I need help comparing The Soldier by Rupert Brooke and Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Decide on the theme of your essay first, after having read both poems and knowing what they both say. The statement of your theme should be in the introduction of your essay. You might say something such as this: "Both of these poems deal with the subject of war..." Then go on to tell the reader what topics you will discuss. Divide the essay into several different topics. For instance:

1. Subject matter
2. Rhyme pattern/or lack of same
3. Language (figurative, realistic, images brought by it)
4. Tone (serious, jovial, friendly)
5. Connotation/meaning (both real and suggested)
6. Effect on the reader (emotions triggered by the poems)




Use examples from each of the poems to illustrate how they compare/or contrast on each of these points. Be specific, quote lines from the poem(s) to give the reader a better idea of what you're talking about. The more specific you are in giving examples, the easier it will be to write a specified number of words for the assignment.

Les

Along with Les's comments on structure, you can be assured that the aim here is to contrast between the soldier who gladly dies for the country, and the soldier who is wantonly slaughtered.

pam

Brooke wrote his poem in 1914, either freshly off to war or before it had even begun
Owen wrote his poem in 1917 in a mental hospital after suffering two years of violent war.

Brooke and Owen's poems do have one thing in common - both poets died in the war less than a year after they wrote it.

One of the most fantastic things about WW1 poetry is that it encapsulates how, in such short space of time, the ideology of an entire nation was to change for ever. The contrast between relatively poor, light-hearted Georgan poetry and the strong, fierce, emotive lines which emerged from War is quite amazing.

i need to find many topics for a compare and contrast essay...due ASAP!! HELPP!!

Charles,
I like what you say about the change in poetry. I think its important when looking at Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen - to appreciate what happened in the time between them.
Ginnyfly

Tobi,
Think carefully about the time elements for both poems - when they were written etc. Think about all the positive, patriotic images in The soldier and the patriotism it would inspire in someone at the time. In Dulche... you can look at disillusionment and how the soldier feels tricked by people like Brooks who said it was great to die for your country. Imagine how you would feel as the speaker in both poems, patrioticm for The soldier and disillusionment in dulche. Look at the imagery language, especially in Dulche.
Hope that helps
Cathy

the poems were written in different times. do you think each poem's composer reflects the publics attitude towards war (being negative or postive)of the time?

the poems were written in different times.

Huh? Brooke's 1914, Owen's 1918. Both WWI, that is.

Yes, but those four years changed how people looked upon war forever. War would never be the same again.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2005 05:03AM by Desi.

The World War 1 experiences of these two officer poets were utterly different.

Rupert Brooke joined the navy. He saw action only on one day, when his ship helped evacuate Antwerp in October 1914. He died on 23 April 1915, not from battle, but from blood poisoning from a mosquito bite, aboard his ship which was then on its way to support the allied landings at Gallipoli.

His poem 'The Soldier' doesn't describe soldiering. It scarcely even imagines war. Rather it celebrates love of England. It contemplates death, but says nothing that advocates dying for one's country (‘pro patria mori’) as something that is sweet and proper ('dulce et decorum est'). This is however interpreting the poem on its own. It was in fact the fifth in a sequence of five sonnets (easy to find on the Internet) inspired by the outbreak of war and written only a few months afterwards, around Christmas time 1914, and meant to be read together. The ‘dulce et decorum’ philosophy is more evident in the first sonnet, ‘Peace’, in which Brooke likens young men turning with new-found purpose to war to ‘swimmers into cleanness leaping’, and in the third sonnet, ‘The Dead’, containing the line ‘dying has made us rarer gifts than gold’. He has been aptly called a 'pre-war' poet. All five sonnets are steeped in pre-WW1, easy upper-middle-class romantic idealism. Though famous and beautifully written, they seem old-fashioned and lightweight beside Wilfred Owen’s work.

Owen joined the infantry and spent months in the trenches and the thick of action on the Western Front. He was at one stage invalided back to England with shell shock. He returned to the Front, and to battles in which he earned a Military Cross for valour, before being killed by machine gun fire only a week before the 1918 Armistice.

Not surprisingly, he was deeply affected by the horrors he experienced in the fighting. Influenced by the poet Siegfried Sassoon he aimed to express these with unflinching realism, still using the traditional poetic devices of rhyme and rhythm but focusing on modern objects and images. In that, he succeeds with devastating intensity, economy and technical skill in the ironically titled ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’. There’s not a false or superfluous note in the whole poem. The word choice, onomatopoeia, images, similes and metaphors remain as powerful and shocking today as when first published. The contrast with Brooke’s image of war as ‘cleanness’ could not be starker.

Maybe a few details need explaining for 21st Century students. The ‘flares’ were brightly burning rockets fired upwards at night to illuminate parts of the battlefield. ‘Five-Nines’ were the standard 5.9 inch diameter shells used by the German artillery. ‘hoots’ refers to their characteristic wailing sound as they hurtled through the air. The ‘gas’ was lethal or lung-damaging chlorine, phosgene or mustard gas used as a weapon of attempted mass destruction by both sides. It was delivered by shellfire or loosed on the wind from huge cylinders. ‘clumsy helmets’ refers to the awkward gas masks issued to the troops as a defence. ‘misty panes’ refers to the masks’ glass visors. The glass was green-tinted; hence the reference to ‘green light’. ‘guttering’ is a candle-related metaphor: a candle gutters when the wax runs excessively down one side, as may happen in a strong draft, usually causing the flame to flicker wildly and go out.

The seven word ‘old Lie’ which Owen’s poem shafts is a Latin language quote from the 1st Century BC Roman poet Horace, whom Owen no doubt studied at school.

There’s no regular metre in his poem, but except for the short last line (suggestive of life cut short), the lines are all five-beat. In the second-last line, that’s accomplished technically, because in the scansion of Latin poetry the ‘et’ is unstressed, and the ‘e’ at the end of ‘dulce’ becomes silent before the opening vowel in ‘et’, as does the ‘um’ in ‘decorum’ before the ‘e’ in ‘est’. It’s more natural however for an English speaker to read the line sounding those syllables, and putting a stress on ‘et’, thus making it six-beats:

   The OLD LIE: DULCe ET deCORum EST

I don’t think that variation is a blemish. On the contrary, the extra beat serves to emphasize the line that expresses the central theme of the poem.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2005 09:15PM by IanB.

Great job Ian!

Wow Lan, but you've covered some of the most important points about the two poems.

Just to add my 2 cents in,

Dulce et decorum est is written in a very bitter manner, by a man who had very strong anti-war sentiments. I never realized what Owen had gone through, I understand why he was so strongly anti-war now. Dulce et decorum est paints a stark picture of war, of bitterness at being betrayed by the 'old lie'. "dulce et decorum est" translates into "it is sweet and fitting" "pro patria mori - to die for ones country". Owens poem starkly shows a soldier exactly HOW he will die, compared to Brookes poem where death is seen as a gentle, quiet moment of peace. Brookes poem is, as Lan has said, a pre-war poem, when people were filled with ideals about war. There is no mention about war, in fact, the imagery you see when you read Brookes poem is of quiet calm.
Owen on the other hand, paints a more immediate and real image of war. Suffering, exhaustion, violent death.

Dulce et decorum est shows strong sentiments against speakings of the glories of war, especially by older people to the impressionable young. The soldiers in Owens poem were all young (boys, most soldiers in trenches are young). In Dulce et decorum est, Owen tries to give the world a real view of war, viewed from the trenches.