Poetic Perspectives on the Great War
World War I brought an unprecedented conflict to the globe; never before had so many soldiers from so many nations been involved in a war together (“Prologue”). Initially, feelings of pride and glory spurred young men to join the fighting armies, especially in places like Great Britain where recruitment campaigns were supported by government propaganda efforts and the public’s patriotism. However, the First World War was unprecedented in other ways as well. Its battles brought to the world the use of industrialized warfare, mechanized weapons, tanks, chemical weapons like poison gas, and trench warfare (Teachout). As soldiers faced the true realities of war, away from the eager patriotism of their homelands, many became disillusioned by their experiences and the deaths of their friends in battle. Fueled by new wartime technologies, the loss of life during the war was great; over 20 million soldiers and civilians died, and another 21 million were wounded (“World War I Casualties”). The variety of emotions and outlooks evoked during the so-called Great War leaves the world with an interesting record of the period. Poets in particular have used their medium to depict both the patriotism and the disenchantment of the era. While Jessie Pope’s “Who’s for the Game?” captures the home-front eagerness for victory in Britain during the war, John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” and Wilfred Owen’s “In Dulce et Decorum Est” have gone down in history as representative of the true sacrifice and suffering endured by soldiers on the battlefront.
“Who’s for the Game?”
Driven by the British patriotism of the era, Jessie Pope’s “Who’s for the Game?” is an enthusiastic call to war, written during the conflict to spur young men into volunteering for the armed forces. In her piece, one can assume the words and emotion come from Pope herself, since she was a “popular journalist and versifier” whose work was published in the Daily Mail and Daily Express and eagerly advocated the ongoing war effort (Roberts). In this poem, Pope treats the subject of the First World War lightly, as if to suggest it is a fun form of entertainment. She asks, “Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played?” and “Who’ll toe the line for the signal to ‘Go!’?” (Pope 1, 5). Pope uses these questions to draw a comparison between war and a sport or game, making the sacrifice of fighting seem like little more than a fun pastime for potential recruits. Her sing-song style of writing and simple, almost childlike rhyme scheme (abab) add to the feeling that war is not complex or frightening, but simply a game to be won.
Pope’s method of asking questions in her poem forces the reader to fall in line with her enthusiastic outlook or feel like he is missing out. She asks, “Who wants a turn to himself in the show? / And who wants a seat in the stand?” (Pope 7-8). While furthering the comparison of war to a game or show, she also makes the option of not fighting seem boring and lacking in heroism. Pope even suggests that young men should be eager to be injured abroad rather than “lie low and be out of the fun” (12). Not only does this insinuation add pressure to young men to join the fighting forces, it also—perhaps unintentionally—makes light of the serious injuries that soldiers were incurring on the battlefields. Pope also uses her questioning format to personalize the issue at hand. She writes, “Your country is up to her neck in a fight, / And she’s looking and calling for you” (Pope 15-16). The poet’s use of “you” means that the reader cannot avoid feeling like the target of her questions. Being so directly addressed in the poem meant that any young male reader at the time was forced to make a choice: either enlist and follow the “only… course to pursue,” or stay “out of the fun” even though his country needed him (Pope 14, 12).
On a superficial level, Pope’s poem is an eager call to action, aimed at persuading young men to become heroic soldiers. It makes no actual statement that anyone choosing to stay home is a coward; it simply suggests that he will be missing out on a fun “game” and the chance to “give his country a hand” (Pope 1, 6). However, the connotations of Pope’s writing have more serious implications. Her poem must have added to the social pressure that young men at the time were feeling to enlist. Even though most of the public knew little about the complex causes of the conflict, young men were pushed by government propaganda and the eager patriotism of public figures like Pope to feel hungry for action and victory. This patriotic pride led them to fight in a war that was far more serious than the “game” that Pope describes. Knowing that Pope was part of the gung-ho propaganda machine in Britain might make one resent her for likening war to a game in order to recruit soldiers. However, she was not doing anything out-of-the-ordinary in wholeheartedly supporting the war. She was simply treating the subject of war with the patriotism and eagerness for victory that was so common in her country at the time, and her ignorance of the true horrors of war prevented her from being anything but entirely enthusiastic about the efforts.
“In Flanders Fields”
A far more somber piece than Pope’s, John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” is perhaps the most famous poem about the First World War. It does not condemn the war (McCrae was in fact an ardent supporter of the efforts), but it does highlight the sacrifices made by soldiers killed in action (Ruggenberg). McCrae writes from the perspective of the dead who have recently been buried in Flanders, Belgium, near the continuing battles. He uses the color imagery of the red poppies that grew so prolifically on the fresh graves and battlefields during and after the war to represent the deceased, reminding one of the blood shed by those killed in action. In fact, this symbolism is so powerful that poppies are still used today in Britain and other countries as signs of remembrance for those lost in the First World War and other conflicts. McCrae’s main aim in having his speaker talk on behalf of the dead is to ensure that they did not die in vain. He writes, “Take up our quarrel with the foe: / To you from failing hands we throw / The torch” (McCrae 10-12). The speaker is asking his nation’s people (and their allies) to continue the fight for which he and his comrades died. Furthermore, he does not make this request half-heartedly. McCrae’s speaker says quite bluntly, “If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders Fields” (13-15). McCrae thereby suggests that the only way to provide the dead soldiers with the true restful “sleep” they deserve is to make their sacrifices worthwhile by winning the war.
The part of “In Flanders Fields” that truly reveals the deeper purpose of McCrae’s poem comes when he describes who the “Dead” were and conveys the sacrifices they made (6). He writes, “Short days ago / We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, / Loved and were loved” (McCrae 6-8). By having his speaker highlight the human qualities of the fallen soldiers, McCrae reminds one that the dead were people, not just pawns in the game of war. They had prior lives that were shattered by the conflict. McCrae had first-hand knowledge of the soldiers’ humanity, since he actually fought in the war himself, as a Canadian physicist and army officer. In fact, he wrote “In Flanders Fields” in the spring of 1915 after witnessing the death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, and performing his funeral ceremony (Ruggenberg). Although McCrae did not die in battle, he was a part of the conflict and saw others give up their lives for their common cause. McCrae’s call to action is similar to the one found in “Who’s for the Game?” in that it asks those still alive to participate in the war efforts. However, McCrae’s writing is more elegant than Pope’s, and his tone is far more somber. While he is in support of the “quarrel,” he does not address the subject of war with the same blindly enthusiastic patriotism with which Pope does. He is far more conscious of the sacrifices and costs of war and sees it as far more than a game. It is perhaps because McCrae captures in his poem the feelings of both desire for victory and remorse for lives lost that it has gone down in history as such an important impression of the First World War.
“Dulce et Decorum Est”
In contrast with Pope’s eager patriotism and McCrae’s somber dedication to the war, Wilfred Owen presents in his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” a completely disillusioned outlook on World War I. He writes from the perspective of a group of soldiers who have the chance for a “distant rest”—albeit, probably a temporary one (Owen 4). As they walk away from the front lines, Owen’s speaker (one of the group) describes the soldiers as “lame,” “blind,” “deaf,” and “drunk with fatigue” (6-7). These impairments contradict the public image of soldiers as heroic, agile, and able. Owen’s speaker also likens the soldiers to “old beggars under sacks” and describes them as “coughing like hags” (1-2). These comparisons add to the shattering of the classic depiction of soldiers; after all, when one thinks of a heroic warrior in battle, one does not usually call to mind a likeness similar to those of hags or beggars. As Owen’s speaker describes the poison gas attack that befalls the men, he uses words like “fumbling,” “stumbling,” “floundering,” and “drowning” to describe the actions of the soldiers (9-14). The image conjured by this carefully chosen diction reinforces the suggestion that these soldiers are not those you hear about in glorified tales of war; the truth of the soldiers’ experiences is far less romantic and far more terrible.
Perhaps the part of the poem that sticks with one the most is when Owen’s speaker describes in gruesome detail what happens to the one soldier who does not get his gas mask on in time. The speaker refers to “his hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin” and describes “the blood / Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs, / Obscene as cancer” (Owen 20-23). These images are horrific and shocking, and they tear apart the notion Pope created of war being merely a game. While Owen employs an abab rhyme scheme, he does not use the childlike sing-song style that Pope does; Owen’s poem is driven forward by his distressing and horrid imagery, and for that reason there is nothing simple or innocent about his verse.
Owen’s aim in writing his poem is to provide a complete contradiction to those who “tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Prop patria mori” (25-28). This Latin phrase, first written by the Roman poet Horace, means “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country” (Kennedy and Gioia 699). Owen himself joined the army after being pressured through rhetoric like this used in British propaganda (Roberts). At that time, he was “full of boyish high spirits at being a soldier” (Roberts). However, after seeing the true sights of the battlefield, like the gas attack he describes in “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen grew disillusioned with the war and consequently became angry at patriots, like Pope, who were trying to convince young boys of the glory and fun of battle. In fact, Owen’s first draft of this poem was dedicated “To a Certain Poetess,” Jessie Pope (Kennedy and Gioia 699). Although he later revised the poem without that dedication, Owen meant his work to be a rebuke of Pope and her ilk, who so enthusiastically encouraged young men to enlist without knowing the true horrors of what they were advocating. In this way, Owen’s work can be seen as the complete opposite of Pope’s poem in how it treats the subject of war. Owen purposely depicts war in a shocking way, as truly horrific, and, unlike McCrae, he makes no statement that the sacrifices made can be worthwhile. Owen appears to find no solace in the thought of possible victory and seems almost ashamed of his eagerness in enlisting, since he calls those in his previous position “children ardent for some desperate glory” (26). Indeed, Owen’s worst fears were ultimately realized; he was shot and died only days before the war ended (Roberts).
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Works Cited
Kennedy, X.J. and Dana Gioia. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama,
and Writing. 10th ed. New York: Longman, 2007. 699.
McCrae, John. “In Flanders Fields.” Punch. 8 Dec. 1915. Found online in “The Making
of ‘In Flanders Fields.’” Article by Robert Ruggenberg. The Heritage of the
Great War. 1994-2008. 30 Mar. 2008
