Disillusionment and World War I
By Seth Bruck
World War I began in July of 1914, and during the four years that it raged on, millions of men died and the world was permanently changed. World War I, otherwise known as the Great War, served as the transition point from the military tactics of old to modern warfare. Technological advances in weaponry led to more death and carnage than ever before. Advancements such as machine guns, chemical weapons, tanks, and artillery were used in excess to decimate the lives of soldiers regardless of allegiance. Along with the shift in the idea of warfare itself, a shift was also occurring within the perception of war. Those partaking in battle on the front lines were becoming disillusioned with the seemingly endless effort. The constant presence of death that surrounded the soldier coaxed them into contemplating their reason for fighting. Creative expression became a primary means for those disheartened by the war to convey their thoughts about the war. Some men turned to drawing, such as George Spencer Hoffman and Paul Nash who sketched their sordid surroundings in notebooks while in the trenches. Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg were examples of soldiers who fought on the front lines and used poetry to relay the sights, sounds, and feelings of the surreal hellscape that which they were immersed. Owen and Rosenberg make use of their unique first-hand accounts of the warfront in their respective poems, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “Dead Man’s Dump,” resulting in excellent depictions of the atrocities of World War I. As a result of advancement in technologies developed to cause death, soldiers became disillusioned with the war they were fighting. Wartime poets used grotesque images written in a plain manner and a dulled view of the world around them to convey to the public that war was not a romanticized thing and dying for one’s country was not glorious.
Before World War I, warfare, although still deadly, paled in comparison to what was accomplished by the technological advancements that occurred in the early 20th century. One of the most heinous methods of killing that was debuted in the first World War were chemical weapons. Gas was fired into enemy trenches and, if inhaled, caused unbelievable agony for the unfortunate soldier’s final seconds of life before succumbing to the bliss of death. The effectiveness as well as the inability to resist or combat the gas caused a deep psychological stir amongst the ranks of soldiers. Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a narrative of the awfulness of chemical warfare. Within the poem, Owen describes a man dying of gas exposure in the lines, “But someone still was yelling out and stumbling / And floundering 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… He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning,” (Owen 1147). These vivid descriptions evoke vile and unsettling thoughts within the reader. Buried subconscious archetypes concerning the color green as associated with evil and the ghastly irony of drowning in air plague the mind as a young man dies from something he cannot control. These visceral images are presented in plain manner which adds to the disturbing factor, for Owen, this was normal for his life. Later in Owen’s poem, readers are met with a horrifying description of the man who died from the gas in the lines, “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 his froth corrupted lungs, / Bitter as the cud,” (Owen 1147). Gone from Owen’s description of war is any sense of glory. Watching blood froth from a friend’s mouth while his eyes stare at nothing is more horrifying than anything imaginable. Owen uses his words to capture the reality that surrounded him daily during the war and the reality of Owen’s life, and the war itself is that there was no valor or bravery, just death. The preciseness of its detail in Owen’s poem shows from a first-hand point of view that on the front war was not an honorable enterprise, but rather a repulsive example of the potential of humanity.
Illustrations drawn by soldiers of World War I further aid the claim that war was transforming from a reputable undertaking to a horrid beast. This transformation was assisted by the continual denunciation of a soldier’s life. As World War I progressed, the quality of life for a soldier decreased. In George Spencer Hoffman’s sketch entitled “Communication Trench,” a soldier is shown walking with his head down through a trench that has walls taller than him. The man is also carrying a rifle, adorned with the standard military uniform, has a sizable pack on his back, and has his lower legs wrapped. This sketch by Hoffman is a snapshot of the, at best, meager life of a World War I soldier. The drawing does not embellish the conditions of the trenches but merely presents them as they are. At best, the state of the trenches was to be considered tolerable, but often times were more apt to the eighth circle of hell from Dante’s “Inferno.” Dead and decaying bodies decorated the walls of the trenches mud and water rose waist high in certain circumstances and most were infested with rats. Hoffman’s sketch draws humility to the armed forces by simply showing the conditions that really existed. The glory and thrill of serving one’s country evaporates when living conditions were as terrible as they were. Gone were the days of fancy red uniforms and living in a respectable manner, now men slept six feet below the surface of the earth while still alive on mud that was saturated with blood and disease. Hoffman’s simple sketch that was done within a trench helps combat the idea of glory associated with dying for one’s country by showing the reality of the warfront and deconstructing the image of war.
Depraving imagery that further critiques the image of war comes from Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est.” The poem, before depicting a terrifying gas attack first describes the solemn march of a group of soldiers in the lines, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the 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,” (Owen 1147). Along with the ghastly imagery, the form of the poem also aids in promoting the appalling conditions stricken on the unassuming soldiers. Intentionally placed end stops that occur within lines jar the natural flow of the poem and cause the reader to pay attention to the detail that is directly before. The first example of this happens after “Men marched asleep” (Owen 1147). Owen draws attention to this particular image because of its strangeness and discomfort that accompanies it. Men absolutely exhausted from battle that they march on in a zombified state is an unsettling notion that challenged the concept English superiority. England and her citizens by the time of World War I had grown accustomed to dominance in their empirical or militaristic endeavors. Therefore, the weary state of the soldiers would elicit a cause for concern amongst those not partaking in battle, a concern of inferiority. Once again, Owen’s first-hand account of the true nature of war during World War I removes the grandeur of patriotism from the mouths and minds of the British people.
The second end stop within the aforementioned quote was causes the reader to pause and absorb the what had just been stated occurs at the second termination of the line, “Many had lost their boots. / But limped on, blood-shod,” (Owen 1147). This quote is alone as equally demoralizing as it is grotesque. The image of men marching without their boots while exhausted after mindlessly completing heinous acts cause the reader to feel a subliminal pity for the men. The sight of men marching without boots would have been a common and normal sight for Owen during the war, but to a lay-person, imagining a soldier who lacks the most basic of personal supplies evokes a deeply suppressed, archaic instinct that all people must have foot protection to shield from the environment. This lingering Homo Sapien line of thought causes the reader to feel contempt for the soldiers despite the presence of war in the narrative. Owen uses this inherent inclination to care for one’s fellow man to draw negative emotions from the reader and in doing so further develops his rhetoric of showing why war is actually a terrible entity and not what it has been romanticized into.
The grotesque aspect of the previously stated quote is what is exemplified by the midline end stop, “But limped on, blood-shod,” (Owen 1147). Here, Owen employs a horrifying and surprising image to shed light on the how World War I is not glorious. The trenches and the front is the site of such an extreme amount of bloodshed that those who walk barefoot have shoes of blood. This image puts into perspective the exact amount of horror that occurs on a World War I battlefield. Having blood and entrails cake one’s exposed feet is a profound and long lasting image that would brand itself into a reader’s mind for a long period time after reading. Owen’s use of this lasting image and the employment of a midline end stop is not only to rebuke the common conception of war, but also to ensure that the reader never forgets the image of men walking through the blood of their fellow soldiers. Therefore, creating a permanent separation between the reader and any notion of war as a celebrated and sentimentalized idea.
In the final stanza of the poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen explicitly states his intent of this piece as well as directly addresses the misconceived idea of the of glory. Through his experience with battle, Owen is able to give a credible and grounded account as to why the warfare of the first World War had shed the façade of an honorable or prestigious event. Owen’s first-hand experience rears itself with his warning, “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,” (Owen 1147). The Latin phrase used by Owen originates from the Roman poet, Horace, and translated means, “Sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.” Owen calls this statement a lie and the crowd that he is directing this message of honor not existing within sacrifice for one’s country is the youth, more specifically the adults who would be the ones to convince the youth of this lie. Through a first-hand account Wilfred Owen has learned of the atrocities of war and how the technological advancements of World War I have changed and advanced the methods of warfare. Through his words as a poet and experiences as a soldier, he is imploring that those who are left alive recognize the changes in warfare and educate the future generations to not be as their forefathers were and make the connection that war is a horrifying, mentally debilitating entity and that honor does not arise from it in any way.
Isaac Rosenberg, like Wilfred Owen was a poet who served in World War I under allegiance to the crown of England. In his poem “Dead Man’s Dump,” the grim realities that all soldiers faced while stationed on the front are prevalent. The men who served during World War I witnessed disgusting and disturbing scenes on a daily basis, constant bombardment of explosives from the enemy, as well as their own mortality being challenged at a moment’s notice. The soldiers, to no effort of their own, internalized what is the equivalent of hell on earth and transformed it into their sense of normalcy. This self-constructed normalcy during this horrible time combats the notion of glory in defending and or sacrificing for one’s country due to the fact that if war was actually glorious, then habituating oneself to having a friend’s brain be blown out or legs forcibly amputated would not exist.
Rosenberg makes use of this notion of ill-conceived normalcy in his poem, “Dead Man’s Dump” in the lines, “The wheels lurched over sprawled dead / But pained them not, through their bones crunched, / Their shut mouths made no moan,” (Rosenberg 108). The vivid descriptive language used accentuates the despicable scene that the narrator is witnessing. The narrator has become desensitized to the multitude of dead bodies that surround him, which is evidence enough that he has become sensually dulled by the world he is immersed within; so much so that when the cart he rides upon crunches over the bones of the dead, he elicits no response. A lack of reaction to dead and mutilated bodies shows that glory is not remotely present during World War I, but other evidence lies in the treatment of the dead. Those who are killed in battle whether they are “brothers” or “brutish men,” to use Rosenberg’s words, are simply left where they lie and decay all the same. There is no glory in this practice. The men who gave up their lives presumably in service for the greater good of their country are cast into oblivion and their alleged sacrifice left unknown and unnamed. By simply describing a routine undertaking, which is actually a horrifying spectacle, Rosenberg highlights the lack of glory World War I soldiers suffer from by acknowledging the treatment of those who died because of it.
The latter part of the previously stated quote from Rosenberg’s poem considers the lack of individuality and importance encountered by soldiers during World War I. Once within the ranks of the armed forces, the individual ceased to exist as its own self. The men who enlisted became a dispensable part of a collective whole where he either died or lived mattered very little. Reality for the average soldier was that they were merely a pawn in a perverse game of chess. Rosenberg grounds this claim in the line, “Man born of man, and born of woman, / And shells go crying over them / From night to night and now,” (Rosenberg 108). Individual personality diminished when fighting on the front, but the last inklings of what made a person a unique individual fluttered out when they died. After death, the bullets and artillery rounds fly over the bodies all the same. This lack of individualization conflicts with the romanticized conception of a glorious and heroic soldier who brings valor to his country. The grim reality that all soldiers came to realized, and subsequently adapted to, was that their lives matter no more or less than the thousands of other men who participated in the war with them.
An illustration done by George Spencer Hoffman entitled “Salvage” is a drawn depiction of the irregular sense of normalcy felt by soldiers of World War I. Within the sketch is a soldier sitting upon a small hillock who is looking at a dead man lying prone on the ground with is left arm at his side and his right arm across his body to the left. The living man is looking at the dead soldier with an unresponsive expression, he is merely looking at this dead man. This chilling drawing perfectly captures the changed sense of reality that occurred within all soldiers from World War I. The living man is not fazed by his deceased brother in arms, he is instead looking on as if dead bodies are a common item found in the French countryside. Death has become such a prevalent and reoccurring force in his life that the archetypal thoughts of death have vacated his mind; no longer does he cower away and avoid dead bodies as do typical humans. Instead of avoiding, he has the power to look on, unfazed, due to the mental shift of normalcy that has occurred within his psyche due to the atrocities of war. This general acceptance of death depicted artistically by Hoffman destroys the thought of glory in war.
The standard way of life changed drastically on the war front that luck and immortality were two analogous terms. Rosenberg in his poem explores the lack of difference between luck and immortality in the lines, “Our lucky limbs as ichor fed, / Immortal seeming ever?” (Rosenberg 109). The constant death and injury that surrounded a soldier during World War I caused his mind to adjust reality to cope with the ever impending presence of doom. One way of attaining some comfort in one’s own life is to find a means to justify one’s reason for still being alive while others lie dead. Here in Rosenberg’s poem, those that are considered lucky for not having been killed by a bullet or artillery shell assume a perceived sense of immortality. They don’t believe that they are unable to die, but rather there seems to be no other logical explanation for why they are still alive. This absolute decimation of the constructs of life and death show disillusionment not only to the war, but to life itself. Within a glorious war as was depicted before the beginning of World War I, this did not exist.
World War I marked colossal change in the world; the 20th century came into existence in a fit of rage and the world as a whole never was the same again. The world was developing into a new entity and Randall Stevenson writes in his article, “Broken Mirrors: the First World War and Modernist Literature,” “The colossal darkness and violence of the war scarcely allowed the world to be contained,” (Stevenson 2016). The world could not be contained, the roaring beast of modernity was breaking loose of its shackles but while the world could not be contained, aspects of it could be killed. One of these aspects was the old notion of glory filled warfare, gone were the days of dreams for Valhalla and honor associated with dying for one’s country. Poets and artists such as Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and George Spencer Hoffman, through their first hand and oxymoronic accounts of the first World War, shed light on how the old ways of warfare were nothing more than a wonderful lie.
Works Cited
Hoffman, George Spencer. Salvage. 1916.
Hoffman, George Spencer. Communication Trench.1916
Owen, Wilfred. Dulce Et Decorum Est. 2nd ed., B, Broadview Press.
Rosenberg, Isaac. Dead Man’s Dump. 1922
Stevenson, Randall. “Broken Mirrors: the First World War and Modernist Literature.” British Library, British Library, 25 May 2016.
By Seth Bruck
World War I began in July of 1914, and during the four years that it raged on, millions of men died and the world was permanently changed. World War I, otherwise known as the Great War, served as the transition point from the military tactics of old to modern warfare. Technological advances in weaponry led to more death and carnage than ever before. Advancements such as machine guns, chemical weapons, tanks, and artillery were used in excess to decimate the lives of soldiers regardless of allegiance. Along with the shift in the idea of warfare itself, a shift was also occurring within the perception of war. Those partaking in battle on the front lines were becoming disillusioned with the seemingly endless effort. The constant presence of death that surrounded the soldier coaxed them into contemplating their reason for fighting. Creative expression became a primary means for those disheartened by the war to convey their thoughts about the war. Some men turned to drawing, such as George Spencer Hoffman and Paul Nash who sketched their sordid surroundings in notebooks while in the trenches. Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg were examples of soldiers who fought on the front lines and used poetry to relay the sights, sounds, and feelings of the surreal hellscape that which they were immersed. Owen and Rosenberg make use of their unique first-hand accounts of the warfront in their respective poems, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “Dead Man’s Dump,” resulting in excellent depictions of the atrocities of World War I. As a result of advancement in technologies developed to cause death, soldiers became disillusioned with the war they were fighting. Wartime poets used grotesque images written in a plain manner and a dulled view of the world around them to convey to the public that war was not a romanticized thing and dying for one’s country was not glorious.
Before World War I, warfare, although still deadly, paled in comparison to what was accomplished by the technological advancements that occurred in the early 20th century. One of the most heinous methods of killing that was debuted in the first World War were chemical weapons. Gas was fired into enemy trenches and, if inhaled, caused unbelievable agony for the unfortunate soldier’s final seconds of life before succumbing to the bliss of death. The effectiveness as well as the inability to resist or combat the gas caused a deep psychological stir amongst the ranks of soldiers. Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a narrative of the awfulness of chemical warfare. Within the poem, Owen describes a man dying of gas exposure in the lines, “But someone still was yelling out and stumbling / And floundering 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… He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning,” (Owen 1147). These vivid descriptions evoke vile and unsettling thoughts within the reader. Buried subconscious archetypes concerning the color green as associated with evil and the ghastly irony of drowning in air plague the mind as a young man dies from something he cannot control. These visceral images are presented in plain manner which adds to the disturbing factor, for Owen, this was normal for his life. Later in Owen’s poem, readers are met with a horrifying description of the man who died from the gas in the lines, “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 his froth corrupted lungs, / Bitter as the cud,” (Owen 1147). Gone from Owen’s description of war is any sense of glory. Watching blood froth from a friend’s mouth while his eyes stare at nothing is more horrifying than anything imaginable. Owen uses his words to capture the reality that surrounded him daily during the war and the reality of Owen’s life, and the war itself is that there was no valor or bravery, just death. The preciseness of its detail in Owen’s poem shows from a first-hand point of view that on the front war was not an honorable enterprise, but rather a repulsive example of the potential of humanity.
Illustrations drawn by soldiers of World War I further aid the claim that war was transforming from a reputable undertaking to a horrid beast. This transformation was assisted by the continual denunciation of a soldier’s life. As World War I progressed, the quality of life for a soldier decreased. In George Spencer Hoffman’s sketch entitled “Communication Trench,” a soldier is shown walking with his head down through a trench that has walls taller than him. The man is also carrying a rifle, adorned with the standard military uniform, has a sizable pack on his back, and has his lower legs wrapped. This sketch by Hoffman is a snapshot of the, at best, meager life of a World War I soldier. The drawing does not embellish the conditions of the trenches but merely presents them as they are. At best, the state of the trenches was to be considered tolerable, but often times were more apt to the eighth circle of hell from Dante’s “Inferno.” Dead and decaying bodies decorated the walls of the trenches mud and water rose waist high in certain circumstances and most were infested with rats. Hoffman’s sketch draws humility to the armed forces by simply showing the conditions that really existed. The glory and thrill of serving one’s country evaporates when living conditions were as terrible as they were. Gone were the days of fancy red uniforms and living in a respectable manner, now men slept six feet below the surface of the earth while still alive on mud that was saturated with blood and disease. Hoffman’s simple sketch that was done within a trench helps combat the idea of glory associated with dying for one’s country by showing the reality of the warfront and deconstructing the image of war.
Depraving imagery that further critiques the image of war comes from Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est.” The poem, before depicting a terrifying gas attack first describes the solemn march of a group of soldiers in the lines, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the 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,” (Owen 1147). Along with the ghastly imagery, the form of the poem also aids in promoting the appalling conditions stricken on the unassuming soldiers. Intentionally placed end stops that occur within lines jar the natural flow of the poem and cause the reader to pay attention to the detail that is directly before. The first example of this happens after “Men marched asleep” (Owen 1147). Owen draws attention to this particular image because of its strangeness and discomfort that accompanies it. Men absolutely exhausted from battle that they march on in a zombified state is an unsettling notion that challenged the concept English superiority. England and her citizens by the time of World War I had grown accustomed to dominance in their empirical or militaristic endeavors. Therefore, the weary state of the soldiers would elicit a cause for concern amongst those not partaking in battle, a concern of inferiority. Once again, Owen’s first-hand account of the true nature of war during World War I removes the grandeur of patriotism from the mouths and minds of the British people.
The second end stop within the aforementioned quote was causes the reader to pause and absorb the what had just been stated occurs at the second termination of the line, “Many had lost their boots. / But limped on, blood-shod,” (Owen 1147). This quote is alone as equally demoralizing as it is grotesque. The image of men marching without their boots while exhausted after mindlessly completing heinous acts cause the reader to feel a subliminal pity for the men. The sight of men marching without boots would have been a common and normal sight for Owen during the war, but to a lay-person, imagining a soldier who lacks the most basic of personal supplies evokes a deeply suppressed, archaic instinct that all people must have foot protection to shield from the environment. This lingering Homo Sapien line of thought causes the reader to feel contempt for the soldiers despite the presence of war in the narrative. Owen uses this inherent inclination to care for one’s fellow man to draw negative emotions from the reader and in doing so further develops his rhetoric of showing why war is actually a terrible entity and not what it has been romanticized into.
The grotesque aspect of the previously stated quote is what is exemplified by the midline end stop, “But limped on, blood-shod,” (Owen 1147). Here, Owen employs a horrifying and surprising image to shed light on the how World War I is not glorious. The trenches and the front is the site of such an extreme amount of bloodshed that those who walk barefoot have shoes of blood. This image puts into perspective the exact amount of horror that occurs on a World War I battlefield. Having blood and entrails cake one’s exposed feet is a profound and long lasting image that would brand itself into a reader’s mind for a long period time after reading. Owen’s use of this lasting image and the employment of a midline end stop is not only to rebuke the common conception of war, but also to ensure that the reader never forgets the image of men walking through the blood of their fellow soldiers. Therefore, creating a permanent separation between the reader and any notion of war as a celebrated and sentimentalized idea.
In the final stanza of the poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen explicitly states his intent of this piece as well as directly addresses the misconceived idea of the of glory. Through his experience with battle, Owen is able to give a credible and grounded account as to why the warfare of the first World War had shed the façade of an honorable or prestigious event. Owen’s first-hand experience rears itself with his warning, “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,” (Owen 1147). The Latin phrase used by Owen originates from the Roman poet, Horace, and translated means, “Sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.” Owen calls this statement a lie and the crowd that he is directing this message of honor not existing within sacrifice for one’s country is the youth, more specifically the adults who would be the ones to convince the youth of this lie. Through a first-hand account Wilfred Owen has learned of the atrocities of war and how the technological advancements of World War I have changed and advanced the methods of warfare. Through his words as a poet and experiences as a soldier, he is imploring that those who are left alive recognize the changes in warfare and educate the future generations to not be as their forefathers were and make the connection that war is a horrifying, mentally debilitating entity and that honor does not arise from it in any way.
Isaac Rosenberg, like Wilfred Owen was a poet who served in World War I under allegiance to the crown of England. In his poem “Dead Man’s Dump,” the grim realities that all soldiers faced while stationed on the front are prevalent. The men who served during World War I witnessed disgusting and disturbing scenes on a daily basis, constant bombardment of explosives from the enemy, as well as their own mortality being challenged at a moment’s notice. The soldiers, to no effort of their own, internalized what is the equivalent of hell on earth and transformed it into their sense of normalcy. This self-constructed normalcy during this horrible time combats the notion of glory in defending and or sacrificing for one’s country due to the fact that if war was actually glorious, then habituating oneself to having a friend’s brain be blown out or legs forcibly amputated would not exist.
Rosenberg makes use of this notion of ill-conceived normalcy in his poem, “Dead Man’s Dump” in the lines, “The wheels lurched over sprawled dead / But pained them not, through their bones crunched, / Their shut mouths made no moan,” (Rosenberg 108). The vivid descriptive language used accentuates the despicable scene that the narrator is witnessing. The narrator has become desensitized to the multitude of dead bodies that surround him, which is evidence enough that he has become sensually dulled by the world he is immersed within; so much so that when the cart he rides upon crunches over the bones of the dead, he elicits no response. A lack of reaction to dead and mutilated bodies shows that glory is not remotely present during World War I, but other evidence lies in the treatment of the dead. Those who are killed in battle whether they are “brothers” or “brutish men,” to use Rosenberg’s words, are simply left where they lie and decay all the same. There is no glory in this practice. The men who gave up their lives presumably in service for the greater good of their country are cast into oblivion and their alleged sacrifice left unknown and unnamed. By simply describing a routine undertaking, which is actually a horrifying spectacle, Rosenberg highlights the lack of glory World War I soldiers suffer from by acknowledging the treatment of those who died because of it.
The latter part of the previously stated quote from Rosenberg’s poem considers the lack of individuality and importance encountered by soldiers during World War I. Once within the ranks of the armed forces, the individual ceased to exist as its own self. The men who enlisted became a dispensable part of a collective whole where he either died or lived mattered very little. Reality for the average soldier was that they were merely a pawn in a perverse game of chess. Rosenberg grounds this claim in the line, “Man born of man, and born of woman, / And shells go crying over them / From night to night and now,” (Rosenberg 108). Individual personality diminished when fighting on the front, but the last inklings of what made a person a unique individual fluttered out when they died. After death, the bullets and artillery rounds fly over the bodies all the same. This lack of individualization conflicts with the romanticized conception of a glorious and heroic soldier who brings valor to his country. The grim reality that all soldiers came to realized, and subsequently adapted to, was that their lives matter no more or less than the thousands of other men who participated in the war with them.
An illustration done by George Spencer Hoffman entitled “Salvage” is a drawn depiction of the irregular sense of normalcy felt by soldiers of World War I. Within the sketch is a soldier sitting upon a small hillock who is looking at a dead man lying prone on the ground with is left arm at his side and his right arm across his body to the left. The living man is looking at the dead soldier with an unresponsive expression, he is merely looking at this dead man. This chilling drawing perfectly captures the changed sense of reality that occurred within all soldiers from World War I. The living man is not fazed by his deceased brother in arms, he is instead looking on as if dead bodies are a common item found in the French countryside. Death has become such a prevalent and reoccurring force in his life that the archetypal thoughts of death have vacated his mind; no longer does he cower away and avoid dead bodies as do typical humans. Instead of avoiding, he has the power to look on, unfazed, due to the mental shift of normalcy that has occurred within his psyche due to the atrocities of war. This general acceptance of death depicted artistically by Hoffman destroys the thought of glory in war.
The standard way of life changed drastically on the war front that luck and immortality were two analogous terms. Rosenberg in his poem explores the lack of difference between luck and immortality in the lines, “Our lucky limbs as ichor fed, / Immortal seeming ever?” (Rosenberg 109). The constant death and injury that surrounded a soldier during World War I caused his mind to adjust reality to cope with the ever impending presence of doom. One way of attaining some comfort in one’s own life is to find a means to justify one’s reason for still being alive while others lie dead. Here in Rosenberg’s poem, those that are considered lucky for not having been killed by a bullet or artillery shell assume a perceived sense of immortality. They don’t believe that they are unable to die, but rather there seems to be no other logical explanation for why they are still alive. This absolute decimation of the constructs of life and death show disillusionment not only to the war, but to life itself. Within a glorious war as was depicted before the beginning of World War I, this did not exist.
World War I marked colossal change in the world; the 20th century came into existence in a fit of rage and the world as a whole never was the same again. The world was developing into a new entity and Randall Stevenson writes in his article, “Broken Mirrors: the First World War and Modernist Literature,” “The colossal darkness and violence of the war scarcely allowed the world to be contained,” (Stevenson 2016). The world could not be contained, the roaring beast of modernity was breaking loose of its shackles but while the world could not be contained, aspects of it could be killed. One of these aspects was the old notion of glory filled warfare, gone were the days of dreams for Valhalla and honor associated with dying for one’s country. Poets and artists such as Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and George Spencer Hoffman, through their first hand and oxymoronic accounts of the first World War, shed light on how the old ways of warfare were nothing more than a wonderful lie.
Works Cited
Hoffman, George Spencer. Salvage. 1916.
Hoffman, George Spencer. Communication Trench.1916
Owen, Wilfred. Dulce Et Decorum Est. 2nd ed., B, Broadview Press.
Rosenberg, Isaac. Dead Man’s Dump. 1922
Stevenson, Randall. “Broken Mirrors: the First World War and Modernist Literature.” British Library, British Library, 25 May 2016.