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Hilliard’s wartime experience sheds light on his time at home, as his life prior to the war appears insignificant in comparison. Upon his return home, the protagonist senses a disconnect with the way of life and believes he may never belong again, as conveyed emphatically in the novel’s opening. He is unfamiliar with the everyday […]

For my coursework, my emphasis will be on poems portraying the aftermaths and hardships of war. My selection of poems revolves around two wars: the Boer War (1899-1902) and the American Civil War (1861-65). The focus is on those impacted by war who are far from the battlefield, and the unfortunate reality that innocent individuals […]

War poetry brings history to life by telling us both the private and public thoughts of men and women who have experienced conflict between nations or indeed within nations. War poetry is among the most striking, touching and moving of all poetry. I have tried to choose my poems carefully to show both the glory […]

The First World War provides one of the seminal moments of the twentieth-century in which literate soldiers, plunged into inhuman conditions, reacted to their surroundings in poems. There were a number of famous poets who wrote war poetry, and a number of different reactions to war. Some poets approved of war, or found it honourable, […]

In the First World War people wanted the young men to go to war, but no-one really knew about conditions of the fighting in the war. Wilfred Owen was one of the people who wanted to tell the public what war was really was like. He tried to do that through his poetry. One of […]

You might be thinking that life in trenches was non-stop death, violence, and pain. But have you ever thought about why? Or what do soldiers do in their trenches when they’re not fighting or dying? Do you always trust sources when you read them? Do you always believe what they say on television documentaries? How […]

“In Flander’s Fields,” written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae during World War I, is to this day, one of the most monumental war poems ever composed. Created as a legacy of the horrifying battle in the Ypres salient in 1915; this very vivid poem gives its reader the sense of death, while its beautiful images […]

‘Perhaps’ by Brittain and ‘A wife in London’ by Hardy, both deal with the subject of the loss of a loved one through the destructions of war. Both poems are written from the point of view of a grieving female who has lost her husband, there are however two major differences that could affect how […]

Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in Oswestry, Shropshire. He was a son of a railway worker and poetry had been encourage by his mother since boyhood. Owen returned to France in August 1918 and won the Military Cross in September. He was sadly killed on the 4th of November 1918, one week before the […]

In Wilfred Owens poetry he is trying to achieve the goal of describing the war the way it really is. As some poets glamorise the war, Owen tells it how it is. It shows how it is like going to war, when your in the middle of the actual war, and the coming home from […]

Journey’s End is a play by R. C Sherriff that focuses on the realities of World War I, it highlights the sort of lives that people led throughout this period and the destruction it caused. However to some extant it can be argued that Journey’s End doesn’t only show the destruction of war but it […]

World War One has often been described as the destruction of a generation; indeed for those who lived through the first large-scale war that Europe had ever seen, life would never be the same again. Of the sixty five million men that fought in World War One over thirty seven million died, were captured or […]

‘This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will simply try to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by […]

In 1798, Robert Southey penned the Battle of Blenheim, a poetic journey to the past. The poem commemorates the victory of the Duke of Marlborough over the French and Austrians. Among its characters is Old Kaspar, a peasant residing on the very grounds where the battle once ravaged. In the first verse, Southey establishes the […]

It seems that war in society is inevitable – for long as it has been historically documented, war has always been present. Although the tactics by which wars have been fought and won have developed throughout the ages, the outcome has always remained the same – with the untimely deaths of many men. It is […]

Suffering is inherently difficult and evil to endure, but it has the potential to bring forth positive outcomes. At some point in our lives, we will encounter suffering, whether it manifests physically or mentally. It is a universally accepted truth that no individual willingly desires to experience suffering, as it is an undesirable state. In […]

Wilfred Owen is the narrator of ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, a poem aimed at the people who were not actively involved in the war, fighting on the bloody battlefields, and therefore do not have first-hand experience of the horrors. He is writing from a period of time after the war, looking back in retrospect and […]

“Goodnight Mr Tom” by Michelle Magorian is a novel which I have recently read and thoroughly enjoyed. I completely agree with the above statement. The novel contains all the elements necessary for a good read and more. William Beech is evacuated from a deprived area of London during the Second World War. He goes to […]

During the start of the First World War in 1914, numerous young men eagerly volunteered to join and travel across the channel for what they anticipated to be a grand adventure. They held the belief that it would be a thrilling experience and that they would be honored as heroes upon their victorious return before […]

Both Homer and Owen, in their poems present arguments about the death of a soldier. However in Homers poem it appears he is engaging the writer with a much more emotional approach than that of Owens. He presents the soldiers as “great fighters” and “brave souls”. In contrast, we see in Owens poem, a typical […]

It is terribly ironic that in the current international crisis over war I may be analysing two pieces with very contrasting views on the subject. Where Shakespeare glorifies the art of war and the honour surrounding it, Owen devalues a respected Latin phrase, which tells of the honour of war. I will first interpret Owen’s […]

War poetry prior to 1914 captured the excitement of war due to the success of the British army in conquering and expanding its empire. Poetry previous to 1900 therefore, focused on the victory of fighting, such as Newbolt’s Vitai Lampada. At the start of the First World War there was a surge of recruitment poems […]