of the working middle class. He went to war two times and he was sent home after he got a tremendous shell shock. Unfortunately he died three days before peace was declared. He was awarded with a medal for his extreme bravery. He wrote this poem in October of 1917 and was finally published after his dead in 1920. The title of this poem is wrote in latin and it talks about how was life in the war, being a soldier, not being able to have a shower in days or weeks.

Wilfred Owen’s poem expresses exactly how I feel about war. He uses tremendous similes and alliteration in many ways. Some similes as “Bent double like old beggars under sacks” expresses the reality of discomfort and filth of soldiers and another example as “and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime” Wilfred Owen makes you feel death to shock the reader.

In comparison, the poem of Rupert Brooke doesn’t show much care about the actual reality of war and just tries to persuade the reader of the good points about war instead of the bad ones such as the suffering of the soldiers and their families. And this doesn’t mean this poem isn’t a good poem it’s just another way of thinking that the reader may agree or not agree with.



The poems have different levels of complexity in relation to the language each poem uses.
Wilfred Owen’s poem is probably more difficult to understand than Rupert Brook’s because of his higher level of language devices that it employs.

The conclusion of these two poems is that non of them is either wrong or right but they obviously are different points of view one expresses the negative view of war and the other the positive. The truth is neither of them can be complete but, as I see it, the two of them give a tremendous idea of war to actually be able to create a setting and a character and imagine being a soldier; how they suffer and also how they feel proud about saving their country although probably the fear and sadness in them is much bigger thant their proud.