Dead Body in War Poetry

¶ … Dead Body in War Poetry

Analysis of Poets

War Poetry

War is a brutal reality on the face of history. Thousands of lives have been wasted in the name of battles and millions of people were affected by it. Poet is a rather sensitive part of our society and feels the brutality of war more than a normal individual. During World War I, the world went through havoc during which millions of lives were shaken. In this era, a lot of poets also emerged due to the depression the society went through. Some of the noticeable names out of these are Wilfred, Thomas Hardy, Isaac Rosenberg and Rupert Brooke. These poets had a lot of differences in their personalities and writing styles however one thing was rather common: they used soldier's dead body as a symbol of death while describing war. Although they way they used it, was different in its own way but this similarity cannot go unnoticed (Means, 1994).

Wilfred Owen was a brave solider who fought on behalf of France, in war trenches in World War I. However, before that he did write few poems, out of which "Dulce et Decorum Est," was considered as a master piece. Owen was born in a rich family, which was subjected to bankruptcy when he was two years old. This left his family in a pessimist state of mind from which they couldn't recover, and this left a great mark on Owen's personality who then turned out to be a rather serious yet smart child (Soudah, 1988).

Fighting his internal combats, Owen decided to join Army after visiting several hospitals where wounded war soldiers were kept (Kirreh, 1986). However, after joining Army, he came across the harsh reality that war is brutal and it's never over; in fact, it stays inside those who fought it, forever. While fighting in Beaumont Hamel, on the Somme, he wrote letters back home which described the war experience better than any historian.

After getting injured in an explosion and returning to England where he was diagnosed with a shell shock, he wrote this impressive poem called, "Dulce et Decorum Est." this poem was successful in making general public aware of how the war is like in trenches, a reality which the British government intended on hiding from the local mass. The poem depicts the horrendous conditions that the soldiers had to go though in World War I and is written in a manner that it leaves grotesque images in one's mind (Moore, 1919).

Owen has written this poem in a manner that each stanza is serving a different purpose. The poem surrounds around a sickening experience of a manner that is slowly approached by death after a gas attack, with war being fought around him. In the first stanza, Owen described the environment around the dying soldiers. He use strong words like "trudge," "marches asleep," drunk with fatigue" and "old beggars under sacks" to explain that soldiers no longer had the zest, health and energy to fight this war and they were slowly dying inside of hopelessness. In fact, their souls were wretched of hopelessness and they were already dead inside with no sign of life.

After explaining how terrible were war conditions were for a soldier, he moved onto explaining the fear that was crawling inside his mind. Owen used a word, "ecstasy" to explain the nervous attitude of a solider which ultimately leads to a horrible death. The exhaustive and weary experience that the solider has obliterated when the writer used "ecstasy" as an expression. It stresses on the rush of hormones that soldiers went through when their lives were in danger and also develops a peculiar confused state for the reader. "Flound'ring like a man in fire or lime" and "As under a green sea, I saw him drowning." Were the lines which rather successful in explaining how the mustard gas took over the solders, creating havoc in their lungs and then slowly killing every live cell in their bodies just the way water penetrates into a body of a drowning man slowly chocking him to death.

The last stanza is the most powerful part of Owen's work in which he used sentences like had "blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs," and having to "watch the white eyes writhing in his face."

"If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;"

These sentences were used in illustrating his experience of following a wagon which was carrying a body of a dead solider who died of a gas attack in the trench, with the blood coming out of his poisoned lungs and eyes wide open of fear and dismal. Owen later on, explained the war stories might be heroic but the experiences were horrifying.

While explaining the slow death of a soldier, Owen also paid attention on describing the trenches of the war. They were unsafe grounds where soldiers were subjected to open hazards, attack of enemies and natural calamities as well.

It is the use of similies and metaphors which helps in leaving an impeccable impact on readers.

Rupert Brooke was an inspirational poet who was greatly influenced by war however he never got a chance to take part in it himself (Hickman, 1994). He wrote the poem "the solider" in 1914 in which he wrote as a first person who took part in World War I. As compared to other writers as Owen and Hardy, he depicted a rather positive image of war, in which he explained that fighting a war for a just cause is a noble deed and nothing is better than dying for one's own country. On top of that, "The Solider," helped Brooke prove his point to a greater deal.

In this poem, Brooke embodied a persona of a writer representing England. Brooke's solider is young, full of zest and patriotism for his country and is anticipating encountering and beating death in war. When this young solider dies, he asks his fellow, family and country not to mourn or feel sorrow for him; they should rather feel proud that the land where his body is lying, is now part of England and he has managed to win his country a piece of foreign land.

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field

that is forever England. There shall be

Furthermore, Brooke explains that as his body decays into soil, it will become more rich and fertile as now it has part of English body in it. England gave birth to this solider, raised him, nurtured him, loved him, offered him clean and fresh air to breath and beautiful lands to walk through and served him with other blessings such as clean water and sun light. Also, Brookes says that despite all the hardships of war, his heart has no wickedness but an eternal piece gifted to him by God, for his noble deeds and loving his glorious country. English people who were still back in homeland will enjoy the open and peace that his death has bestowed upon them.

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

a dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

Through this poem, Brooke used death to inflict hope into minds of English people during World War I. he avoided heavy metaphors and similies to ensure that it is well understood by all. Furthermore, the poem has a rather simple language explaining patriotism for one's country. Brooke include not horrifying or tragic war stories in this poem. He rather explained that dying for one's country and serving one's people is a kind of death one should aspire for.

He explained his country as a kind of heaven; In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. He further explained that his country embodies a persona of a loving, caring mother who bears her child and takes good care of him with love and affection ("A dust whom England bore.). furthermore, England has been mentioned as a heaven on Earth, a safe place that one can look forward to return after the war ends. Once the solider dies, his soul enters into a heaven, the England itself. The solider is at peace, now that he has reached his paradise (In hearts at peace, under an English heaven).

Brooke has used a rather simple and peaceful tone while defining war in "The Solider." He emphasized on the fact that war is just and worth fighting for, as it may bring eternal peace. Unlike many other writers, he avoided writing about gruesome war realities. May be the because he was too patriotic or may be because he never encountered a war himself. Gentle images such as the "flowers to love" and the glorious picture of the English countryside, including the "rivers" and the "suns of home," emphasize the peaceful tone. The sestet gives an sanguine tone of idyllic peace as well, with phrases such as "dreams as happy as her day," "laughter," and "an English heaven." The last line especially explains the gentle tone of the poem, with the phrase, "and gentleness, in hearts at peace."

On the contrary, Thomas Hardy's explained war not as pleasing as Brooke did. In his poem, "Drummer Hodge," Hardy narrates a story of an Englishman who died during the Boer war, in South Africa (Johnston, 1964). Thomas wrote this poem after completion of World wars. Similar to Brooke, he never participated in a War; in fact, he was 72 years old when he wrote this poem. Thus, what he wrote was out of his own imagination and perception of war.

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 and was a son of a country man. Hardy appeared to have a normal successful life however, Hardy seemed to live a peaceful and successful life, but there was a "pattern of storm beneath the tranquility." During these three decades of creation, public acclaim, and critical praise, his private life was overshadowed by what appeared to be his wife's fall to insanity[footnoteRef:1]. She was a victim of delusions, one of her biggest delusions is that she married a lesser man than she deserved.[footnoteRef:2] She also believed that she had written Hardy's work and he stole them from her to be published for himself. She also insulted him publicly by taking more pride in being the niece of archdeacon than being the wife of the greatest English writer. She even tried to stop the publication of Jude the Obscure because she felt it immoral. She died unexpectedly in 1912 and even though Hardy was with her last before she died, she never regained consciousness after a dispute they had earlier. His remorse and grief broke into the release of the most moving love poems of his or any other century. Home life became much calmer and ordered when he married Florence Ellen Dugdale in 1914[footnoteRef:3]. All around him people were in extreme poverty because of the poor law system. There were many skilled men that didn't have jobs. Hardy was not only a poet, he was also a novelist. His belief on the purpose of fiction was 'to give pleasure by gratifying the love of the uncommon human experience. It is clear that Hardy knew of lost love and experienced the surrounding hardships. Thomas Hardy was a good writer and he led a good life.[footnoteRef:4] [1: Hardy, Evelyn. Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography. London: Hogarth Press, 1954. ] [2: Millgate, Michael. Thomas Hardy: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1982. ] [3: Turner, Paul. The Life of Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography. London: Blackwell, 1998] [4: Zeitlow, Paul. Moments of Vision: The Poetry of Thomas Hardy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.]

Drummer Hodge was a young chap who died during war but for a cause which he failed to understand. And worse, once he died, his dead body was shown no respect and was mutilated badly. In fact, it was thrown in a ditch along with other dead bodies. His grave was given no headstone, therefore no one could recognize here he was buried. The only landmark to show the position of his grave is the "kopje crest/That breaks the veldt around." Hodge was given a rather foreign treatment and Hardy used terms like "kopje" and "veldt," to explain his resting place and by the strangeness, to him, of the stars that rise nightly over his grave.

Hodge was a young and naive solider who didn't deserved to be there in the battle field in the first place. Now that he had fought the battle and served his country, his services should have been acknowledged. Although Hodge was ignorant to the cause of war but he would always remain part of South African veldt forever. His body dusted in the soil would later on act as a fertilizer for some tree in South Africa. The irony of this situation has been explained by using terms like "southern trees" and "strange stars."

Furthermore, the embarrassment of being buried in a strange land gives a rather peculiar touch to the whole situation. As Brooke, dying on a foreign land would have been something to be proud of which will earn him heaven. However, Hardy explained the distress and humiliation that one might feel after having his contribution during war, going unnoticed.

Hodge has clearly opted for a typical theme of war, which is full of horrors.

While explaining the treatment given to the soldiers during war, one cannot forget the horror that they went through in war trenches. The trenches were best explained by Paul Fussell in his book, The Great War and Modern Memory,

"The idea of "the trenches" has been assimilated so successfully by metaphor and myth ("Georgian complacency died in the trenches") that it is not easy now to recover a feeling for the actualities. Entrenched, in an expression like entrenched power, has been a dead metaphor so long that we must bestir ourselves to recover its literal sense. It is time to take a tour. From the winter of 1914 until the spring of 1918 the trench system was fixed, moving here and there a few hundred yards, moving on great occasions as much as a few miles. (Fussell, 1981)"

Paul explained that the war trenches of the oppositions were quite near to each other and it was quite daunting to have enemies' present so near to English soldiers.

"Another imagination has contemplated a similar absurd transmission of sound all the way from north to south. Alexander Aitken remembers the Germans opposite him celebrating some happy public event in early June, 1916, presumably either the (ambiguous) German success at the naval battle of Jutland (May 3 I-June ') or the drowning of Lord Kitchener, lost on June 5 when the cruiser Hampshire struck a mine and sank off the Orkney Islands. Aitken writes, "There had been a morning in early June when a tremendous tin-canning and beating of shell gongs had begun in the north and run south down their lines to end, without doubt, at Belfort and Mulhausen on the Swiss frontier." Impossible to believe, really, but in this mad setting, somehow plausible (Fussell, 1981)."

Fussel further mentioned about how the soldiers felt in these trenches

"But most of the time the soiders were not questing. They were sitting or lying or squatting in place below the level of the ground. "When all is said and done," Sassoon notes, "the war was mainly a matter of holes and ditches." And in these holes and ditches extending for ninety miles, continually, even in the quietest times, some 7000 British men and officers were killed and wounded daily, just as a matter of course. "Wastage," the Staff called it. (Fussell, 1981)" "

Isaac Rosenberg was a Jewish man and his parents migrated from Lithuania. Rosenberg was raised in extreme poverty in East London where due to his ethnicity, he was isolated not only from British intellectual circle but also in the Warfield, within his fellows in trenches. Rosenberg's work enjoyed no popularity until four years after his death when his work was published.

He was a graduate from Slade School of Art, but he couldn't find the work anywhere as a painter. Therefore, in order to support his family, he had to join 12th Suffolk regiment's 'bantam' battalion (so called because it was for men under five feet three inches tall) which got his mother a separation allowance from government.

Rosenberg was killed during war however his body was never found nor got buried. On top of that, he wasn't even given any recognition by government neither a memorial headstone. Even in 1927, his parents paid for having a headstone named after him, in which he wasn't mentioned as solider but as "poet and artist." He never published his work. As a matter of fact, some of his friends gathered his old work and got it published at their own expense.