War Poetry Analysis: Owen, Jarrell, and Eberhart Compared

War, Memory, and the Role of Art

Wars — cruel and dramatic experiences — have become ineffaceable marks in our collective memory. The tragedy, the unimaginable scale of victims, the horror of warfare, and the darkened shadow of death are hallmarks of those periods of conflict that have terrified the entire world and the generations that followed. It is difficult for those of us who have been fortunate enough not to live through such events to imagine an entire world existing under terror. Wars expanded from one continent to another, leaving no domain untouched: the air, the water, and the ground seemed doomed, the conflict seemed endless, and the feeling of fear seemed as though it would never go away.

Within this frame of despair and horror, one simple quotation best describes the long night of war that fell upon civilization: "War is Hell," memorably declared General Sherman — without yet having any knowledge of tanks, gas, or aerial bombardment (Clarke xxv).

There is another simple yet powerful line that serves as a perfect reference point for the subject of war: "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn" — Robert Burns (Manwaring 1). It is sobering to realize that the sacrifice of an entire generation was decided by men driven by the desire for power, the greed of armament, and the absolute wish to redraw the global map for a state's own benefit — an ambition that, viewed against today's trend toward globalization, seems all the more futile and tragic.

What have the two World Wars left behind? Glory for the heroes, respect for their acts, and perhaps a profound lesson: it is our duty to try to prevent, as far as possible, further global tragedies of this kind. And what better way to honor that duty — and to make future generations aware of qualities like bravery, patriotism, and self-sacrifice — than through art?

Humanity has always expressed its innermost experiences through music, poetry, prose, drama, painting, and whatever other form of expression best captured thought and feeling, leaving a record of what was witnessed at a particular moment in time. The experience of warfare literature is no exception: thousands of poems and pieces of prose stand as proof that wars had such a powerful impact on humanity that they gave rise to a specific genre — war literature.

Introduction to War Poetry and the Poems Under Analysis

This paper focuses on and analyzes several poems that are, in my view, extremely representative of war poetry as a genre. Through the linguistic register they employ, the realistic imagery they construct — giving the reader the feeling that narrated scenes are unfolding before their eyes — and the literary merit of their authors, the following poems convey to their audience an extraordinarily profound frame of mind. The poems under consideration are: "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment" by Richard Eberhart, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell, and "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum Est," both by Wilfred Owen.

What these poems share, first of all, is their major theme — war — and the fact that they were written under broadly similar circumstances, even though their authors refer either to the First World War or to the Second. In order to gain a better understanding of what each writer focused on, it is essential to conduct an in-depth analysis of the writing itself, attending to aspects such as word register, metaphor, correlation, antithesis, and literary reference.

Eberhart's 'The Fury of Aerial Bombardment'

In Eberhart's "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment," the author draws on abstract nouns, adjectives, and verbs such as "to rouse," "to relent," "to repent," "infinite spaces," "multitudinous will," "eternal truth," "fighting souls," and "avidity." Concrete words or direct references to weapons and specific actions of warfare are largely absent. In fact, words for weapons do not appear at all — or perhaps they do, if we consider humanity's capacity for evil and destruction as the supreme weapon that sets in motion all the physical actions of war. This reading serves as a confirmation of Burns's quotation cited above, which frames man's inhumanity toward his fellow man as the driving force behind all acts of warfare, genocide, and other large-scale tragedies.

In terms of specific warfare references, the title — "aerial bombardment" — appears only in the first line and is not mentioned again directly afterward. If one draws an analogy between the title and the description that follows, it seems that the poem builds its message from the concrete image of bombardment yet ultimately describes war in all its dimensions, not merely one type of attack. The war has come, and its repercussions are unparalleled. A powerful impact is achieved through the poem's references to Divinity and to the biblical figure of Cain — the ancestral model of evil and cruelty — lending a moral and spiritual weight to the condemnation of war.

In the poem's final lines, Eberhart recalls the unnecessary deaths of individuals as a marker of the tragedy and horror that are the direct effects of war.

Jarrell's 'The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner'

Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" is as short as it is expressive. Consisting of only five lines, it nevertheless produces a very powerful image of death, which results largely from the author's use of first-person singular verbs. This technique creates proximity to the reader and a deeply personal understanding of events. The author effectively transposes himself into the position of a victim who meets an early and tragic end in wartime. The image of being "washed out with a hose" carries profound meaning: it suggests that the case is far from singular. A single death may be a tragedy, but a death in the context of warfare is merely another number added to the final sum of victims — another depersonalized element in a statistical ledger. This is an excellent metaphor for war's most devastating effect: the staggering number of lives taken.

Similarly to Eberhart, Jarrell uses language that suggests how anyone may become a victim of war, through phrases such as "names on a list," "faces I do not recall," and "early death," as well as the metaphor of being "loosed from dream of life" and the image of being washed away. Another similarity between the two poems, beyond their shared outlining of tragedy and horror, is that both authors refrain from using concrete words for weapons or military action, yet both perfectly capture the atmosphere of war. In both cases, specific vocabulary from the lexical field of warfare appears exclusively in the title.

References

Clarke, George Herbert. A Treasury of War Poetry: British and American Poems of the World War, 1914–1919. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917.

Powell, Anne. "Another Welcome Letter: Soldiers' Letters from the Great War." Contemporary Review 265.1546 (Nov. 1994): 1.

Manwaring, Randle. "Poetry and the Pity of War." Contemporary Review 273.1594 (Nov. 1998): 1.