The Soldier' Rupert Brooke
The General' Siegfried Sassoon
Dulce Et Decorum Est' Wilfred Owen.
Sassoon and Owen where treated at the same mental hospital during world war one. Do their poems appear to be the work of madmen?
Rupert Brooke's poem The Soldier' was written at the start of World War One, this was before the horror of the trenches was known. The poem is a traditional sonnet in which Brooke expresses his love for England and how he believes it is right to fight and die for his country. However Brooke never discovered what war was like in reality as he died in 1915, before he actually got to fight in the war. Therefore his poem is very idealistic and has a very traditional viewpoint.
Brooke's poem is written in iambic pentameter and has alternate line rhyme he also uses metaphors and euphemism.
Brooke's poem would inspire young men to enlist and would bring comfort to the families of the victims of war. In his poem Brooke uses repetition of the word England in a very patriotic style. He also uses personification to describe England as if it were a person, for example, her sights and sounds, dreams happy as her day'. Sassoon's poem The General' and Owen's poem Dulce Et Decorum Est.' could be considered as deliberate responses to Brooke's The Soldier.'
The General' points out the contrast between the soldiers who die and the Generals who send them to their deaths. He says in his last line But he did for them both by his plan of attack' which shows how the Generals killed their soldiers by sending them of to their deaths. This is a good end for the poem as it leaves the reader thinking about the incompetence of the general. In this poem Sassoon uses irony to criticise the folly of war. Sassoon's poem is written in iambic hexameter and has alternate line rhyme except for the last three lines, which are rhyming triplets.
Sassoon's poem shows that he is an intelligent man and knew how