War Poetry Essay

Jeffrey Qiu

War poems reflect the changes through a society about the perspective of war with writing from the
poet’s own experiences. Over centuries and decades, the perspective of war has differed as poems
and texts accentuate wars and these perspectives. Poems convey the Sorrow of Sarajevo and WWI
as good and bad, glorified and horrified as wars are. “The Soldier” is a poem written in 1914 by
Rupert Brooke portraying WWI as a glorifying image in his time. “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a 1918
poem written by Wilfred Owen, which, disparately, is somewhat opposite to “The Soldier”, as it
represents war as horrific and not at all glorifying. Furthermore, “The Sorrow of Sarajevo”, written by
Goran Simic, evidently portrays war through his own experiences as horrible and non-glorifying.

War is a hard-fought conquest to gain glory in a heroic scene and fight for your country. This concept
is conveyed by “The Soldier” as Rupert Brooke confronts the audience with a vivid image of a
glorified England and a soldier’s death as a sacrifice to England for prosperity and peace. The sonnet
was written in the first year of World War I and is a deeply patriotic and principled poem that
expresses a soldier’s love for England, his homeland in this case. Beginning his poem, Brooke starts
off with a phrase “If I should die, think only this of me:” to immediately create a melancholy and
sentimental tone. As the main message of the sonnet is of a soldier passionately stating that their
home country is something worth defending through war, it would imply that war would bring glory
to soldiers as they make sacrifices for their country. Brooke metaphorically states, “there shall be in
that richer earth a richer dust concealed; a dust whom England bore”, which signifies that the earth
will be enriched by the soldier’s dead body as his body was born and made in England. This is the
first part of the poem in which Brooke appears to glorify England and the concept of war.
Furthermore, Brooke renders the soldier as feeling he owes his identity primarily to his country, as it
was from the personified England that “bore” and “shaped” the soldier who was also “blest by suns”
and breathed air from England and was “washed by the rivers”. The initial part of the sonnet, the
octave, is devoted to creating a sense of England as utopian, pastoral and idyllic. The imagery used
of rivers, flowers, sun and air, attempts to transform the society from a human concept to more
natural and fundamental, as if the land is infused with its people. Rupert Brooke portrays his
perspective of war as glorifying and patriotic. He represents England as a staple of a utopian
hometown, and the soldier as a passionate citizen that would go through war to sacrifice for their
country and glory.

Written by Wilfred Owen at the end of the First World War, “Dulce et Decorum Est” condemns the
perspective of war from “The Soldier” as Owen produces his perspective of war as horrific from
personal experience. Owen wrote his poem when he was fighting as a soldier during World War I,
and the specificity and detail in his graphic descriptions of war’s horrors confronts the audience of
his perspective on war. In the first stanza, Owen thrusts the reader into the suffering of a war
experience as his group of soldiers – his regiment – travels from the front lines to a vague
description of “distant rest”, to show that their destination is unknown, and is to just retreat from
war. These men are miserable, and Owen’s language puts readers into the scene of the soldiers
“coughing like hags” and cursing as they “trudge” through “sludge”. The “men marched asleep”,
proposed that soldiers are like the living dead, as the brutality and terror of war have deadened
them. While it is evident that the life of a soldier is demoralizing and painful, in the second stanza, it
is demonstrated that death in war is also horrendous, agonizing, barbarous and meaningless. In the
first two lines of the second stanza, Owen seizes the dumb confusion and terror of a gas attack with
the rush from the first “Gas!” to the more panicked and urgent amplification of the next cry “GAS!”,
which is emphasised in capital. This is followed by all the soldiers “fumbling” in ecstasy with “clumsy
helmets”. Verbs used by Owen allow a description of a particular soldier unable to grasp and don his
helmet in time, and “stumbling” and “flound’ring” like a “man in fire”, while the narrator of the
poem (Wilfred Owen) can only watch powerlessly from his own mask. The poet’s third stanza
plunges suddenly into the mind of the narrator. This reveals the other horror of war; that even
surviving warriors undeniably gains glory yet must face the challenge of perpetual torment in the
future. The narrator is shrouded by all his dreams as he helplessly sees the dying man in agony in “all
my dreams”. The narrator’s sleep is constantly haunted by this image of death he has witnessed and
is a clear representation of posttraumatic stress disorder. Owen’s perspective on war comes from his
personal experience from traumatic events and is one that condemns it. He has vividly shown how
war can be so horrific and traumatising with his clear descriptions, imagery, and language.

Supporting “Dulce et Decorum Est”, Goran Simic’s “The Sorrow of Sarajevo” presents a poem with its
descriptions detailing the horrors of war and the traumatic experiences that innocent citizens need
to face as well. The poem tells the accounts Simic’s experience in Sarajevo during the siege, in 1990
Bosnia. Depicting a man in the middle of a warzone, the poem details that he is surrounded by dead
bodies and wreckage. Witnessing atrocities and full of sorrow, the narrator appears to be all alone
and wandering his hometown as it is destroyed and covered with blood, while still having to carry on
helplessly with his daily life. The narrator passes by “newspapers that are glued by blood to the
street” with a “loaf of bread”, which depicts the damage done to citizens and soldiers in the city, and
how this affects the life of innocent bystanders and families of soldiers. Showing the horrors of war,
Simic describes a “corpse of a woman” floating on the river through the city. The river may have
been used for drinking water, cleaning or washing before the siege. Now however, with the woman
not being the only casualty in the river, the water would be long polluted and to dirty with blood and
grime to wash or drink. The woman has also got her “wristwatch, still in place”, advocating that she
was killed unexpectedly. This further highlights the helplessness of the citizens and the larger impact
of wars. Simic confronts the audience that war would affect towns, families, and citizens way more
than just losing a family member or friend. Moreover, throughout fighting, families are torn apart
and more than just the soldier’s life can be lost. “Someone lobs a child’s shoe into the furnace”,
signifying that the child was killed and her belongings are not necessary as her “shoe” is burnt in the
furnace. In “family photographs spill from the back of the garbage truck”, a message is directed that
sloppiness and recklessness occurs to the photos as there would be no other family member to give
the photos to, so they are discarded in the rubbish and they “spill” from the garbage truck. The
repetition of “love from” followed by an ellipses highlights the losses of family members and the way
war has shattered families. In the last stanza, the narrator wakes at night to watch his neighbour
“who stands by the window to watch the dark”, displaying the vulnerability and helplessness of the
citizens of this town. Simic generates a meaning of loss in his poem and antagonises the audience
with his descriptions of the horrors of war. The impact of the siege on the citizens, families and
children, are detailed in his poem, which signify the helplessness of everyone during a war.

War is viewed in the world as patriotic and glorious. In “The Soldier”, Rupert Brooke glorifies England
and war to show the patriotism of England itself. Condemning this concept, “Dulce et Decorum Est”
and “The Sorrow of Sarajevo” both are used by their poets – Wilfred Owen and Goran Simic
respectively – to convince their audience that the horror of war far outweigh the patriotic clichés of
those who glorify it. Each perspective is subjective and the contrast of a perspective of war being
glorious, and a perspective of war being horrific is shown through comparing these poems.