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English

Literatur
e II

[-WAR POETS-]

H I S T O R I C A L C O N T E XT
At the turn of the 20th century, the nations of Europe had been largely at peace
with one another for nearly 30 years. While peace and harmony characterized much of
Europe at the beginning of 1900s, there were less visible at work as well. Below the
surface of peace and goodwill, Europe witness several gradual developments that would
ultimately help propel the continent into war.
WORLD WAR I- CAUSES
HIDDEN CAUSES

The rise of nationalism: by the turn of 20th century, a fierce rivalry had developed
among Europes great powers. Those nations were: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Great
Britain, Russia, Italy and France.
This increasing rivalry among European nations stemmed for several sources:
competition for materials and market, territorial disputes, competition for military power
and dominance, etc. Besides this, much of the origin of the war was based on the desire
of the Slavic peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina to no longer be part of Austria Hungary
but instead be part of Serbia. In this way, nationalism led directly to the War.
Imperialism: (Imperialism is when a country increases their power and wealth by
bringing additional territories under their control). With the rise of industrialism countries
needed new markets.By 1900 the British Empire extended over five continents and
France had control of large areas of Africa. Before World War 1, Africa and parts of Asia
were points of contention amongst the European countries. This was especially true
because of the raw materials these areas could provide. The amount of lands 'owned' by
Britain and France increased the rivalry with Germany who had entered the scramble to
acquire colonies late and only had small areas of Africa.
Militarism: As the world entered the 20th century, an arms race had begun. By 1914,
Germany had the greatest increase in military buildup. Great Britain and Germany both
significantly increased their navies in this time period. Further, in Germany and Russia
particularly, the military establishment began to have a larger influence on public policy.

Alliances: A number of alliances had been signed by countries between the years 1879
and 1914. These were important because they meant that some countries had no option
but to declare war if one of their allies declared war first.

879

1881

1882

The Dual Alliance

Austro-Serbian Alliance

The Triple Alliance

Germany and Austria-

Austria-Hungary made an

Germany and Austria-

Hungary made an

alliance with Serbia to stop

Hungary made an

alliance to protect

Russia gaining control of

alliance with Italy to stop

themselves from Russia

Serbia

Italy from taking sides


with Russia

1894

1904

Franco-Russian Alliance

Entente Cordiale

1907
Anglo-Russian Entente

Russia formed an

This was an agreement,

alliance with France to

but not a formal alliance,

This was an agreement

protect herself against

between France and

between Britain and

Germany and Austria-

Britain.

Russia

Hungary
1907

1914

Triple Entente

Triple Entente (no separate


peace)

This was made between


Russia, France and

Britain, Russia and France

Britain to counter the

agreed not to sign for

increasing threat from

peace separately.

Germany.

Crisis in the Balkans: (Balkan peninsula--- a mountainous peninsula in the southeastern


corner of Europe) by early 1900s the Ottoman Empire, which included the Balkan region
was in rapid decline. While some Balkan groups struggle to free themselves from the
Ottoman Turks, others already succeed in breaking away from their Turkish rulers. Serbia
had a large Slavic population, and was supported by Russia. Austria- hungary opposed to
Serbia and feared that efforts to create a Slavic state would stir rebellion among its Slavic
population. In 1908, Austria annexed boznia and Herzegovina. In the following years,
tension between Serbia and Austria steadily rose.

IMMEDIATE CAUSE:

Murder of the Archduke of Austria: on June 1914 the archduke Franz Ferdinand and
his wife paid a visit to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. However, a Serbian nationalist
assassinated him and his wife while they were in Sarajevo, (which was part of AustriaHungary). This was in protest to Austria-Hungary having control of this region. Serbia
wanted to take over Bosnia and Herzegovina. This assassination led to Austria-Hungary
declaring war on Serbia. When Russia began to mobilize due to its alliance with Serbia,
Germany declared war on Russia. Thus began the expansion of the war to include all
those involved in the mutual defense alliances.
CHARACTERISTICS

War in the Trenches: trenches were long, narrow ditches dug into the ground where
soldiers lived all day and night. There were many lines of German trenches on one side
and many lines of Allied trenches on the other. In the middle, was no man's land, socalled because it did not belong to either army. Soldiers crossed No Man's Land when
they wanted to attack the other side.
Soldiers in the trenches did not get much sleep. When they did, it was in the afternoon
during daylight and at night only for an hour at a time. They were woken up at different
times, either to complete one of their daily chores or to fight. During rest time, they wrote
letters and sometimes played card games.
The trenches could be very muddy and smelly. There were many dead bodies buried
nearby and the latrines (toilets) sometimes overflowed into the trenches. Millions of rats
infested the trenches and some grew as big as cats. There was also a big problem with
lice that tormented the soldiers on a daily basis.

War in the air: Early in the war, military strategists realized that aircraft could be very
useful forspying on enemy troop movements. Thus, the reconnaissance plane was born
a tool that all sides in the war used to varying degrees. These aircraft typically carried a
pilot and an observer with a camera, who would photograph troop positions on the
ground. The use of aircraft for reconnaissance grew rapidly during the first few months of
the war and played an increasingly crucial role in achieving victories. Such aircraft
proved vital to the British and French forces during the Battle of Monsand the Battle of
the Marne, for example.
s Fighter Planes: As aerial reconnaissance became more common, so did the need
for ways to stop enemy observation planes. One way was by firing upon them from
the ground, which was ineffective until guns could be better adapted for the
purpose. The other way was to develop a means for one aircraft to attack another.
The first such attempts were made using the observation aircraft themselves, as
pilots and observers attempted to shoot at other planes using rifles and even pistols
a method that quickly proved hopeless. Some pilots tried throwing hand
grenades, bricks, or even long ropes with grappling hooks at planes below them.
The ideal solution was the machine gun, which could fire a continuous stream of
bullets, significantly increasing the chance of hitting a target.
s Bombers: Bombing was an obvious offensive tactic for use in air warfare, but
different countries approached the concept in different ways. Russia was the first to
develop an airplane specifically for this purpose: the Murometz, a large four-engine
airplane that Igor Sikorsky had developed in 1913 as a passenger plane, was
adapted for use as a bomber in 1914 and was used successfully throughout the war.
s Zeppelins: Germany took a different approach to bombing by using lighter-thanair dirigibles, or zeppelins, to drop bombs on targets as far away as London and
Paris. The slow-moving zeppelins, which had a long range and could carry a
relatively large cargo of explosives, reached the peak of their success early in the
war, during 1915. As the war continued, the giant airships became increasingly
vulnerable to the rapidly improving capabilities of fighter planes: the zeppelins
were filled with hydrogen, so only a small spark was necessary to cause the entire
ship to explode in flames. As a result, Germany turned more and more to using
airplanes as bomber.

War in the sea: Germany deployed U-boats (submarines) after the war began.
Alternating between restricted and unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic,
the Kaiserliche Marine employed them to deprive the British Isles of vital supplies.
The deaths of British merchant sailors and the seeming invulnerability of U-boats led
to the development of depth charges (1916), hydrophones (passive sonar,
1917), blimps, hunter-killer submarines (HMS R-1, 1917), forward-throwing antisubmarine weapons, and dipping hydrophones (the latter two both abandoned in
1918).[80] To extend their operations, the Germans proposed supply submarines

(1916).
The use of Gas: Poison gas was used by both sides with devastating results (well,
sometimes) during the Great War. The Germans pioneered the large-scale use of
chemical weapons with a gas attack on Russian positions on January 31, 1915, during
the Battle of Bolimov, but low temperatures froze the poison (xylyl bromide) in the
shells. The first successful use of chemical weapons occurred on April 22, 1915, near
Ypres, when the Germans sprayed chlorine gas from large cylinders towards trenches
held by French colonial troops. The defenders fled, but typically for the First World
War, this didnt yield a decisive result: the Germans were slow to follow up with
infantry attacks, the gas dissipated, and the Allied defenses were restored. Before
long, of course, the Allies were using poison gas too, and over the course of the war
both sides resorted to increasingly insidious compounds to beat gas masks, another
new invention; thus the overall result was a huge increase in misery for not much
change in the strategic situation (a recurring theme of the war).

CONSEQUENCES
World War I killed more people--more than 9 million soldiers, sailors, and flyers and
another 5 million civilians--involved more countries--28--and cost more money--$186
billion in direct costs and another $151 billion in indirect costs--than any previous war in
history. It was the first war to use airplanes, tanks, long range artillery, submarines, and
poison

gas.

It

left

at

least

million

men

permanently

disabled.

World War I probably had more far-reaching consequences than any other proceeding
war. Politically, it resulted in the downfall of four monarchies--in Russia in 1917, in

Austria-Hungary and Germany in 1918, and in Turkey in 1922. It contributed to the


Bolshevik rise to power in Russia in 1917 and the triumph of fascism in Italy in 1922. It
ignited

colonial

revolts

in

the

Middle

East

and

in

Southeast

Asia.

Economically, the war severely disrupted the European economies and allowed the
United States to become the world's leading creditor and industrial power. The war also
brought vast social consequences, including the mass murder of Armenians in Turkey and
an

influenza

epidemic

that

killed

over

25

million

people

worldwide.

Few events better reveal the utter unpredictability of the future. At the dawn of the 20th
century, most Europeans looked forward to a future of peace and prosperity. Europe had
not fought a major war for 100 years. But a belief in human progress was shattered by
World War I, a war few wanted or expected. At any point during the five weeks leading
up to the outbreak of fighting the conflict might have been averted. World War I was a
product of miscalculation, misunderstanding, and miscommunication.

No one expected a war of the magnitude or duration of World War I. At first the armies
relied on outdated methods of communication, such as carrier pigeons. The great powers
mobilized more than a million horses. But by the time the conflict was over, tanks,
submarines, airplane-dropped bombs, machine guns, and poison gas had transformed the
nature of modern warfare. In 1918, the Germans fired shells containing both tear gas and
lethal chlorine. The tear gas forced the British to remove their gas masks; the chlorine
then scarred their faces and killed them.

In a single day at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, 100,000 British troops plodded across
no man's land into steady machine-gun fire from German trenches a few yards away.
Some 60,000 were killed or wounded. At the end of the battle, 419,654 British men were
killed, missing, or wounded.

Four years of war killed a million troops from the British Empire, 1.5 million troops from
the Hapsburg Empire, 1.7 million French troops, 1.7 million Russians, and 2 million

German troops. The war left a legacy of bitterness that contributed to World War II
twenty-one years later.

C U LT U RA L C O N T E XT
WAR POETS
War poets is a term referring primarily to the soldierpoets who fought in the First World
War, of whom many died in combat. The best-known are Blundeb, Brooke,
Graves,Owen, Rosemberg, Hamilton, Thomas, and Sassoon. Most of these writers came
from middle-class backgrounds; many had been to public schools and served as officers
at the front. In fact, hundreds of war poets wrote and published their verse between
1914 and 1918, often capturing the initial mood of excitement and enthusiasm. Rupert
Brooke established the cult of the soldierpoet in England, though the tone of his work
differed markedly from writers who experienced later battles on the western front.
Brooke's striking good looks and five patriotic war sonnets written in December 1914,
coupled with his death in a troopship bound for Gallipoli, his burial at Skyros, and the
glowing Times obituary over Winston Churchill's initials, made him a symbol of a
mythical (or much mythologized) pre-war golden age ended by conflict. In contrast to
Brooke, the next generation of poets actually went to the trenches and saw action. The
reality appalled them. Owen, Sassoon, Graves, Gurney, and Jones were all either
wounded or shell-shocked, or both. They wrote powerfully and poignantly about the
effects of war on the bodies and minds of men, the horror and the waste.

THE GEORGIAN POETRY


The Georgian poetry that was in vogue when the WWI broke out was made in
honor of the reign of King George V. The term was first used by poets when Edward
Marsh brought out in 1912 the first of a series of five anthologies called Georgian Poetry.
Their work represented an attempt to wall in the garden of English poetry against the
disruptive forces of modern civilization. But, as WWI went on, with more and more poets
killed and the survivors increasingly disillusioned, the whole world on which the

Georgian imagination rested came to appear unreal. The patriotism for the country
reflected in poets and soldiers of the beginning of the century became a ridiculous
anachronism in the face of the realities of trench warfare. This is the case of the
antagonism presented by the two war poets: Rupert Brooke, who wrote a patriotic sonnet
reflecting soldiers glory of fighting for England, in contrast to Siegfried Sassoons
savage ironies which portraits the real atrocities of the war.
SOCIAL CHANGES DUE TO THE WAR

Feminism: In the 19th and 20th centuries feminism movement won the womens
suffrage, educations rights, and better working conditions. During World War I most
feminist were anti-war, and most anti-feminist were pro-war. Jane Addams and Carrie

Chapman founded the Womens Peace Party.


African Americans: They were actually allowed to serve in the military; however they

were treated a lot worse than the other soldiers.


Native Americans: although they were not allowed to be in the war, a lot of Native

Americans enlisted. Approximately 10000 Native Americans ended up serving in the war.
Education: World War I altered education in the United States through curriculum
changes with government pamphlets and required patriotism sessions. Strong focus on
nationalism and patriotism. Patriotic and pro-war lessons were instituted in public

schools. Some children lost the opportunity to education.


Changes in social class: middle class become officers on the front lines. Working class

became foot soldiers. Different social classes were seen as equals.


Cross-cultural exchange: two or more cultures exchanged ideas, art, weapons, science
and politics. During WW1, globalization greatly fell: ships used for transporting goods
were often sunk by German submarines. International trade, migration, and investment all
collapsed. Cultural exchange was almost nonexistent with the lack of open trade between
countries.

GEORGIAN AGE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1914-1940


It begins with the First World War. It is named for George V, although he reigned
from 1910 to 1936. The war effected a fundamental change in English life and thought, a
true start of a new age, marked by a long and bitter struggle for national survival, by a
flowering of aesthetic talent and experiment in the 1920s, and by the harshness of the
Great Depression in the 1930s. In 1940 England had become once more an embattled

fortress, destined to suffer six years of harsh attack and the destruction of much of its
finest talent.
It was a rich period for the novel. The Edwardians Galsworthy, Wells, Bennett,
and Conrad continued to do fine work, and in the 1920s experimental fiction was
triumphantly developed by Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. In the
1930s Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene joined Maugham and
Lawrence in producing fiction that constituted a serious commentary on social and moral
values. The theater was marked by the social drama of Galsworthy, Jones, and Pinero,
and the plays of ideas of Shaw. Maugham and Coward practiced the Comedy of Manners
with distinction. Although Thomas Hardy turned 74 in 1914, he was still producing
extraordinarily powerful poetry, especially that in the volume Satires of Circumstances
(1914). Hundreds of other poems followed in the years before Hardys death, at 87, in
early 1928. Throughout the Georgian Age Yeats was a major poetic voice, as was T. S.
Eliot, whose The Waste Land was the most important single poetic publication. The
posthumous publication of poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1918 added significantly
to the new poetry. T. E. Hulme, Wyndham Lewis, I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot, and William
Empson created an informed, basically anti-Romantic, analytical criticism. Modernism
found its doctrines and its voice and did much of its best work during the Georgian Age.
It was a time of national troubles, of major war, of deep depression, and of declining
empire, yet the literary expression of the age was vital, fresh, and varied. By the coming
of the Second World War, the chief literary figures were turning inward, but they still
showed little of the diminishment that was to come.
GEORGIAN POETRY
It refers to a series of anthologies showcasing the work of a school of English
poetry that established itself during the early years of the reign of King George V of the
United Kingdom.
The Georgian poets were, by the strictest definition, those whose works appeared
in a series of five anthologies named Georgian Poetry, published by Harold Monro and
edited by Edward Marsh, the first volume of which contained poems written in 1911 and
1912. The group included Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, D. H.
Lawrence, Walter de la Mare, Siegfried Sassoon and John Drinkwater.

SIEGFRIED SASSOON
(1886-1967)

BIOGRAPHY:
Siegfried Sassoon was born in 1886 in Kent. He was an English poet, writer, and
soldier. His father was part of a Jewish merchant family, originally from Iran and India,
and his mother part of the artistic Thorneycroft family. Sassoon studied at Cambridge
University but left without a degree. He then lived the life of a country gentleman,
hunting and playing cricket while also publishing small volumes of poetry. In 1915,
Sassoon was commissioned into the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and went to France. He
impressed many with his bravery in the front line and was given the nickname 'Mad Jack'
for his near-suicidal exploits. He received a Military Cross for bringing back a wounded
soldier during heavy fire. His brother Hamo was killed in November 1915 at Gallipoli.
In the summer of 1916, Sassoon was sent to England to recover from fever. He
went back to the front, but was wounded in April 1917 and returned home. Meetings with
several prominent pacifists had reinforced his growing disillusionment with the war and
in June 1917 he wrote a letter that was published in the Times in which he said that the
war was being deliberately and unnecessarily prolonged by the government.
As a decorated war hero and published poet, this caused public outrage. It was
only his friend and fellow poet, Robert Graves, who prevented him from being courtmartialled by convincing the authorities that Sassoon had shell-shock. He was sent to
Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. Here he met, and greatly
influenced, Wilfred Owen. Both men returned to the front where Owen was killed in
1918. Sassoon was posted to Palestine and then returned to France, where he was again
wounded, spending the remainder of the war in England. He died in 1967.

On 11 November 1985, Sassoon was among sixteen Great War poets


commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. The
inscription on the stone was written by friend and fellow War poet Wilfred Owen. It
reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

MAIN WORKS
COUNTER-ATTACK AND OTHER POEMS collects some of Sassoon's best war poems,
all of which are "harshly realistic laments or satires,"
THE WAR POEMS OF SIEGFRIED SASSOON included 64 poems of the war, most
written while Sassoon was in hospital recovering from his injuries.
THE MEMOIRS OF GEORGE SHERSTON. In these, he gave a thinly-fictionalized
account, with little changed except names, of his wartime experiences, contrasting them
with his nostalgic memories of country life before the war and recounting the growth of
his pacifist feelings.
Some readers complained that the poet displayed little patriotism, while others found his
shockingly realistic depiction of war to be too extreme. Even pacifist friends complained
about the violence and graphic detail in his work.
After the war Sassoon spent a brief period as literary editor of the Daily Herald before
going to the United States, travelling the length and breadth of the country on a speaking
tour. He then started writing the near-autobiographical novel 'Memoirs of a Fox-hunting
Man' (1928). It was an immediate success, and was followed by others including
'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' (1930) and 'Sherston's Progress' (1936).

In 1957 Sassoon became a convert to Catholicism, though for some time before his
conversion, his spiritual concerns had been the predominant subject of his writing. These
later religious poems are usually considered markedly inferior to those written between
1917 and 1920. Yet SEQUENCES (published shortly before his conversion) has been
praised by some critics.
POEMS ANALYSIS

Does it Matter?
Does it matter? -losing your legs? (Rhetorical question)
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter? -losing you sight? (Rhetorical question)
Theres such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light. (Metaphor)
Do they matter-those dreams in the pit? (Rhetorical question)
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that youre mad;
For they know that you've fought for your country,
And no one will worry a bit.
Sassoon's poem begins with a rhetorical question which lends, not only a sarcastic tone to
the poem, but also an argumentative proposal: If it does matter, then people must react to
this poem and do something about the absurdity of war.
In the first stanza, with a subtle sarcasm, Sassoon asks if it makes a difference whether
someone loses his legs if people will be kind if the soldier appears to not mind when

others, alive with activity and hunger, "come in from hunting/To gobble their muffins and
eggs."
The sarcasm becomes even more prominent in the second stanza as the poet asks if it
matters if the soldier loses his eyes when "There is such splendid (ironic word) for the
blind;/And people will always be kind (also ironic)." Then, the acridness of Sassoon's
sarcasm becomes apparent as he creates the metaphor in which the maimed soldier is
compared to having been reduced to plant-life:
As you sit on the terrace remembering/And turning your face to the light.
Continuing his verse, the poet pointedly asks,
Do they matter, those dreams in the pit?/You can drink and forget and be glad,/And
people won't say that you're mad;

With the loss of part of his humanity, the soldier can no longer dream of the future. In
despair, he will drink and lull himself into a state of nothingness, a state in which no one
will accuse him of irrational anger towards war:
For they know that you've fought for your country/And no one will worry a bit
Of course, in these last two lines there is bitter irony as Sassoon poses the true
irrationality: People believe that glorious war warrants any sacrifice. However, the
poet's rhetorical question leads the reader to conclude that war is inglorious
(THEME) and it is not worth the sacrifice of life or of one's essence.

CONCLUSION

Siegfried Sassoon is best remembered for his angry and compassionate poems of the First
World War, which brought him public and critical acclaim. Avoiding the sentimentality
and jingoism of many war poets, Sassoon wrote of the horror and brutality of trench

warfare and contemptuously satirized generals, politicians, and churchmen for their
incompetence and blind support of the war

R U P E RT B R O O K E
BIOGRAPHY
The English poet Rupert Chawner Brooke was born in1887. The son of the Rugby
Schools housemaster, Brooke excelled in both academics and athletics. He entered his
fathers school at the age of fourteen. A lover of verse since the age of nine, he won the
school poetry prize in 1905.He attended Kings College, Cambridge, where he was
known for his striking good looks, charm, and intellect. While at Cambridge, he
developed an interest in acting and was president of the University Fabian
Society. Brooke published his first poems in 1909; his first book, Poems, appeared in
1911. While working on his dissertation on John Webster and Elizabethan dramatists, he
lived in the house that he made famous by his poem The Old Vicarage,
Grantchester.Popular in both literary and political circles, he befriended Winston
Churchill, Henry James, and members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia
Woolf. In 1912, Brooke left England to travel in France and Germany for several months.
Upon his return to England, Brooke received a fellowship at Kings College and spent
time in both Cambridge and London. In 1912 he compiled an anthology
entitled Georgian Poetry, 1911-12, with Edward Marsh. The Georgian poets wrote in an
anti-Victorian style, using rustic themes and subjects such as friendship and love. While
critics viewed Brookes poetry as too sentimental and lacking depth, they also considered
his work a reflection of the mood in England during the years leading up to World War
I.After experiencing a mental breakdown in 1913, Brooke traveled again, spending
several months in America, Canada, and the South Seas. During his trip, he wrote essays
about his impressions for the Westminster Gazette, which were collected in Letters From
America (1916). While in the South Seas, he wrote some of his best poems, including
Tiare Tahiti and The Great Lover.He returned to England at the outbreak of World
War I and enlisted in the Royal Naval Division. His most famous work, the sonnet
sequence 1914 and Other Poems, appeared in 1915. In1915, after taking part in the
Antwerp Expedition, he died of blood poisoning from a mosquito bite while en route to
Gallipoli with the Navy. He was buried on the island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea.
Following his death, Brooke, who was already famous, became a symbol in England of
the tragic loss of talented youth (Brooke, aged 27)during the war.

*Bloomsbury

Group: was

an influential

group

of

associated

English writers,

intellectuals, philosophers and artists, the best known members of which included
Virginia Woolf, Keynes,Forster, and Strachey. This loose collective of friends and
relatives lived, worked or studied together near Bloomsbury,London, during the first half
of the 20th century. They were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the
arts".Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and
economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality.

MAIN WORKS
Poetry
Poems (1911)
Georgian Poetry, 1911-1912 (1912)
1914, and Other Poems (1915)
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (1915)
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (1918)
The Poetical Works of Rupert Brooke (1946)
Prose
Lithuania: A Drama in One Act (1915)
John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama (1916)
Letters From America (1916)
Democracy and the Arts (1946)
The Prose of Rupert Brooke (1956)
The Letters of Rupert Brooke (1968)
Rupert Brooke: A Reappraisal and Selection From His Writings, Some Hitherto
Unpublished (1971)
Letters From Rupert Brooke to His Publisher, 1911-1914(1975)

THE SOLDIER- SUMMARY AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS


S U M M A RY

The Soldier is a sonnet in which Brooke glorifies England during the First World War. He
speaks in the guise of an English soldier as he is leaving home to go to war. The poem

represents the patriotic ideals that characterized pre-war England. It portrays death for
ones country as a noble end and England as the noblest country for which to die.

Concepts to take into account:


Sonnet: it is fourteen lines in length, and it almost always is iambic pentameter, but in structure

and rhyme scheme may be considerable leeway


Italian sonnet: it is divided usually between eight lines octave- using two rimes arranged a a b
b a a b b a, and six lines-sestet- using any arrangement of either two of three rhymes: c d c d c d

and c d e c d e are common pattern


English sonnet: is composed of three quatrains and concluding cuplets riming a b a b c d c d e f

efgg
Iambic pentameter: every line of iambic pentameter contains five iambs. Now, an iamb is

a two-syllable pair that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Eg. That is forever England. There shall be (exception in line 8)


Brooke's poem combines elements of both the Italian (structurally) and the English
sonnet (rhyme scheme). The octave is like an English sonnet, and its rhyme scheme is
ABABCDCD. The sestet, however, takes the form of an Italian sonnet and has a rhyme
scheme of EFGEFG.
TITLE
The Soldier. It's not "a soldier," but "the soldier," as in "the soldier, par excellence," or
"the ideal soldier." That, at any rate, is what Brooke's title seems to be telling us his poem
is about: a generic but ideal (or model) soldier, one who understands that he may die but
also believes his death will benefit his country (England). As a result of his sacrifice, after
all, "some corner of a foreign field" will be "forever England," no matter what happens.
To a certain extent, Brooke's poem reflects what many Europeans at the time would have
considered an ideal soldierone who loves his country very deeply (the words England
or English occur four times in this very short poem). That soldier would also see his own
death as a sacrifice that will benefit his country. And his reward for this sacrifice is honor
in the afterlife. The soldier's death is portrayed as not really the end, but only the
beginning of a new life in heaven.
SPEAKER
The speaker of "The Soldier," is the soldier which was Brookes reality (autobiographical
poem).
TH E R E A L IS T

When you start a poem with "If I should die," then you're already confronting a cold, hard
truth that most people would rather not think about. As a solider, though, the speaker is
thrust face-to-face with his own mortality, and so this poem is his way of working
through that imminent possibility. (Historically, for Brooke, that possibility became a sad
reality when he went off to war and died of infection not long after this poem was
written.) So we feel that we must give the speaker props for dealing with reality, rather
than ignoring it.
T H E ID E A L IS T

Of course, the WAY that the speaker deals with the threat of death is hardly realistic. He
imagines a kind of heaven that will be just the like home, full of the same thoughts,
sights, sounds, and even dreams of his native land. Now, you could say that this makes
our speaker a real patriot, but you could also make the case that he's sort of deluding
himself. Sure, it'd be nice to imagine heaven as a place EXACTLY like your favorite
place, but think about that for a second. Isn't doing so just imagining that you're current
experiences will go on forever, despite death? Isn't this just an elaborate form of denial,
then? He couldnt witness the atrocities of war.
TH E PATR IO T

Another way to read the speaker's "English heaven," though, is just to see it as a natural
extension of his love of country. He celebrates his upbringing there, promises to claim
more land for it in the war, and portrays heaven as nothing more than an extension of
England. In other words, he's saying that England will go on foreverboth in terms of
earthly conquest, and in terms of heavenly immortality.
This patriotism, then, is part of what ultimately blinds the speaker to the very real,
impending horror of World War I. His speaker is a great example of the kind of nave,
overly-romantic, and jingoistic thinking that could send millions of people into armed
conflict against each other.
SETTING
From the speaker's past, England in a foreign field, heckeven England up in heaven! No matter
where the speaker's mind roams (because the poem literally takes place in his mind), it always

finds England. What's really telling about this poem, though, is the way that England so
dominates our speaker's thoughts.

FIRST STANZA -ANALYSIS


In the first stanza (the octave of the sonnet) stanza, he talks about how his grave will be England
herself, and what it should remind the listeners of England when they see the grave.
Hypothetic situation (by using if) / Apostrophe eg. Line 1: If I should die, think only this of
me:
Apostrophe: consist in addressing sb. Absent or sth nonhuman as if it were alive and present and
could reply what is being said

The speaker begins by addressing the reader, and speaking to them in the imperative:
think only this of me. This sense of immediacy establishes the speakers romantic
attitude towards death in duty. He suggests that the reader should not mourn. Whichever
corner of a foreign field becomes his grave; it will also become forever England. He
will have left a monument of England in a forever England. He will have left a
monument in England in a foreign land, figuratively transforming a foreign soil to
England. The suggestion that English dust must be richer represents a real attitude
that the people of the Victorian age actually had.
.
Alliteration- eg. Line 2: that theres some corner of a foreign field
Alliteration: the repeated sound of the first consonant in a series of multiple words, or the

repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or
in stressed syllables of a phrase.
ImageryImagery: the representation through languge of sense experience
There's a lot of nature in this poem. Fields, dust, flowers, rivers, sunsit's all over the
place. The relationship between the speaker and the natural world is very close, even
harmonious. When he dies, he returns to the earth (as dust). Moreover, as a child, he was
"washed" and "blest" by the rivers and sun of his homeland (England). When he dies, his
heaven will look like the England he knew as a childincluding its natural
characteristics. Eg-

Line 2: The speaker imagines acquiring a "corner of a foreign field" for his home country,
England. Nature is endowed with English-ness here, as it will be again soon.
Line 4: in that rich earth a richer dust concealed; (imagery of the country)
Line 6: gave once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
Personification

Personification: consist in giving attributes of a human being to an animal, an object or an


idea.
Eg. Line 5: The speaker is a "dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware." England
can't really do these things, so this is a case of personification.
Line 6: England gave the speaker "flowers to love" and "ways to roam." England can't
actually give anything, so this is an example of personification.
Line 8: The speaker was "washed" by England's rivers, and "blest" by her suns. Neither
the suns nor the rivers can wash or bless, so this is also personification.
Religious connotations
Eg: Line 8: The soldier also has a sense of beauty of his country that is in fact a part of his
identity. In the final line of the first stanza, nature takes on a religious significance for the speaker.
He is washed by the rivers, suggesting the purification of baptism, and blest by the sun of
home.

SECOND STANZA - ANALYSIS


Religious connotation- Christian point of view

In the second stanza, the sestet, the physical is left behind in favor of the spiritual. If the
first stanza is about the soldiers thought of this world and England, the second is about
his thoughts of heaven and England (in fact, an English heaven).
In the sestet, the soldier goes on to tell the listener what to think of him if he dies at war, but he
presents a more imaginative picture of himself. He forgets the grave in the foreign country where
he might die, and he begins to talk about how he will have transformed into an eternal spirit. This
means that to die for England is the surest way to get a salvation: as implied in the last line, he
even thinks that he will become a part of an English heaven.

The heart will be transformed by death. Line 9: All earthly evil will be shed away. (a
Christian view). Once the speaker has died, his soul will give back to England everything
England has given to him- in other words, everything that the speaker has become. In the

sestet England takes on the role of a heavenly creator, a part of the eternal mind of
God. In this way, dying for England gains the status of religious salvation. Wherever he
dies, his death for England will be a salvation of his soul. It is therefore the most
desirable of all fates.
Personification: eg

line 11: gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given

line 12:he sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;


imagery: eg-

Line 10: The speaker describes a "pulse in the eternal mind." The "eternal mind" refers to
God's mind (eternal here means that it has never been created and will never die). God, of
course, lives in heaven, which is described as being just like England.

Line 14: the speaker describes an "English heaven" in the last six lines of the poem.
Alliteration: eg- Line 12 gives us "sights and sounds," line 13 has "laughter, learnt," and
line 14 ends with "hearts" and "heaven."

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS TO CONSIDER


PRE-WAR IDEALISM

Rupert Brooke is often criticized for not being realistic about war. To put it another way,
his poetryand the war sonnets in particular, of which "The Soldier" is one of the most
famousis idealistic.
In "The Soldier," for example, the speaker says nothing about the horrors of war. The
mass murder of millions of young soldiers over inconsequential plots of land, for
example, is nowhere mentioned or even hinted at in Brooke's poem. Instead, the speaker
suggests that dying on the battlefield while claiming more land for one's country is a
noble, a heroic, even an ideal way to go out.

Moreover, the poem says nothing about the gaping void the soldier's death will leave in the lives
of his friends and family. All we get is a description of a peaceful death that leads the soldier to an
even more blissful "English heaven." The realities of wardeath, sadness, and lossare not to
be found in "The Soldier," or Brooke's work in general
ENGLAND

The word "England" or "English" occurs six times in this poem. That's a lot for a poem
that is only 14 lines! In this poem England is like a mother to the soldier; she gave birth
to him, nourished him, and made him who he is. But England is also immortal. Even
though, in death, the soldier must leave England, it's only for a little while. When he dies,
the soldier will go to a heaven that's just like the England he left behind on Earth.

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