Compare and Contrast the different attitudes to war you have studied
The three poems that I am going to compare and contrast are: “Who’s for the Game? ” by Jessie Pope, “Dulce et Decorum est,” by Wilfred Owen and “God! How I hate you! ” by Arthur Graeme West. The three poets use their writing to express their opinions of the war. Jessie Pope is a persuasive journalist who wrote war poems to help recruitment and to sustain the war effort. “Who’s for the Game? ” tries to convince young men through propaganda that they should go to war.
She portrays the war as a game, which will be fun for the men who join up and will make them heroes: whereas the men who do not join will be perceived as people who are spoiling the fun. She persuades the men to fight in ‘the game’ by using manipulation, which would then make them feel guilty if they did not go to war. “Dulce et Decorum est” is a poem in response to Jessie Pope’s attitude to war, which aims to prove to her that war is not a game and that watching a fellow soldier die is not enjoyable. Wilfred Owen describes how he saw a man being choked to death by poisonous gas and how the war changed the soldiers.
He describes the soldier dying in horrific detail, and he paints a vivid picture of how it must have felt for him to see the man die. ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ is a Roman motto, meaning: “It is sweet and fitting to die for your country” and he demonstrates through his poem that it is not sweet to die for your country. He also sarcastically refers to Jessie Pope as ‘my friend’, which is telling her that she is not his friend because she is persuading easily-influenced young men to go to war and to die horrifically for their country. He describes the war as, ‘the old lie’ and ‘obscene as cancer’.
The harsh title of “God! How I Hate You,” tells us that Arthur Graeme West is also anti-war. Arthur Graeme West is not referring to how he hates God, but how he hates the young, cheerful men who write poetry about how wonderful it is to go to war and how young men should be thanking God because he has given them a motivation in life. Had they been to war themselves and seen a young man die, as he had, they would not write such things. He then also goes on to describe how he saw a man being shot, and he gives a vivid description of his brain exploding ‘like an eggshell’.
The last two sentences of the poem are sarcastic, as he is saying how God is in His Heaven in the best possible of worlds, indicating that he disagrees with the poets that write that. The three poems describe how the soldiers during the war and whether they act positively or negatively. Jessie Pope is describing how the war would be to the soldiers who took part and how they would be perceived as brave heroes. The second stanza says, “Who’ll give his country a hand? ” which gives the impression that war is like doing a small job which will make you feel brave once you have done it.
On the last line of the second stanza she says, “And who wants a seat in the stand,” which seems to sneer at the soldiers who do not take part in the war. In the third stanza on the last line she writes about the soldier who again did not take part in the war by saying, “Then lie low and be out of the fun? ” which makes them seem as though they are spoiling it for everyone else and being selfish by lying low and not helping the others fight. In the third stanza, she writes about how the country is trying to fight, and that she needs the young, brave men to help her with the fight.
She uses personification when she says that the country is a ‘she’, which may makes the young men seem strong and protective of their country, as she is a ‘woman’ and therefore will need the help from the men. “God! How I hate You,” does not describe the soldiers as being part of a game. Instead Arthur Graeme West describes the men as slowly dying humans and he also describes the dead soldiers lying in the trenches. He describes the men as being bored of the war, as they only sit around waiting to be attacked by the enemy. He says in the third stanza, “Proved that all muddy brown monotony,” which shows us the tedium of war.
Arthur Graeme West describes in vivid detail how he saw a man being shot, and he describes how he saw the man slowly dying, which makes you sympathise with him and the other soldiers because who saw such horrific events. In “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen describes the men as tired, unenthusiastic and dirty, and he gives more detail than the two other poets. On the first line of the first stanza, he describes the men with similes as, ‘Bent double, like old beggars,’ which shows us that the men look unwell and older then they are due to the effect the war has had on them.
On the second line, he says that the men were, ‘Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,’ which shows us that they had developed an abnormality in the knees, causing them to walk differently, that they were finding it harder to breathe because they were coughing like old women, and that they were cursing as they walked through mud, which shows their lack of enthusiasm. On the forth line, it says, ‘to trudge’ which also shows us that they were unenthusiastic and tired.
The soldiers were tired because it said that the ‘men marched asleep’ so they were subconsciously walking onwards, without thinking about where or why they were walking. This shows us that Arthur Graeme West and Wilfred Owen both agreed that the soldiers were unmotivated and that they were not playing happily as if they were in a game. However, Jessie Pope disagrees with them and she thinks that the men were happily playing along in the war, and that they were keen to participate in the war as if it were a game or sport.
In, ‘Who’s for the Game? there are no deaths that are described because Jessie Pope is trying to persuade people that it is right to go to war and that it is more of a game than a battlefield. She had never been to war and never seen someone die in battle. has she done so then perhaps she would have described a death to warn the men that they should not go to war. However, Dulce et Decorum Est describes a soldier dying in graphic detail. In the second stanza, Wilfred Owen says ‘floundering like a man in fire or lime… ‘ when he is describing the soldier dying. He uses metaphors to describe the gruesome sight of the man dying.
In the third stanza he says, ‘And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,’ which shows us that his eyes of struggling to move and that he is suffering. Another metaphor that it says is ‘His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,’ which is saying that, as the devil will never be sick of sin, that his face would have looked as though it was slowly being tortured to death. He then describes that there was ‘Blood gargling from his froth corrupted lungs’ which is showing us how gruesome and horrific it would have been to watch. In, ‘God! How I hate you,’ there is a description of a man’s head being burst open.
It uses similes to describe it. For example, in the third stanza it says, ‘Smashed like an eggshell and the warm grey brain, Spattered all bloody on the parados… ‘ It is using horrific detail so that the person can imagine how horrific it must have been to see the man die and to know that they could end up dying like him. ‘God! How I hate you,’ and,’Dulce et Decorum est,’ are both including gruesome details on how the soldiers die and what it was like to be there, unlike Jessie Pope, who decides not mention the possibility of deaths, but instead speaks of how the men who ‘eagerly shoulder a gun’ are heroes.
The rhythm of, ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ begins with a slow and heavy rhythm, because it helps the reader to imagine the soldiers trudging slowly across the ground, and you can imagine how they feel tired and unenthusiastic. Then the rhythm suddenly speeds up when the gas shells explode, to show how they quickly fumble around in desperation to find their gas masks, which helps the reader to imagine the panic and anxiety. In, ‘God! How I hate you,’ has a loud, quite slow clapping rhythm, which seems to get louder as his anger increases.
This helps the reader to see Arthur Graeme West’s anger and how it helps them to feel what he is thinking. In, ‘Who’s for the Game? ‘ the rhythm is approximately the same speed as, ‘God! How I hate you,’ because they are both loud, although Jessie Pope was probably trying to make the rhythm sound enthusiastic rather then angry. This shows us that although the two poems are making different points, they both use the same rhythm for different purposes, unlike Dulce et Decorum Est, which has a slower beat which gradually gets faster.
In conclusion, the poem which I least prefer is, ‘Who’s for the Game’. The reason for this is because the poem uses manipulation and propaganda to try and force men to go to war. It is not as gruesome and as graphic as the other two poems, and it does not describe horrific deaths in it; instead it portrays the war as a game and as something which will enable you to be seen as a hero and bring you glory if you die for your country. It glosses over the harsh realities of war and dishonestly lures young men towards a possible grim death.
