Analysis of the Deserter by Winifred M. Letts
Opening Lines Poetry Anthology
Section H
1914-18 War (ii)
This revision guide is intended to support the work you have been doing in class on the following poems:
Recruiting
Joining the Colours
The Target
The Send-Off
Spring Offensive
The Bohemians
Lamentations
The Deserter
The Hero
Falling Leaves
In Flander’s Fields
The Seed-Merchant’s Son
The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
Spring in War-Time
Perhaps-
Reported Missing
E.A. Mackintosh
Katherine Tynan Hinkson
Ivor Gurney
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Ivor Gurney
Siegfried Sassoon
Winifred M. Letts
Siegfried Sassoon
Margaret Postgate Cole
John McCray
Agnes Grozier Herbertson
Wilfred Owen
Edith Nesbit
Vera Brittain
Anna Gordon Keown
Historical Context – The 1914-1918 War
The 1914 -1918 War was also known as the Great War, and is infamous for the millions of young men millions of young men who died, using old-fashioned battle tactics against the first modern weapons, such as machine guns. Young men volunteered to go and fight believing they were on a heroic mission.
The horror they faced when they got to the trenches is the subject of much of their poetry. The soldiers felt betrayed by those who had persuaded them to go and fight, and were desperate to show the reality of war.
“Recruiting” E.A. Mackintosh
“Recruiting” shows that the reality of war is different to the propaganda recruitment, the poem contains bitter criticism of the politicians who sent the soldiers off to war and the journalists who write about it. The poem comments on the recruitment drive in Britain; taking issue in particular with posters encouraging young men to sign up to the army. Mackintosh focuses on the discrepancy between the image of war as presented by the advertising campaign of the “fat civilians” and the reality of war as experienced by the young “lads” called up to fight.
STRUCTURE
Constructed of 11 verses, each made up of 4 lines (quatrains) with a regular rhyme scheme abcb defe ghih …The structure of the poem is
Section H
1914-18 War (ii)
This revision guide is intended to support the work you have been doing in class on the following poems:
Recruiting
Joining the Colours
The Target
The Send-Off
Spring Offensive
The Bohemians
Lamentations
The Deserter
The Hero
Falling Leaves
In Flander’s Fields
The Seed-Merchant’s Son
The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
Spring in War-Time
Perhaps-
Reported Missing
E.A. Mackintosh
Katherine Tynan Hinkson
Ivor Gurney
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Ivor Gurney
Siegfried Sassoon
Winifred M. Letts
Siegfried Sassoon
Margaret Postgate Cole
John McCray
Agnes Grozier Herbertson
Wilfred Owen
Edith Nesbit
Vera Brittain
Anna Gordon Keown
Historical Context – The 1914-1918 War
The 1914 -1918 War was also known as the Great War, and is infamous for the millions of young men millions of young men who died, using old-fashioned battle tactics against the first modern weapons, such as machine guns. Young men volunteered to go and fight believing they were on a heroic mission.
The horror they faced when they got to the trenches is the subject of much of their poetry. The soldiers felt betrayed by those who had persuaded them to go and fight, and were desperate to show the reality of war.
“Recruiting” E.A. Mackintosh
“Recruiting” shows that the reality of war is different to the propaganda recruitment, the poem contains bitter criticism of the politicians who sent the soldiers off to war and the journalists who write about it. The poem comments on the recruitment drive in Britain; taking issue in particular with posters encouraging young men to sign up to the army. Mackintosh focuses on the discrepancy between the image of war as presented by the advertising campaign of the “fat civilians” and the reality of war as experienced by the young “lads” called up to fight.
STRUCTURE
Constructed of 11 verses, each made up of 4 lines (quatrains) with a regular rhyme scheme abcb defe ghih …The structure of the poem is