WWI Perspectives!!!

Just as the French and Industrial Revolutions influenced both the Romantic and Victorian writers respectively, similarly, WWI had a profound impact on the Modern writers in the early 20th century. World War I also known as the “Great War” was entered into by many countries not over territorial aims, “but in defense of principles the maintenance of which is vital to the civilization of the world” (p. 1080). What may have began as a heroic idea turned into one of the ugliest and costly endeavors. New technologies including trench warfare, chemical warfare, U-boats, airplanes, and tanks made it the deadliest conflicts ever with over 15 million casualties. As I previously stated, the war began with such high hopes; it was coined “The War to End all Wars!”, but it soon turned into something that many people thought would never end and there would be no progress.
In this blog, I am going to touch on two poems, Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier and Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth, which come from two very different perspectives. Rupert Brooke was one of the first of Britain’s “War Poets”. He wrote The Soldier as he was sailing out to duty for the first time. His war sonnets are a symbol of English pride. There are two reasons why I think his poems are read so optimistically, the first is that he had never actually been to war and was therefore unaware of the true horrors of war; and secondly, he wrote his poems early in the war when people were still optimistic that this would be THE war to defend ideologies and end all other wars. On the other hand, Wilfred Owen enlisted in 1915 and in 1916 left for France with the Artists’ Rifles. It didn’t take long at all for Owen to witness the horrors of war and in 1918 he was sent to a hospital to recover from “shell shock”. It was there where he wrote many of his poems. Unlike Brooke, Owen actually endured battle and was able to convey it’s disillusionment to the world. We see, through their work, a naively optimistic perspective as well as an understanding and apprehensive perspective of war.
Brooke begins The Soldier with, “If I should die, think only this of me:/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England” (p. 1098). This statement shows the reader that Brooke thought fighting was a very noble thing to do and that even if he died there, he would be leaving a part of himself and thus a part of England where he was, and therefore it was worth it. When he states, “A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,” (p. 1098) and “Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given,” (p. 1099) I think we get a sense that Brooke truly believed he was fighting for certain ideologies and that by fighting he could make the enemy “aware” of those ideologies that Britain stood for. This poem is very naive and ignorant. An optimistic outlook, which many soldiers and wives at home needed to hear; that their sacrifice would be worth it, but they would soon realize that that was a disillusionment.
As seen in the title, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Owen’s perspective of the war was much more realistic. In the very first line, “What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?” (p. 1100) we quickly see the way Owen felt about the “youth” dying in battle. Describing them as “cattle” gives the connotation that there were so many of them that they can’t be thought of as distinct individuals but as a collective group and as unimportant as a heard of cattle lacking emotions, feelings, or desires. In the second stanza, he states, “Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--” (p. 1101). Again, when there is a death in the family there is a funeral service and a great amount of mourning, but Owen describes the devastation being so large that there is no way we can honor each youth the same; he makes their death and even life seem so pointless. The last line of the poem, “And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds” (p. 1101), points to the fact that not a single day went by without producing a death. Every time the sun went down on the battlefield, the blinds were drawn. Owen’s disturbing account of war was extremely pessimistic, but true and he conveyed to the men and women at home the true horrors of war.