When World War I broke, earlier poets wrote poems celebrating the outbreak of the First World War. These poems reflected an over-optimistic, sentimental and unrealistic attitude to war that mirrored the attitude of the British people, who assumed that the war was chivalrous and heroic. Rupert Brooke's “The Soldier” is an example of such early World War I poetry, in which Brooke uses strong figurative language and symbols to romanticize and sentimentalize the horrors of war. By 1915, both the British people and poets began to realize how horrific and terrible the war really was, and poems thereafter began showing an awareness and anti-war perspective of the horrors of the ruthless war. Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is an example the second wave of World War I poetry. World War I was certainly horrific, even though poets like Rupert Brooke may have regarded it as patriotic war but poets like Wilfred Owen who used their poetry to express their objection towards war.
According to early poets, Britain’s role in WWI in 1914 was inevitable and that Britain had no choice but to go to war. They were also seeing the war as a Christian crusade and those taking part in it as patriotic. It may be true that the war seemed this way at first, and so Rupert Brooke's “The Soldier” reflects on the theme of war in a patriotic manner. Brooke has romanticized the horrors of war in his poem using figurative language, approaching them in an indirect manner. The speaker of the poem is a soldier who talks about his likely and untimely demise with sheer patriotism and describes the foreign land he will be buried in as a “foreign field/That is for ever England. There shall be/In that rich earth a richer dust concealed” (Brooke 2-4). Brooke uses the field as a symbol for the simple graveyards where soldiers were buried and has been criticized for using such a light tone for addressing the war.
In the lines “In that rich earth a richer dust concealed” (Brooke 4) and “A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware” (Brooke 5), Brooke has used “dust” as a symbol for the dead soldier to lighten the serious subject of war. The fact that he keeps repeating England in the poem reflects how he is romanticizing war as something patriotic. Throughout the poem, Brooke tries his best to associate the soldier in his poem with England as strongly as possible so that the soldier’s participation in the war is seen as something patriotic. The line, “A body of England’s, breathing English air” is a notable example of Brooke’s effort to associate the soldier with England and make him appear patriotic in order to romanticize war. Broke does not just refer to the soldier as English, but as an embodiment of England itself. The message that is Brooke is apparently conveying through his poem is that soldiers fight in war for their country and that wars are patriotic.
Apart from figurative speech, the rhyme scheme of “The Soldier” alternates from the Shakespearean rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d in the first stanza to the Petrarchan rhyme scheme of e-f-g-e-f-g in the second stanza. Taking a look at the historical context of the poem once again, Brooke wrote this poem when young English men were being sent off to fight in WWI, and Brooke himself was enlisted in the Royal Naval Division. These men were losing their lives in WWI and it was poems like Brooke’s “The Soldier” that gave the public the assurance that their men were fighting for their country, in the name of patriotism, giving the public a way to cope with the deaths. Perhaps that is why, as critics have pointed out, in the line, “And think, this heart, all evil shed away” (Brooke 9), Brooke symbolizes the death of soldiers in war as a purification in which they offer themselves as lambs to be slaughtered for their country.
Regardless of its purpose, Brooke’s “The Soldier” is a sentimental poem in which war has been romanticized, and it is unfortunate that by 1915, a year after writing his poem, when WWI had actually become ruthless, Brooke had already died. However, poets like Wilfred Owen began to realize that the sheer destruction and obscene waste of human life that was occurring as a result of the war. Thus, in his poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” Wilfred Owen describes the terrible and unfortunate deaths caused by the war using an adverse and sympathetic tone. Owen’s poem reflects a protestation towards war because of its sonnet structure. Unlike Brooke, Owen portrays the theme of war as mindless destruction and an unrecognized sacrifice using images of inappropriate funerals and figurative devices of brutal conditions. Like other poems of that time, Owen’s poem is based on his personal experience of the war, in fact, he wrote this poem during his recovery from a war injury in 19 17.
The title of Owen’s poem, “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” suggests that this poem is a song for those young men who lost their lives in war, introducing the grieving and sympathetic poem that he uses throughout the poem. Usually, anthems are joyful celebratory songs, however, in the case of this poem, the anthem is sung for the “doomed youth,” young men who inevitably doomed to die in the war. Owen’s poem is an anthem for the tragic fate that awaits these men. Owen sets the depressing and gloomy mood for the entire poem by making the “doomed youth” sound horrible and sorrowful by using assonance. Unlike Brooke, Owen explains in his poem that there is no glory or honor in dying in war. The poem deals with both auditory and visual images of war, the form and structure of the poem is a reflection of the inhumane destruction caused by war, and not only does Owen lament over the doomed youth but also expresses his disapproval of war.
Throughout the poem, Owen has used words and phrases such as anger of the guns” (Owen 2), “funeral prayers” (Owen 4), “bugles and sad shires” (Owen 8), and others to give readers a sense of the sounds heard during war and its aftermath. Other phrases such as “rattle of guns” (Owen 3) and “wailing shells” are more personified. The personification of these words makes the images they portray all the more harsher, making readers feel as if they are in the middle of a battlefield and see the destructiveness of war. Owen has also used various religious imagery throughout the poem to emphasize how precious human lives are and how they are destroyed by war. The fact that Owen sets religious imagery against a word like “mockery” (Owen 5) also seems to be suggesting that war is such a power destructive force that even religion cannot prevent it from taking place. Owen is able to masterfully emphasize the serious of the theme of war and the death associated with it using a traditional sonnet form.
In the comparing Rupert Brooke's “The Soldier” and Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” it is apparent that the predominant theme in both poems is war. However, the portrayal of this theme varies in both these poems since they were written in different times at two different points in the war. Although the perspective of war that Brooke presents in his poem mirrors the view of the English people, and even though like other poets Brooke had also romanticized war in a sentimental manner to help the public cope with the deaths, but his poem does not show the realities of war. On the other hand, Owen wrote the poem in a period when the horrors of war had become quite evident and in his poem, Owen makes the point of how destructive and senseless war really. In short, although both poets have depicted the theme of war in their poems, Brooke tries to hide the realities of war while Owen tries to uncover them.
Works Cited
Brooke, Rupert. Rupert Brooke: The Complete Poems. 2nd ed. Brooklyn, NY: AMS Press, Inc., 1936. Print.
Owen, Wilfred. "Anthem for Doomed Youth." Trans. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume F: The Twentieth Century and After. 8th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. Print.
