How Did Rupert Brooke's View Of War

The first great war, now officially called World War 1, left an impact on, not only society, but also in the minds of the many that experienced it, either directly, or indirectly. Poetry is one of the many mediums that some of those people used to express their thoughts, feeling, and memories of the war. This method can also reveal how the poet views the war. Take Rupert Brooke’s “Soldier”. In it, Brooke takes the position of a man who is willing to die for his country. The imagery of the poem suggests that if he should die, it would have been to benefit England, Rupert Brooke’s home country. The idea that the spot in which he dies, would be “forever England”, that the soil is now richer for having him there, and that flowers would grow and …show more content…
This viewpoint is in contrast with Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”, which takes a very negative view on the war. The poem begins with imagery of exhaustion, fear, and injury. The soldiers in the poem “march in their sleep”, with artillery shells landing behind them. Then the gas comes, and the men around the narrator scramble for safety from it. One man is then described as “drowning” and choking on the gas and the blood in his lungs. Owen goes into detail how the man died, in pain, with blood coming out of his mouth. The narration then suggests that if one would have seen that, they would “not tell children the old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, which is Latin for sweet and fitting it is to die for your fatherland. This statement tells us Owen felt that to die for one’s country, was not something that should be romanticized, and the death is never something to take lightly. This concept would permeate throughout war poetry during both the first world war, and the