What is the perception of the war conveyed in the different texts analyzed?

 

THE FOX – D. H. LAWRENCE

 

1 . War conditions, again, were very unfavourable to poultry-keeping. Food was scarce and bad. And when the Daylight Saving Bill was passed, the fowls obstinately refused to go to bed as usual, about nine o'clock in the summer-time. (p. 2)

 

2 . Since the war the fox was a demon. (p. 2)

 

3 . a young soldier, with his heavy kit on his back, advanced into the dim light. (p. 6)

 

4 . The young man--or youth, for he would not be more than twenty--now advanced and stood (p. 6)

 

5 . Having his heavy sack on his shoulders (p. 7)

 

6 . seeing something boyish (p. 7)

 

7 . 'Well--from Salonika really.' (p. 8)

 

8 . 'Ay,' said the youth. 'We've seen enough of rifles.' (p. 8)

 

9 . Rapidly and carelessly she prepared the meal, cutting large chunks of bread and margarine--for there was no butter. She racked her brain to think of something else to put on the tray--she had only bread, margarine, and jam, and the larder was bare. (p.9)

 

10 . 'There's nothing but bread and jam,' she said. (p. 9)

 

11 . He was such a boy. (p. 9)

 

12 . Also he ate largely and quickly and voraciously (p. 9)

 

13 . It appeared he was Cornish by birth and upbringing. (p. 9)

 

14 . 'Yes, but there won't be any demand for women land-workers now the war's over,' said the youth. (p.9)

 

15 . For the youth, sitting before the fire in his uniform, sent a faint but distinct odour into the room, indefinable, but something like a wild creature. (p. 12)

 

16 . Banford flew into the village on her bicycle to try and buy food. She was a hospitable soul. But alas, in the year 1918 there was not much food to buy. (p. 12)

 

17 . 'Well'--he hesitated--'at the "Swan" they've got this flu, and at the "Plough and Harrow" they've got the soldiers who are collecting the hay for the army: besides, in the private houses, there's ten men and a corporal altogether billeted in the village, they tell me. I'm not sure where I could get a bed.' (p. 13)

 

18 . He was a huntsman in spirit, not a farmer, and not a soldier stuck in a regiment. And it was as a young hunter that he wanted to bring down March as his quarry, to make her his wife. (p. 17)

 

19 . And suddenly it seemed to him England was little and tight, he felt the landscape was constricted even in the dark, and that there were too many dogs in the night, making a noise like a fence of sound, like the network of English hedges netting the view. He felt the fox didn't have a chance. For it must be the fox that had started all this hullabaloo.  (p. 29)

 

20 . So she saw him off in the train that was going West: his camp was on Salisbury Plain. (p. 35)

 

21 . With this one fixed idea in his mind, he went to ask for twenty-four hours' leave of absence. (p. 47)

 

22 . In that great camp of wooden huts and tents he had no idea where his captain was. (p.47)

 

23 . 'May I speak to Captain Berryman?' The captain was Cornish like himself. (p. 47)

 

24 . He was gone. The captain, upset, took a gin and bitters. Henry managed to hire a bicycle. It was twelve o'clock when he left the camp. He had sixty miles of wet and muddy crossroads to ride. But he was in the saddle and down the road without a thought of food. (p. 48)

 

 

Conclusion

Conditions of living  during the war in the English countryside (Berkshire, England)

-    misery

-    lack of food and limitation

-    lack of protection and security

-    fear

 

Life at the frontline

- hardship of life

- young age of most soldiers

 

The role of women

-    need of independence and autonomy

-    difficulties to face every day life

-    absence of men (strength, support for the family, feelings)

-    research of freedom

 

 

THE SOLDIER – 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.

 

 

Key words:

-    England

-    Homeland

-    English heaven

 

Conclusion

In The Soldier, the perception of the war is conveyed by the perspective of a young soldier (Rupert Brooke himself), who did not take effectively part in  the conflict. He represents the war as the chance to celebrate and to honor his own country, revealing Brooke’s romantic attitude to war. The sacrifice of one’s life for his country sets him aside a place in Heaven. England turns out to be the cornerstone of the poem . Th text becomes the manifesto of English patriotism and an instrument of propaganda.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST – 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.

 

 

Semantic fields:

-    Hardship and misery: bent, beggars, sludge, lame, fatigue, tired,

-    Absence of feeling: asleep, blind, deaf

-    Violence: blood-shod, outstripped Five-Nines, GAS, fire

-    Chaos and confusion: ecstasy of fumbling, dim, misty

-    Disease: blood gargling, froth-corrupted lungs, cancer, cud, sores

-    Death: helpless sight, guttering, choking, drowning, hanging face

 

Conclusion

Differently from Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier, Dulce et Decorum est is based on Owen’s experience of the horrors of war in the trenches, and it is an attempt to communicate the ‘pity’ of war to future generations.

The reader comes not only across the perception of the war but across a descriptive scene  of one who actually lived the  conflict.

Owen does not hide the horrors and the cruelty of the war, providing the reader with a realistic and violent representation of the conflict. War means hardship, violence, chaos, disease and, above all, it means death.