How was World War One Depicted as a Tragic event in two Poems?

William Howden

Cohen

ENG2D

Dec 3, 2020

Both of these poems have very different views on the war but use similar ways to convey their information, for example, Sassoon uses end-stopped and Pope uses caesura. If a reader were to look at Sassoon's poem and nothing else about World War One or anything else from the time period, they may think why would anyone do this or this sounds awful which it was. But if they went a bit deeper and looked into what was happening at the time they would understand that men were told that the war was something that they had to do and if they didn’t they would receive a symbol of cowardice known as the white feather. Whereas Pope's poem is the perfect representation of the propaganda towards men that was happening back when the war was going on.

In the poem Who’s for the Game by Jessie Pope, war is represented as something that all men should do, and that it will just be a fun couple of months of playing a game. This poem is also an amazing representation of the propaganda towards men during the war. If a reader were to read only this poem and nothing else from the war, they may think that the war was actually just a fun game and if they went to war they would just have a fun few months. The fact that she was told to write like this is very easily displayed in the quote “Who knows it won’t be a picnic—not much—/Yet eagerly shoulders a gun?” (Pope, 2008, 22) This quote clearly displays that they had not told her what the war was really like, as she clearly doesn’t know how tragic World War One really was and was essentially telling men that they should sign up. Pope also used a caesura to make you pause and think about what she was writing, a reader may think that her goal of this is to make them think about enlisting in the war. An example of this is “Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,” as you can see she put a comma in the middle of the line indicating that she wants you to stop and think. Pope also used an alternate rhyming scheme, which is a good way to help a reader remember something without them even trying.

The poem Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon is an amazing example of the mental toll that the young men in the war would have to deal with. The poem depicts a soldier boy who takes his own life due to how horrific the war really was. In the quote “I knew a simple soldier boy/Who grinned at life in empty joy,” (Sassoon, 2008, 15) the reader can clearly see that the boy was depressed as Sassoon says “empty joy,” (Sassoon, 2008, 15) a reader can already see that the boy is very depressed and doesn’t want to fight in the war. This poem also describes how people who kill themselves in the trenches are frowned upon with this quote “He put a bullet through his brain./No one spoke of him again.” This quote also has an end-stopped line after the boy kills himself which indicates that something has ended and in this case, it is the boy’s life. He also wrote about how other people who haven’t been in the war shouldn’t praise them, as they have had to do some stuff that they are not proud of. In the poem, he also tells people “Sneak home and pray you'll never know/The hell where youth and laughter go.” (Sassoon, 2008, 15) The fact that he used the word “hell” (Sassoon, 2008, 15) just gives the reader a slight idea of how bad the war really was.

These two poems both have very different messages but use similar methods to convey them. For example, in In Who’s for the Game the writer uses caesura to make you pause and think, but in Suicide in the Trenches, the writer uses end-stopped lines to indicate that something has ended. In the poem Whos for the Game, the main message behind it is to get people to enlist into the war, but the poem suicide in the trenches is about informing people how horrible the war was and to essentially tell the truth to what everybody else was saying about the war. Now while Whos for the Game may seem like a harmless lie to get people to fight for their country, it could have very well been the cause of death to multiple young men who fought in the war for the simple reason that they were false informed, and some readers may think that suicide in the trenches was a protest poem to bring awareness to the propaganda. If a reader were to have read whos for the game and no other poems they may wonder why we have a whole day just for remembering the severity of the war, but if that same reader only read Suicide in the Trenches they would wonder why we only have a day. This point is simply to explain how difficult it was to get information about the war as a citizen at the time it was taking place. There were many men who believed the statements in whos for the game were true and went off to war and died, this is just meant to display how incredibly tragic the propaganda actually was.

These two poems both have parts of them that are extremely tragic whether it is part of the poem or not. In conclusion, World War One was extremely tragic and these two poems are very good examples of that, and the fact that there was so much propaganda makes all the tragedy seem so much more horrible.