IntroductionMy report explores the horrors of war through a series of war poems examining the dehumanization of young soldiers in the First World War and how war affects their families and society. The poems I chose to use were Anthem for Doomed Youth, by Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est, also by Wilfred Owen, Attack, written by Siegfried Sassoon, and Reservist, written by Boey Kim Cheng. I felt that all four poems chosen had enough evidence to discuss the dehumanization of soldiers who fought in World War I and how the war affects their families and society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayWilfred Owen presents the dehumanization of young soldiers in the meat grinder of the Western Front by sharing his war experiences, to challenge society's patriotic mentality. After analyzing the poem, I found that Owen uses a number of linguistic characteristics to describe the dehumanization of war. Owen begins the poem with a rhetorical question: "What bells for those who die like cattle?" What Owen is alluding to here is the fact that the parish church bells used to mourn the dead are entirely absent on the battlefield and that instead of bells, the only sound that salutes the soldiers is that of "stuttering rifles ". rapid rattle.” The simile also compares the death of the soldiers to the death of the cattle as it shows that the soldiers are trapped at the mercy of others - similar to a slaughterhouse - indicating that there is not much hope of escaping death. Owen then asks the reader, “What spark plugs can you hold to speed them all up? / Not in the hands of the boys, but in their eyes / The holy flashes of farewells will shine”. This is ironic because we know that there will be no formal funeral for the soldiers and that there will be no candles, only the sky conspicuously lit with explosives. Typically, people who die outside of war receive an appropriate send-off. away with a formal funeral service, which many would expect to be a basic human right. However, in the meat grinder of the Western Front, it is the exact opposite. Owen uses the contrast between the soldiers' glorious expectations and reality, allowing the reader to ask: why do we send young men to the battlefield when they still have too much to live for? What Owen wants us to understand here is that they were ordinary young men who had more to live for than to die on the battlefield where they would be forgotten, and that war is not like Jessie Pope (one of the main poets who glorified war). ) portrayed him: glorious and heroic. It is still quite common to see the dehumanization of soldiers today, in countries like North Korea where their soldiers are deprived of basic human rights such as the right to have enough food and the right to be free. The poem Attack, written by Siegfried Sassoon differs slightly as it does not use irony to show the dehumanization of the soldiers. Sassoon instead chooses to display the message as clearly as possible to maximize the effect it has on the reader. Both Owen and Sassoon, however, challenge the common enthusiastic perspective on war to reveal its horrors. Sassoon begins by setting the scene with the “wild purple of the bright sun” using a calm tone, however, in the next line the tone changes as he begins to describe the battlefield above the mountain. Towards the end he begins to describe the emotions of his fellow soldiers: “grey, mumbling faces, masked by fear”. What Sassoon is getting away from here is the fact thatthese young soldiers have finally realized the horrors of war behind the facade created by Pope and Horace. Sassoon ends the poem with the striking metaphor: “He struggles in the mud. O Jesus, make it stop." Sassoon wants us to understand that sending young men to war is essentially like committing suicide, as the once enthusiastic soldiers have had no recourse to crying and begging for the torture to stop. Sassoon's Attack highlights the fact that these young men are going to war and risking their lives, but their country is unwilling to return the favor by giving them the right to die with dignity. Owen's most famous poem, Dulce et Decorum Est, is similar to Anthem for Doomed Youth in that it shares his experiences of war, to challenge the fact that war is glorious and heroic. It is also similar to Anthem for Doomed Youth as it also has an ironic tone throughout the poem. The title of the poem, which is Latin for "It is sweet and right to die for one's country", is ironic as it is the exact opposite of what the poem is actually about, thus maximizing the effect it has on the reader. Owen explains how the soldiers “limped, shod in blood… drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the whistles / Of the gas bombs falling softly behind.” The use of the words “drunk” and “deaf” indicates that soldiers were forbidden to sleep, and in some cases even for a few days, in case the enemy attacked them. Owen may also be alluding to the fact that they were mentally tired as many soldiers sat in silence for hours, waiting for the enemy to strike. The use of the word "shod in blood" also helps to further reinforce the zombie-like nature of the soldiers, as it shows that the soldiers wore blood-soaked shoes but still endured the pain, to "protect" the body. Village. However, what the soldiers do not understand is that the country is not willing to do the same for them, offering them a dignified funeral if they die, as they were promised by the propaganda spread by Horace and Pope to attract young adults to join. the Army. The juxtaposition that Owen creates between the glorified title and the conditions of the exhausted soldiers helps to expose the false image of war as dignified and glorious. Like Owen's "Hymn for Doomed Youth" and Sassoon's "Attack," Owen's most famous poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est" contains the same dehumanizing message throughout the poem: soldiers are denied by their country the right to to die with dignity. Boey Kim Cheng's poem Reservist mocks the practice of military training that all men undergo in Singapore for a total of two years, into their forties, to prepare for a metaphorical war training in medieval warfare through the use of medieval diction such as “joust,” “fanfare,” and “clarion.” Through the use of these words and the opening phrase: “It's time again for the annual joust, the regular warfare", we find that Cheng finds the practice of compulsory training useless - like Don Quixote swinging his sword at windmills, thinking it was some enemy. Through the use of the negatively charged tone in the quote, Cheng speaks to name many Singaporeans to tell us that the annual training is not worth it, as they "charge up the same hills [and] trudge through the same old forest", indicating that it is boring because they do the same course every year and also useless because they don't they do nothing new. After reading the poem, Cheng makes us ask: why do they force people to train for a metaphor when they already have 75,000 soldiers? Even today, many young people in Singapore believe that the practice of military training is pointless as they "march the same paths until they break". After further research into how the reservist system works, I have.