Compare and contrast the ways in which Owen and Sassoon present images of suffering and death in Exposure and The Hero Essays

Compare and contrast the ways in which Owen and Sassoon present images of suffering and death in Exposure and The Hero Essays Compare and contrast the ways in which Owen and Sassoon present images of suffering and death in Exposure and The Hero Essay Compare and contrast the ways in which Owen and Sassoon present images of suffering and death in Exposure and The Hero Essay Essay Topic: A Long Way Gone Owen and Sassoon are both famous poets, who wrote their poems during and about the First World War. Wilfred Owen was very descriptive poet, who wrote in great details about all that he saw, using much poetic and flowing language. Siegfried Sassoon however was very cynical about the people running the war, and could not see a point in all the death going on all around. However, they both fought in the war and since they should have many experiences of war in common, their poems should surely have very common themes and views, and those should be typical of the time. However, after examining the poems closely, one can determine that there are a great amount of differences between the two poems. In Exposure, Owen uses much descriptive language to allow the reader to perfectly understand and almost feel the suffering that is going on in this war. He describes the wind as iced and knifing, which in itself would be painful; he personifies the wind to a point, because it is stabbing him, and only humans can do that. The suffering and pain that is going on will not and cannot stop, since in the distance, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles. Owen seems to convey a sense of misery and hopelessness upon the whole situation. He even makes the morning sound miserable, since normally dawn means a fresh start, new beginnings, new hope; whereas here, dawn is simply a bringer of poignant misery. This emotion is quite sharp, stinging and painful. Owen also manages to separate war from everyday life, because the soldiers no longer know what is happening elsewhere: We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy. The use of the word sag seems to indicate gloominess and almost apathy, as if the clouds could no longer care to hold themselves in shape. Even the enemy (which in this case is the start of a new day which has been personified) is melancholy; everyone is suffering, there is no point to this war. If both sides are suffering, he seems to say, why should they both continue to go through this misery? Finally, to end the isolation felt by all, and to finalise the general amount of suffering and isolation that is being experience, Owen says that the love of God seems dying. The situation cannot get more desperate, and yet, in their hour of need, no help comes, and the desolation and pain just continues. However, in The Hero, suffering and pain is portrayed quite differently. Since the subject matter is completely different, the reasons and methods of portraying pain obviously differ. This poem is much more cynical in comparison to Exposure, because here the only suffering that is endured is purely due to second hand relation of news. The mothers voice is described as tired, perhaps because she has been completely drained by the news that her son is dead. Tired here seems to indicate that she has had enough. The anguish that she is going through comes out more with her voice that quavered to a choke. Quavering describes the voice almost wobbling, perhaps due to the mother crying, and the fact that it went to a choke shows how much this news has affected her. She tails off involuntarily, and is obviously choked and so overpowered by her grief that she cannot continue talking. This section of the poem describes her grief very delicately, like how Owen describes the elements of nature v ery carefully in Exposure. However, once we get to the third stanza, we find out the main truth of what happened to Jack, and the poem suddenly becomes very critical of authority, and it also becomes generally callous overall. Normally, one does not insult the memory of the dead, but here, the Brother Officer thinks about Jack in blunt terms; not softening the memory of his death at all, but just casually thinking what he thought at the time. The way he calls Jack a useless swine demonstrates this perfectly, swine highlighting how low his opinion was of Jack whilst he was still alive. He also calls him, although not out loud, cold-footed, showing how cowardly he was. Perhaps the insults were because Jack could simply not stand the suffering in the trenches however, since the Brother Officer doesnt think like that, the reader is still exposed to his criticism. This is completely unlike how Owen describes suffering, with great detail and much description; Sassoon just goes straight to the point. In both poems, there are also many mentions of death as a theme, and death is so final, that surely there should be only one way to describe it. However, since Owen and Sassoon have very differing views, the ways in which they portray death are very different. Wilfred Owen has many mentions of death in the final few stanzas of Exposure, whereas The Hero has many mentions of death throughout the poem, since the whole poem is referring to the death of Jack. In Exposure, Owen makes various mentions of death, which adds to the overall gloom and almost apprehension of what is to come throughout the poem. The narrator is sure that death is near: - Is it that we are dying?. You could also interpret snow-dazed as being close to death, since the soldiers are almost paralysed by the cold, which comes as such a shock that they are almost hypnotised and lose all their knowledge of what is going on around them. Again, Owen reinforces this with sun-dozed, which seems to imply that the soldiers are just lying on the ground, looking at the sun. He calls the soldiers drowsing- perhaps because they are close to death. The reminiscence that occurs in stanza 6 could be introspection and vision of their past before death. Our ghosts drag home: the very word drag shows how tired the soldiers are in life, and how much they want to be resting, preferably at home. The final mention of death is at the very end of the poem, in the final stanza, where many soldiers and in a way the narrator are described as being dead by the end of the evening. This shows in how Owen describes the frost as being fastened on the people, and the frost damages the bodies. Shrivelling many hands and the use of the word shrivelling really brings home the reality of death, but yet again, it is described in a very detailed, descriptive way. And finally, the bodies are removed by the burying-party, who pause over half-known faces. The dead were once alive and known by the living, but now that is gone. Finally, part of the very final line is the most haunting of all: all their eyes are ice, describing the burying-party, people who are still living, but yet are almost dead at the same time. Sassoon on the other hand in this case gives neither any dignity to the dead, nor to the Brother Officer who holds no respect for Jack. The way that Sassoon describes his death is very short, blunt and straight to the point: Blown to small bits. No mention of him even being human once, no long descriptive words; instead he is almost de-personified by the bluntness and the lack of caring that is shown to his death by anyone except his mother. Apathy seems to be a common theme here with Exposure, since the burying-party do not show much respect towards these dead, because they have seen so many. They no longer care about the matter of death, and neither does the Brother Officer. The fact that only Jacks mother cares about his death is quite poignant, and it does give a sense that there were so many casualties that people became immune to feeling suffering about death after a while. There are few similarities between these poems, but many differences. This is unexpected, since both poems are written at the same time about the same war, yet ultimately it is the personality and personal views of the author that influences what is written about.