The two texts that I am going to compare and contrast are "Dulce et Decorum Est", a poem by Wilfred Owen and "The Last Night" an extract from Charlotte Gray, novel written by Sebastian Faulks. Both recount an episode of the war, and how it really affected the people.
The aim of these two texts is to tell people about the reality of war, and they employ similar linguistic devices to achieve this purpose.
In both of them emotions and feelings are expressed through senses, such as sight, hearing or touch. For example, in "Dulce et Decorum Est", the soldiers go "lame", "blind" and "deaf". In his dream, he remembers the soldier dying before his "helpless sight". He addresses the reader by stimulating his touch "If [...] you too could pace", sight "[If you could] watch the white eyes" and hearing "If you could hear the blood". This renders the memory more vivid and realistic, and makes the narrator seem more human. It also includes the reader in the poem, by ascertaining that he would feel the same way were he there and therefore influences his opinion.
[...] Another difference between the two texts is the place they are set in. In Last Night”, pieces of evidence tell us that this is a familiar environment, with life going on as usual: Jewish orderly came in with postcards”, the “homely thudding of a Parisian café opposite” . This creates a contrast with the bad conditions they are kept under and the abnormality of the situation: the postcards are for the deportees to write a “final message” on, the bus is going to take them to concentration camps and the café opposite is not lit up because they are going in the middle of the night. [...]
[...] Until André understands that the woman is staring at the child to remember him and not because she hates him, the reader is forced to have the same opinion about this event as him for we see the scene through the filter of his eyes. In this extract, we are reminded that sight was even more important than it is now because it was the only way that the families and friends had to remember each other, they could not take photos or films before they were separated, often forever: had kept her eyes so intensely open in order to fix the picture of her child in her mind”. [...]
[...] The contrast in this poem comes from the reminders of the soldiers' young age and innocence “innocent tongues” and “children” compared to infirmities that old people have, “bent double”, beggars”, “coughing like and even to death and hell, as explained above. Both texts use contrast to show the atrocity of war but in “Dulce et Decorum there is even a contrast between the different stanzas. The first one expresses dullness; the tone is lifeless to show how tired the men are cursed through sludge”, “marched asleep”, “drunk with fatigue”. Therefore, when the tone becomes much quicker and more panicked in the second stanza, it is emphasized by the shift. [...]
[...] In a way, this can also be perceived as a personification of although it is a common turn of phrase that only renders the sentence more poetic but is understood easily by the reader. In the same way, the “innocent tongues” do not mean that the inanimate muscle inside one's mouth is blameless, but is a metonymy to signify the tongue of innocents. Once more in a slightly ambiguous way, this could be interpreted as a personification of the tongue. [...]
[...] In the third stanza, the gradation “guttering, choking, drowning” also sounds like what it describes; you can hear the soldier choking by pronouncing it. Therefore, even the sound of the text goes along with its meaning, and emphasizes the ideas, whereas in Last Night”, the story is told as it is and there is no added sound effect. Nevertheless, the main difference between the two texts is in the contents. Wilfred Owen was a soldier during the First World War, and he strongly reproved the popular idea that war was glorious and heroic. [...]
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