My Thesis & Prewriting Thoughts

My introduction and thesis go as follows: The poems “Dulce et Decorum est,” by Wilfred Owen, and “The Man He Killed,” by Thomas Hardy, use a soldier’s viewpoint to show how gruesome and violent war is. The horrific images and confusion seen and felt by each soldier during military service show that the once common notion, fighting and dying in a war is a righteous and heroic act, is no longer applicable to modern day wars. By using a soldier’s point-of-view, these poems show that war doesn’t bring about feelings of bravery and courageousness to soldiers on the battlefield, but brings about the realization that war is a destructive, dark pursuit that causes agony.

I chose this topic because these two poems, especially “Dulce et Decorum est,” intrigued me from the first time I read them. I am able to find new, interesting points in each poem every time I read them. Since I enjoy these poems, I won’t have any difficulty re-reading them many times for my essay.

The ideas I am considering using to compare my two poems are: the speaker’s attitude towards war, the figures of speech used to express the ideas about war, the poems’ tones, what the poems reveal about the speaker, and the central theme of each poem. I came up with these points by doing the prewriting activity on page 893 in our literature book.

My poetry essay will be a comparison between “Dulce et Decorum est” and “The Man He Killed.” I will use the figures of speech and graphic imagery used in “Dulce et Decorum est” to prove that the speaker is against war. For “The Man He Killed,” I will use the hesitation and confusion shown within the poem to prove that the speaker is unsure about war and can’t justify war. Although these two poems use different techniques to show their attitude towards war, they share a central theme, which will be what I am comparing in my essay.

The difference in tone between the two poems may cause difficulty when I am writing my essay. Although both poems have central themes that denounce war, the speaker’s use different tones to show how they feel about war. The lack of strong, graphic imagery in “The Man He Killed” may also cause problems when I am writing my paper, because in “Dulce et Decorum est,” the speaker uses very vivid imagery, while in “The Man He Killed,” the speaker uses his pauses and hesitation more so than graphic imagery.

The topic I have chosen excites me, because war is a subject that has been blazing in the news for the past few years. By writing this essay, I will be able to gain more personal perspective on how I feel about war, while comparing how these two speakers, who are soldiers, felt while they were serving in wars.