, Research Paper
The Gruesomeness of World War I
poetry explication(rewrite)
1222 words
“Greater Love” is a poem about the painful memories experienced by Wilfred Owen in World War I. These memories seem to overshadow the memories he has for his love. All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel whcich is also about World War I. The description of the war is similar in both works. Experiencing the terrors of war changed the outlook Owen has on life, and this poem describes his new outlook.
The theme of “Greater Love” is how the war has changed the author’s look on life. Before the war Owen tells how he had fond memories of his love singing, her lips, and her eyes. After experiencing the war Owen remembers the bright red blood-covered stones, as stated in line 2. He remembers the knife skewed limbs instead of the slender limbs of his love. Rather than her beautiful eyes he remembers the eyes of blinded men which he witnessed injured in his stead. The memories of the dear singing voice of his love are no longer soft after witnessing the voices of those past disappear to never again be heard. The heart of his love is not a big as the hearts he witnessed being filled with bullets. Nor is the memory of her heart as vivid as the memory of those hearts filled with shot. The paleness of his love’s skin can not compare to the paleness of the dead bodies of the soldiers scattered across the battlefields. Thus, the death and gruesomeness of this poem contribute to the theme of the war changing Owen into a sad soldier no longer able to remember the days when he would woo his love. Owen’s tone is regretful. Owen expresses regret for letting comrades fall in his place and because he can no longer see the world or his love the way that he once could. The mood of the poem is one of sorrow. The author is sorry that he had to witness the blind being led through the streets and the English bodies falling dead on the rocks. Many literary devices express the theme, mood, and tone; in the poem “Greater Love” the following are examples. Within the poem Owen uses several literary devices for conveying his message. Alliteration is used in the second line, “the stained stones.” Owens is calling attention to the fact that the stones covered in blood are more memorable in his mind than the memories of his love’s sweet lips. Consonance places emphasis on the redness of the stones, “stained stones” (L 2). Alliteration is used once again to describe the ties between “…wooed and wooer…”(L 3). Wilfred Owen’s poem is a dramatic monologue because he is speaking to his love and her responses are not recorded within the poem. The rhyme scheme of this poem is standard, with six lines to a stanza the scheme would be written AABBBA CCDDDC EEFFFE GGHHHG. The poem “Greater Love could be considered in its self an analogy between the authors memories of his love and his memories of the gruesome war.
All is Quiet on the Western Front and “Greater Love” are two similar works of literature because they were both written about World War I. Both narrator, Owen and Paul, portray the war as a sad and tragic time which changed, in Paul’s case ended, the lives of the narrator. Owen implies throughout his poem that the memories of war have faded and corrupted the memories he once had of a society which he fit into. The same is true
“Greater Love” and All Quiet on the Western Front are two very different works of literature which both convey the message of the gruesomeness of World War I. By reading and comparing these two pieces readers can better understand that any format of writting can be used to convey the same message.