The four poets all take different approaches in attempting to portray the effect that war has on the people involved. Rupert Brooke wrote towards the start of the war, this is why when you read his poems there is a strong air of patriotism, unlike Siegfried Sassoon who focuses more on protesting about the war. Wilfred Owen goes on to portray the emotional side of the war where some people become angry about it whereas Isaac Rosenberg goes on the search for understanding. Faulks uses different characters throughout Birdsong to portray the changing response to war. These characters vary between times, we see what effects the war has on people actually involved in the war and on people many tears after the war has finished.

As I said above, Brooke is a poet that focuses more on the patriotic side of the war, his poem ‘The Soldier’ represents this fact very well. Them poem itself soldier is written in the

As the war continued some men began to think that maybe it wasn’t worth dying for your country, they began to protest about the war. Siegfried Sassoon is one of these men, his poems are very different from Brookes and concentrate on protest. Sassoon’s ‘The Death-Bed’ is split into six stanzas that appear to follow no apparent pattern. Since he is trying to show how he thinks that being dead is better than being at war, a lot of the imagery he uses is of peace: -

Faulks has attempted to portray every aspect of the war through different characters and differing situations. The situation on page 224 relates well to the events in ‘Exposure’. It shows what different characters are copying, knowing that they will soon be facing death in the war situation. Some of the men sang whilst some prayed and others just sat thinking, contemplating their death. It seems that after the initial shock of knowing they have to face death, the men almost relax and perhaps pretend that everything’s normal. They want to attempt to enjoy themselves in the little time they have left. Owens poems, ‘Mental Cases’ for example, also have a tendency to be graphic in order to give a complete picture of what war was like. Faulks also shows this in many points throughout ‘Birdsong’; one of these is a short passage on page 155. It shows the actual physical damage inflicted after an explosion: -

“The wheels lurched over sprawled dead”

Lamentations is another poem by Sassoon also showing the horrors of war. This time about a man being found who has practically gone insane because his brother has gone to war. The poem is set in a guardroom and has just one stanza. The line explains how the man was ‘found’, this is to tell us that the this man is fairly helpless, it isn’t even him that’s gone to war yet its turning him insane. Sassoon uses particular lexical sets to convey the anguish caused by exposure to the conditions of war. For examples; ‘Howled, blundered, moaned.’ This set has the connotations of someone who has lost control. This is a very effective way of showing the emotional response to war and create much sympathy for the men involved. The last line of this poem: -

form of a sonnet, 14 lines of iambic pentameter, divided into an octave and sestet. The poem is written as if it was the last words of a soldier, writing a message to his family and loved ones whilst on the battlefield. It uses repetition to get the point of the poem across, the word England is used many times to emphasis the patriotic nature of the poem and makes it seem somewhat passionate. It grows in emotion towards the end as the use of commas increases, this could be to suggest tears which supports the theory that it might be a soldiers last words. The whole poem actually personifies England: -

Some topics in this essay:
Death-Bed’ Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Sassoon’s Lamentations, Siegfried Sassoon, Day Trenches’, Firebrace Stephen, Colonel Barclay, Man’s Dump’, Western Front, emotional response, response war, war people, protesting war, physical conditions, emotional response war, war poem, dead war, changing response, ‘break day, day trenches’, ‘break day trenches’, convey changing response, create emotional response, sassoon protesting war,