V4 - Literature lesson 2: War Poetry

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 4

Literature lesson 2:

War Poetry

The Great War

What do you know?

What do you know about World War I?

WW I in bullet points

• 1914: after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria... World World 1 starts.
• Two major factions: Allied Powers (France/Britain/Russia) VS Central Powers (Germany/Italy/Austria/Ottoman Empire) and they basically used Belgium as their battleground.
  
• Advanced technological and chemical warfare: machine guns, tanks, airplanes, telephones, field radios, & mustard or chlorine gas.
  
• Oddly enough, the dominant powers were itching to fight each other and try out their new toys on each other.
  
• Most of it was fought in trenches, with little ground gained or lost in each battle.
  
• It was a world war because fighting also took place in colonized parts of the world such as Africa, Asia & the Middle East. Later on (1917), the USA would join the war as well, which was a defining moment.
  
• By the time it ended in 1918, the Allied Powers had won, but Europe was in tatters and the blame was placed on the losing side, in particular Germany.
  
• The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was about 40 million, both from directly dying in the war or later on of injury or illness (Spanish Flu pandemic), the highest count of any war to that date.

The First World War was the first major conflict to be captured on film. The public flocked to watch footage from the battlefields: a 1916 documentary about the Battle of the Somme was seen in cinemas by an estimated 20 million people inits first six weeks of release.

 Now, 100 years later, Peter Jackson’s extraordinary film brings the war back to life, using the latest digital technology to render this century-old footage colour.

What effect does the transition from black and white to colour have on the impact of the footage? 

What effect does the transition from black and white to colour have on the impact of the footage?

Why look at war poetry?

All the world ground to a halt when the war broke out. 

As young men signed up, they were optimistic: it would soon be over and Britain would be victorious. 

They thought it would be glorious to die for 'King and country' and few believed that they actually would. 

Their insights into the war and its consequences is what inspired their poems, many of which would be read by and published for the general public back home. In their works we see not only this initial hope, but the true words of men locked in constant and hopeless battle.

The two poets we will look at today are Rupert Brooke & Wilfred Owen. Both of them sadly did not live to see the end of the war. 

I knew a simple soldier boy 

Who grinned at life in empty joy, 

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, 

And whistled early with the lark. 

In winter trenches, cowed and glum, 

With crumps and lice and lack of rum, 

He put a bullet through his brain. 

No one spoke of him again. 

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye 

Who cheer when soldier lads march by, 

Sneak home and pray you'll never know 

The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfried Sassoon

Rupert Brooke - The Soldier

• About what happened when the soldiers died while abroad.
• It is full of positivity and seems to glorify the idea of a person dying for their country.
• Became very popular during and after the war.
• England will forever be great and where an English soldier dies shall forever be part of their great nation.
• Brooke foreshadowed the vast numbers of soldiers whose bodies would remain buried and unknown in 'foreign fields'.
• Religion is central to the second half, expressing the idea that the soldier will awake in heaven as a reward for dying in the war.
• Filled with patriotic language. 
• Rupert Brooke ironically became a soldier buried in a 'foreign field' himself.

Rupert Brooke - The Soldier (5)

1. What stands out about the way Sophie Okonedo reads 'The Soldier'?
2. What stands out to you in this poem?

Wilfred Owen - Dulce et Decorum est

The poem centers around a group of exhausted soldiers having to flee from a mustard gas attack.

1. While listening pay attention to the tone of the poem. What can you say about this?

2. Focuses on the Latin phrase: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. What is Owen's message do you think?

Wilfred Owen - Dulce et decorum est (8)

1. While listening pay attention to the tone of the poem. What can you say about this?
2. Focuses on the Latin phrase: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. What is Owen's message do you think?

Now you've read 2 war poems, compare their contents. Which one do you appreciate more? Why so?

Choose one of these assignments for next literature class (you can work in pairs):

1. Find 2 contrasting English war poems. Copy these poems in a word document : write down what these poems mean, by whom they’ve been written, from which wars they stem and why you think they offer opposite views. 
2. Choose one war poem you think to be impressive. Write it down on an A3 and make it into a poster by creating a fitting background. 
3. Write a war poem yourself. It does not have to be on WWI. Explain the contents of it. Do so in a word document.

Your work will not be shared in class unless you have given permission to do so. Please note down if you want your work shared with the class.