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THE WAR POETS - Coggle Diagram
THE WAR POETS
WILFRED OWEN (1893-1918)
LIFE
He was born in 1893 and after working as a teacher of English in France and visiting a hospital for the wounded, he decidet to return to England and enlist
He was very patriotic but when he lived life in trenches, he understood the horror of the war so he became against it
1917: he was sent to France, where he saw his first action, and in March he was injured and sent to a War Hospital in Edinburgh to recover from shell shock. In this period he started writing poems
He returned to the front in August 1918 and seven days before the armistice he was killed in a German machine gun attack.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
The latin title means "it is sweet and honourable". This is a quotation from the Latin poet Horace who borrowed the line from the Greek poet Tyrtaeus
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It could be divided in 4 sections: 1) Retreating towards the trenches, 2) Description of a gas attack, 3) The sight of a dying friend (then it will have allucination in which he see his friend again and again), 4) The main message: dying for the country isn't honorable and war is a all lie
There are many cruel images and sounds that reminds life in treanches. He talks about a friend who is unable to wear is helmet ad the fact that before and after an attack the soldiers often used to drink due to the fear and the pain.
He talk about a gas attack in which there was a green see and a green light due to the explosion. this is a metaphor to describing a nightmare
In the last stanza there is a bit of irony because he said "Dulce et decorum est. Pro patria mori". what he wanted to say is the fact that ar is only degradation
WORKS
His poems describe terrible conditions and cnstant stress expirienced by the soldiers in trenches.
His poems are painful in their accurate narrative of gas casualties, men who have gone mad, men who are cinically alive but their bodies have been destroyed
He introduced a technical innovation: pararhymes. Half-rhymes where the consonants in 2 different words are the same but the vowels vary.
He used also a lot of alliterations, assonance and onomatopias.
His poem isn't only for First World War but to all wars: they can be suitable for every situation in which people must suffer or die.
In 1918 he was writing the Preface of his poem's collection. In this is taking distance from the poetry of the 19th century and he said that the subject of his poems is War and the pity of War. so his poetry wants to speak out about the horror of war
The poet's task is warn, so the true Poets must be truthful
When the First World War (1914-1918) broke out, thoudands of young men volunteered for military service because they saw the conflict as an adventure
After The Battle of the Somme in 1916 that sense of pride and exatation of war was replaced by doubt and disillusionment.
For the soldiers life in trenches was Hell because of the rain and the mud, decaying bodies that the rats fed on, repeated bombings and the use of poison gas.
Almost from the beginning, soldiers wrote songs, letters and poems to show their emotions
These became a group of poets who volounteered to fight in the Great War and in most cases lost their lives in the conflict. They were The War Poets
The style of their poems are unconventional, realistic and describe life in trenches but also the horror of the war
Their aim was to make reaeders realise the pain, the horror and the frustration of the soldiers during the war.
Their poetry can be considered modern because its subject-matter could be conveyed in the 19th century poetic conventions
Themes: courage, patriotism, glory, pain and suffering, duty, violence, loss of innocence.. war is all a lie because there's nothing noble and glorious in war