War is Hell for Lack of a More Apt Metaphor: The Personae and Atmosphere of Modern

War Poetry

Who can convey the true implications of war? War and conflict have always been a
definitive factor of the human condition; however, The Great War, or World War One, was such
a drastic deviation from previously accepted norms and conventions of warfare that it caused a
profound impact in all aspects of life, from the political to the artistic. Poetry was not exempt
from the effects of World War I, and the poetry of this era, the early 20
th
Century, reflected the
seismic shifts that were occurring not only in the personal psyche, but also in the conception of
the phenomena that encompassed existence. Such a paradigm shift was evident in the World
War I poets in general, and in the poems of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in particular.
In Sassoons poem, Repression of War Experience, and Wilfred Owens poem, Dulce et
Decorum est, the psychological impact of the war and its lingering effects upon the soldier, the
active participant of such a traumatic event, forms the basis of the poems; through the speakers
narration, atmosphere and meaning are conveyed.
Both Repression of War Experience and Dulce et Decorum est feature speakers who
are directly affected by the war; both poems, moreover, feature speakers who are unable to
escape the trauma they experienced during this momentous event, and both poets use an explicit
and unvarnished style of language to convey the speakers unsettling psychological landscapes.
In Sassoons poem, the speaker is far removed from the front and the trenches, yet is unable to
escape the lingering, malignant realities of the battlefield. While convalescing, the speaker
attempts to enjoy the respite he is afforded; the guns that never cease, however, make this an
exercise of futility. The onomatopoeic repetition of the guns, Thud, thud, thud, though quite
soft, is incessant, insinuating itself into the mind of the patient. It is evident, furthermore, that
action of the front has permeated the speakers psyche permanently, for he declares: O Christ, I
want to go out/ And screech at them to stop Im going crazy; Im going stark, staring mad
because of the guns. There is no escape from the haunting nightmares, from the nagging guilt
of survival. And, it is ironic that Sassoons speaker is not haunted by the soldiers who died, but
rather by the ones who survived, like himself, for the ghosts among the trees are the old men
who died/ Slow, natural deaths, - old men with ugly souls,/ Who wore their bodies out with nasty
sins; the speaker feels that he should have perished along with the myriad of young souls who
lost their lives in this conflict. The speaker implies that he as well is guilty of the nasty sins of
murder, a guilt he cannot eradicate; this overwhelming sense of guilt is a reflection of the
murderous nature of the battlefield.
Similarly, the speaker in Owens poem is haunted by a particular experience where a
fellow soldier fails to get his gas mask on and perishes right before the whole company. The
whole scene is reported in flashback, in vivid detail, but only in the third stanza is it revealed that
the action described in the previous stanzas has occurred in the past. The extremely graphic and
explicit language used to describe a soldiers agonizing death is indicative of the searing effect
this scene has upon the speakers mind: In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,/ He plunges
at me, guttering, chocking, drowning. Unlike Sassoons speaker, however, Owens speaker is
not racked with survivors guilt, but rather, haunted by this unfortunate soldiers untimely
demise. Owens figurative language in describing this gas attack, moreover, matches the
gruesome tragedy that was an everyday occurrence during this conflict; the death throes of the
soldier is described in uncompromising similes: Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud/ Of vile,
incurable sore on innocent tongues.
Undoubtedly, the unprecedented and modern nature of The Great War played a
significant influence on the direction that modern poetry would take. World War One ushered in
the era of modern warfare, and it witnessed the use of technologies hitherto unused: airplanes,
tanks, and chemical warfare in the form of gas attacks, the subject of Owens poem. The reality
of an unbeknownst modern form of warfare is reflected in the structure of both Owens and
Sassoons poems. Owen chooses an alteration of the traditional sonnet in which to frame his
poem, reflecting and paralleling the paradoxical irony in which humanity found itself; there was
the traditional notion of warfare and chivalry to which Europe clung entering World War One,
but was soon confronted by an emerging, modern, and unfamiliar method of waging war.
Owens poem, for the most part adheres to the traditional sonnets rhyme and rhythm scheme if
two sonnets were fused into one; the poem is essentially two sonnets with only minor variations.
The rhyme and rhythm of the first half of the poem is particularly effective in conveying the
weariness of the soldiers in their march, with their almost mechanical and instinctive progress
towards a distant respite dangled like a carrot on a stick before them: Bent double, like old
beggars under sacks, - / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,/ Till on the
haunting flares we turned our backs/ And towards our distant rest began to trudge. The similes,
like old beggars and like hags, indicate the extent of the soldiers degradation as well, and
the mood and atmosphere is served well with the structure of the poem. The shift in the third
stanza, however, marks a deviation from the structure of a traditional 14 line sonnet, a shift that
is indicative of a break from the official state sponsored stance on the war and the glories
involved in the sacrifices for ones homeland. In an ironic twist on the Horace allusion of
Dulce et decorum est/ Pro patria mori, Owen shatters the myth that caused so many young
people to enlist and sacrifice their lives in a gruesome and horrific manner, in a war
characterized by unimaginable tragedy.
The structure of Sassoons poem, likewise, reflects the modern consequences of a modern
war on an individuals psychological well-being. The speaker of Repression of War Experience
is evidently suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which ironically, is a rather
contemporary diagnosis; more ironic is the fact that the disorder, while only recently named, was
a psychological reality in the past as well. PTSD was called shell shock, and the methods of
dealing with it in the past was very primitive, as evidenced by the speaker in Sassoons poem
who is overwhelmed and unable to deal with his war experiences. The poem, while having a
relatively, not perfectly, iambic pentameter metre, is unrhymed. The structured metre suggests a
stubborn clinging to the methods of dealing with shell shock, where soldiers dont go mad/
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts. The speaker erroneously believes that he has the
capacity to almost will away his psychological disorders, but it is soon apparent such a method is
futile. The lack of a rhyming scheme, furthermore, works well with the point-of-view of stream
of consciousness, for the speakers ramblings are uninhibited by structural necessity.
Sassoons poem, because of its narrative structure, possesses an unsettling, disjointed,
and claustrophobic atmosphere. The constant shift in points-of-view, from the second-person
point-of-view to the first-person is indicative of the speakers intense internal conflict, and it
becomes unsettling because it is evident that the speaker is having a conversation with himself
rather than addressing the reader. The speaker commands himself to Now light your pipe, and
implores pleadingly to Come on; O do read something in order to escape his haunting
memories of the war. The speakers efforts at forgetfulness are a losing battle, however, for
everything in the room is a reminder of his life as a soldier; the speaker manages to connect even
the most harmless objects in the room to his wartime experiences, and because of this, a
claustrophobic atmosphere is created. The poem begins with the speaker lighting a candle and
noticing a moth, noting its self-destructive propensity of being drawn to flames, who scorch
their wings with glory, liquid flame. The speaker then draws a metaphor comparing the moth to
the self-destructive soldier who throws his life away in battle in the pursuit of glory and honour,
only to have to remind himself not to make such destructive mental connections, for its bad to
think of war. Even the books begin to press in on the speaker, and he is unable to prevent
himself from personifying them as soldiers; he calls them a jolly company, obviously seeing
them as a company of soldiers, Dressed inevery kind of colour, representing the various
nations gathered on the front. The speakers paranoia intensifies the claustrophobic atmosphere,
for in an attempt to escape the reminders of war that are contained in the room, he gazes outward,
into the garden. Unfortunately, even the garden presses in on him, cutting off any means of
escape from his claustrophobic and paranoid mind; in the garden there are crowds of ghosts
among the trees and horrible shapes in shrouds. Contributing to this ghoulish imagery, is the
incessant audial imagery, an undertone from which there is no escape, the constant imagining of
the sounds of shells. For the speaker, far removed from the front, and long after the war, the war
will never be over, for why, [he] can hear the guns, and he will never be able to silence them.
The atmosphere in Owens poem is also created by the speakers reliving a war
experience; a surreal and ghastly atmosphere dominates the poem. The juxtaposition of the first
and second stanza, however, only highlights the horror of the gas attack. In the first stanza, an
overwhelming weariness is conveyed only to be shattered by the second stanzas flurry of action
and activity: Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! Then, all the soldiers, having dispelled their lethargic
fatigue, put on their gas mask, except for one unfortunate soul. And, it is through the warping
vision of the speakers gas mask, through the misty panes, and the ghoulish fog of gas, the
thick green light, that the surreal atmosphere is created. The speaker is haunted by this
dreamlike sequence of events, and it is difficult to imagine that his nightmares could be more
terrifying than this scene. In fact, the whole poem could be a description of the speakers
nightmare, for he states that it is in all [his] dreams, the dying soldier plunges at [him],
guttering, choking, drowning. The switch to the present continuous tense in the second stanza,
moreover, while contributing to the immediacy of the flurried action, contributes to the surreal
atmosphere, for it indicates that the episode is revisited repeatedly in the speakers mind and
dreams, and it will remain forever occurring. The speaker will forever relive the ecstasy of
fumbling,/ Fitting the clumsy helmets, and the dying soldier will forever be yelling out and
stumbling,/ And floundring, and the speaker will forever see the soldier drowning.
Repression of War Experience and Dulce et Decorum est by Sassoon and Owen,
respectively, unflinchingly and explicitly, convey and depict their experiences of war; the poets
attempt to recreate the atmosphere they experienced, and in doing so deliver their antiwar
messages quite directly. These two war poems relinquish the quaint poetic movements of the
past, for there is nothing romantic or metaphysical in their depiction of their experiences. The
unprecedented tragedy and horror of World War One demanded an unvarnished artistic treatment;
undoubtedly, this momentous 20
th
Century event contributed in ushering the modern age. The
people who experienced World War One, and in fact the whole world, would forever be altered
by this horrific event. War is hell for lack of a more apt metaphor.