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. 

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.

The Soldier

BY RUPERT BROOKE

If I should die, think only this of me:

     That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

      In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

      Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

      Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

      A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

            Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

      And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

            In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

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?

Dulce et Decorum Est

BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

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?

Siegfried Sassoon

Blighters'

BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON

The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin

And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks

Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;

“We’re sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!”

I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls,

Lurching to rag-time tunes, or “Home, sweet Home,”

And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls

To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

August, 1914

BY VERA MARY BRITTAIN

God said, “Men have forgotten Me:

The souls that sleep shall wake again,

     And blinded eyes must learn to see.”

So since redemption comes through pain

He smote the earth with chastening rod,

   And brought destruction's lurid reign;

But where His desolation trod

The people in their agony

    Despairing cried, “There is no God.”

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, hand it in via Teams before next class. 
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. Take a photo and hand it in via Teams before next class.
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 and hand it in via Teams before next class.

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