The darkness of WWI poets' vision

World War I Poets

These works by several writers and poets are all dark and disturbing works, and there is good reason for this. They are participating in the largest World War to date, and using many items of modern warfare, such as the machine gun and tanks, that were not available to earlier soldiers. Thus, death and destruction on the battlefield was far greater than anything imaginable, and the conditions were terrible. Almost every writer mentions the horrible conditions on the battlefield in their works. For example, Siegfried Sassoon writes in his memoirs, "I am staring at a sunlit picture of Hell, and still the breeze shakes the yellow weeds, and the poppies glow under Crawley Bridge where some shells fell a few minutes ago" ("Memoirs" 2059). His words show the horrors of trench warfare, and the ordeals the soldiers had to suffer. It was a dark time in history, and the poems reflect this feeling of death and doom. Wilfred Owen also writes of the tediousness and drama of the war when he writes, "And towards out distant rest begin to trudge. / Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots / But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; / Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoofs" ("Dulce et"). All of the poets write of the sheer horror of war and warfare, and this colors their words and their outlook. They all speak of fighting a terrible war at a terrible cost.