War Poetry Analysis

Wilfred Owen and John McCrae are two of the most celebrated war poets from the First World War who have written poetry that is still read to this day. War poetry deals with gruesome, heartbreaking, harsh and sometimes happy details of the war that are generally faced by soldiers first hand. War poetry is the writing of experiences, horrors, traumas of war generally experienced first-hand by soldiers who have fought wars. Apart from the themes of suffering, conflict, death and horror the poems deal with other areas as well. One common theme, I’ve noticed, that occurs in a few of the war poetry is the theme of nature. Nature is generally not associated with war, at least in a good connotation. War generally usually results in the destruction …show more content…
He describes it as ‘perishing great darkness’ making references to both the atrocities and horrors of war that a soldier and his fellow soldiers have to face and the harshness of the winter that comes along with the war. The foul tornado, also a reference to nature is generally a sign of destruction and in terms of war Owens describes it as the mass destruction that is centered in Berlin that is causing deaths and the war. Further on in the poem, with the season of Winter is the growing ‘famine of thought and feeling’. People are beginning to lose control of their thought and only perform what is commanded to them and adding to their misery is the continuance of the winter and in the end of the verse the poet compares the human soul to the grain of Autumn. No gone and past for the hard times to come. In the second verse he again uses seasons to show the effects of war. He compares the Spring with the end of war in Greece which recovers from the hard times of winter and goes again into building life and the community back up. There is further reference to the summer in Rome which is also recovering from war. However, for them the hard times are over and the suffering is over since Winter is over and for them now it is time