Compare A Working Party and Dulce et Decorum est. Essay

Owen and Sassoon, as well as being renowned anti-WW1 poets, also had a role as soldiers in the war. Although not together, they both fought against the German army, and knew, better than most, the terrible conditions that WW1 soldiers were faced with. It was probably their first hand experience that made them feel great pity and respect to other ordinary soldiers, the ones still fighting, as well as the ones laid to rest. Owen and Sassoon also had a fierce hatred about them towards war enthusiasts feeling that they were sending hard-working men to their deaths and loathing the way that they wrote about the war when they themselves had not seen nor taken part in the war apart from sending people to it. I believe that Owen and Sassoon chose to write poetry about the war as a way to express their feelings as well as a way to express their feelings as well as a way to contradict the propaganda and tell people what was really going on when the sent their relatives to war.

During A Working Party by Sassoon, it starts of describing the way a man walked through the trenches, and by doing so, also described the conditions of the trenches in the first three verses. By the fifth verse, the man previously described, has become dehumanised and turned into a jolting lump showing that in life he was a person, in death, a lump of flesh and bones. Going on, the next three verses are describing what the now deceased man was like, talking about his wife and children, picturing him as an ordinary man and how the only thing he had to look forward to was a tot of rum to send him to sleep. In the last verse, Sassoon says the simplicity of how the man died and how quick his life ended, an instant split and all went out.

Dulce et Decorum est. is a very similar poem to A Working Party as, for a start, it focuses mainly on one person and how he died. During the first paragraph, Owen also describes how men walked up the trenches and, in doing so describes the conditions they are faced with, a very similar start to both poems. The next verse in Owens poem is a about the beginning of a gas attack, Similarly to Sassoon, Owen also focuses on one man, a victim to this gas attack, but, unlike him, Owen describes a complex death as the man is guttering, chocking, drowning and like a devil sick of sin, emphasising the way that the man died instead of the simplicity that Sassoon used of an instant split.

There are many difficulties for men as they walked down, through, the trenches. The most obvious one was the mud. In A Working party, Sassoon describes the mud the mud as sludge that was ankle-deep painting a clear picture of the dreadful stuff that literally could fill the trenches. In Dulce et Decorum est, Owen says that his men cursed through sludge suggesting that it was so bad it was worth swearing. Another difficulty for the men was the hidden dangers that may have been visible on a clear day, but most of the time was lost in the fog and darkness that the trenches held. In Dulce et Decorum est. Owen describes Gas shells dropping softly behind showing that you couldnt see, nor hardly hear where the next shell was going to land, it could be 10meteres away, 5meteres, 3, or even on your head. Also there were the dangers from your own trench. In A Working party, A sagging wire had caught his neck something that could have killed him, a piece of barbed wire caught around his neck that you couldnt even sees. Lastly, there was the poor visibility in the trenches. Most of the time you couldnt see the man in front, a big problem in the middle of a battlefield. In A Working Party, Sassoon used phrases like faces peered and voices would grunt emphasising the fact that the men were only faces and voices, lost in the gloom.

Both poets describe the mens movements as very clumsy and slow. In Dulce et Decorum est Owen describes the men as bent double like old beggars showing the way that they walked like old men when most of them were in their early teens and had lied about their age. Owen says towards our distant rest we began to trudge suggesting that the men were so tired the only reason that they moved was to get some rest. In A Working Party, Sassoon uses words such as Blundered, sliding, groping, tripped, and lurched to make his characters movements seem very clumsy, and very hard to move along so that normally, he would be able to cover that distance in half the time.

Continuing partly from what previously said, the soldiers were in constant danger. In A Working Party, Sassoon says that rifle shots would split and crack and sing a good use of onomatopoeia which shows how the shots were a common thing to hear as none of the men were alarmed and the shots were described effortlessly it would seem. Flares would go up regularly in the night and Sassoon describes these as a shining whiteness, but also showing nimble rats and later