She's Got You High

Robert Graves' poem Escape came out on August 6, 1916 and is about an Officer that was previously reported to have died of wounds, and that was now reported wounded, that seems to be Graves himself. The poem holds a lot of allusions, interesting punctuation and a powerful theme.


The allusions in this poem are overwhelming. Most of them refer to Greek mythology, like 'Ceberus' and 'Lethe'. Ceberus is mentioned several times. In the Greek stories, he's a three-headed hound who guards the doors of the underworld to prevent those that have crossed the river Styx to ever escape again. He describes Ceberus to 'stands and grins above me now, wearing three heads - lion, and lynx and sow'. He then goes on and fights Ceberus by cram its mouth with army biscuit smeared with ration jam', symbolizing that he conquers death and goes back to the living. Lady Proserpine, who is also mentioned in the poem refers to Persephone, the queen of the Greek underworld. He describes that she's the one who saves him by sending him back to the world of the living, even though that makes the hosts of the underworld very furious. The Greek mythology in this poem is very pertinent, and Graves uses it to put his near-death experience into metaphores and images.


The punctuation in this poem helps creating an image of helplessness and being lost. A lot of elipses are used like 'I said. ... Cerberus stands and grins above me', and 'Stolen!...No bombs...no knife. ... The crowd smarms on,...[...]'. By using all these elipses, he creates a sense of suspension and gives the poem a breath pattern. It is very possible that Graves wrote this poem to read to his little daughter, which would explain the fact that he would make it more suspense-full and entertaining to her by adding all these pauses and halts. He even starts the poem off with three points, creating the notion of being dead and awakening in another world after an hour of thinking he was dead.


The theme of this poem is very personal, as he talks about his near-death experience that is very close to his heart. He might have written this poem to his daughter, which explains the punctuation, as well as the entertaining diction and words such as 'poppy', 'snore' and 'apple', which a little kid can easily relate to even if she doesn't understand the true meaning of the poem. This poem is very interesting in terms of allusions, punctuation and theme and it is a good representation of Graves' usual writing style. 

People Help The People

Wilfred Owen's Athem For Doomed Youth and Siegfried Sassoon's Picture-Show have a few similarities. First of all, they have a similar structure, then they share some similar dictional elements and last of all they talk about a similar theme.
Structure:
Wilfred Owen's Anthem For Doomed Youth has a weird structure. The first stanza is larger than the second stanza, containing 8 lines, while the second stanza has only 6 lines. It has an ABABCDCD rhyme scheme in the first stanza, and a different one in the second: ABBACC. This leaves the poem to having an overall attempted rhyme scheme. Every second line, including the last two lines begin half a centimetre before the other lines, giving them some special importance, as he doesn't do this in his poem 'Strange Meeting' for example.
Just like Anthem For Doomed Youth, Siegfried Sassoon's Picture-Show has an odd structure. The first stanza has 6 lines but the second stanza has only 4 lines. It seems as though it was in style to get away from the traditional stanzas that contained an equal amount of lines. Just like in Owen's poem, Picture-Show changes the rhyme scheme from first to second stanza. The first one goes: AABCBC and the second one: AABB, an heroic couplet. Both authors liked to play with an attempted rhyme scheme to convey a message or to portray a certain mood or idea. This poem starts its lines at the same level, so that must be something specific to Owen's poems.
Dictional elements
What was very recurrent in Anthem For Doomed Youth was the repition of the words 'Only' and 'no/nor'. He uses very powerful and dark diction to talk about the scenery, saying 'monstrous anger', 'stuttering', 'hasty orisons', 'shrill, demented choirs', 'sad shires' in the first stanza. Then in the second stanza he takes over a much softer diction, writing 'In their eyes shall shine the holy glimmers', 'their flowers the tenderness of mind'. Another element that stood out was alliterations. 'The stuttering rifles rapid rattle' is the main alliteration in the third line but there are also the 'sad shires', 'glimmers of good-bye' and the 'dusk a drawing-down'.
Picture-Show shares some of the dictional elements of Anthem For Doomed Youth. There is a repition of the word 'And' in terms of starting off an additional thought in a new line with this word: 'And still...', 'And still...' and 'And life...'. Both authors use this strategy to put emphasis on a certain idea or word. Repition of a word seemed to be a modern way of getting the most important ideas across. Sassoon uses rather neutral adjectives and descriptions in comparison to Owen. Instead of portraying something 'good' or 'bad', he describes a neverending cercle, using words such as 'come and go', 'endless picture-show', 'listless faces' and 'ever the same'. It can be said that when it comes to the use of diction, each poet has their own style of writing. Just like Owen, Sassoon likes alliterations such as 'faces flicker', but they're not as dominant as Owen's.
Theme:
Both poems are obviously about war.
Anthem For Doomed Youth is about death, as well as Picture-Show. They both share the notion of something passing by, in forms of bells or pictures. They're about people that pass by or away mentally and physically. They talk about loss and the pain it brings on their families and loved ones. Both authors have suffered through the war, and they've become close friends. They're styles of writing are similar to other WW1 poets, but they still guard their individuality.

Any Other World

The poem Trench Duty by Siegfried Sassoon is about a soldier being on guard at night, witnessing a bombing and the death of a chap. Sassoon's satirical tone depicts the unnecessary prolongation of war. If a certain disapproval was present in Sassoon's words at the beginning of this poem, the last words of the poem bring forth his frustration and cynical disgust with war and the fact that people die for no reason. 

The setting of this poem is very important to the meaning of it. The poem is set in the midst of a battlefield, in 'the trench'. It is set off almost like a nightmare, like a surreal situation that seems absurd to the narrator. The words 'Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake' create a scenario where the narrator is stumbling half-awake through the dangerous scenes of war, highlighting his bitter feeling towards fighting by making it seem like the narrator doesn't care about what's going on. The alliterations at various moments in the poem give the setting a sense of repetition which reveals the bored, but at the same desperate tone like: ‘… the men crouching in cabins candle chinked with light.’ This alliteration in particular could mean that the narrator is so annoyed with the fact that the soldiers have to crouch like animals in small rooms with only the light of a candle, or that the narrator is trying to give the whole setting a bit of a humorous side which makes the situation absurd.

A second element that is crucial to a development of understanding of the poem is the narrator. Given a few indices in the text, it can be assumed that Sassoon is telling a true story that has happened to him. The fact that the most important thing in the text is the moment where he hears someone shoot a gun and then he’s wide awake and his chap is dead, leads to conclude that the chap is Wilfred Owen. They met in war and built up a true friendship before Owen was killed and Sassoon’s poems adopted a darker tone than before. Sassoon fought at war and was honored for bravery, but he realized how useless it was to fight, which is something that is very well presented in this poem through tone, that was discussed earlier.

The poem is a moment of awareness that arises throughout the lines. In the beginning the narrator has just been woken up, he’s tired and he’s ‘scarce awake’. When he realizes the situation around him, mocks it and then bitterly acknowledges the drama, he finds himself ‘wide-awake’ when his chap is dead.

The Only Lonely One

The poem 'Greater Love' by Wilfred Owen is a response to 'Before the Mirror' by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Before the Mirror is a poem that gradually changes its tone from sad to sadder. The poem is about a young girl that he's fallen in love with but that has deceived him by marrying someone else. Before he knew her he thought of her as a white rose in a red-rose garden, but it turned out that she wasn't so white after all. The words 'Snowdrops that plead for pardon' show that something happened that she's sorry for but that she can't change because she has been told to marry someone else. The hard East is compared to the institution that is forcing her to marry the man she's given. She's not pure and innocent anymore because she's been with someone else, the narrator of the poem.
Greater Love is also about love, but it takes a more sarcastic take on the whole notion of it. Owen's poem is much more war related and relates everything he says about being hurt by love to another level by comparing it to the much worse pains of war. Both poem mention the color red, which plays a big role in the development of the poem. Swinburne writes saying that the red-roses are the used ones, the one that aren't innocent anymore, that are full of love and seduction. Owen writes 'Red lips are not so red' taking a direct take on Swinburne's line: 'White rose in red rose-garden is not so white', and emphasizes on the fact that red is a color of seduction and lust, which isn't considered pure. The girl that Swinburne describes isn't pure anymore because her color starts resembling the color of the red roses. She has experiences life even though she might be better to him than any other woman.
The second phrase in Greater Love that relates directly to Before the Mirror is: ' And though your hand be pale, paler are all which trail your cross through flame and hail: weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not'. Swinburne wrote  'My hand, a fallen rose, lies snow-white, on white snows and takes no care'. Owen comments on the paleness by saying that your hand may be pale and that all that are paler have gone through hell putting shame on religion and your beliefs, and that you can cry about all that you've lost but that you may not touch what you've lost because you lost all right to. Swinburne is saying that his hand has fallen, that he's lost his love and hope and there's a notion of death in the tone.
The styles the poems are written in are similar, if not the same. Owen wrote a response to Swinburne, not to mock him, but to tell him about his own opinion, adopting Swinburne's structure and style of writing. 

I can't make you love me (if you don't)

The poem ‘Greater Love’ by Wilfred Owen compares love to war. It expresses a deep sentiment of dark pain that is embellished with soft words and the notion of love but never loses its sweet bitterness.

The title ‘Greater Love’ suggests that the cruelty of war is an even stronger feeling than love, which is ironic because one says that love is the most extraordinary feeling you could have. Owen is commenting on the fact that war diminishes ones perception of happiness and turns all ones attention of the one and only important thing in their lives: war. Through his writing it becomes very clear to what extent Owen resents everything that comes with war, which can easily be explained by his tragic biography that includes various war wounds.

The way he portrays this lover of his, he almost mocks the whole notion of being in love. In his third stanza he writes:

Your dear voice is not dear,

Gentle, and evening clear,

As theirs whom none now hear,

Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

The first two lines are soft but cynical, and then his words become darker and darker when he reminds everyone of the dead whose voices won’t ever be dear again because they’ve been put to silence by the arrogant hand of man. The first line states that “Red lips are not so dead as the stained stones kissed by the English dead”, giving a perfect example of the constant irony and mocking in Owen’s words.

Personally I really loved this poem, it’s something different and I could relate to it for once. His words are honest and he doesn’t try and twist things in a million ways to make them look and sound good, it just seems to me like simple perfection, something he wrote in a certain state of mind that pushed him to write his feelings down. 

The A-Team

Siegfried Sassoon’s poem ‘Repression Of War Experience’ is about a soldier that tries to forget his memories of the war that are driving him mad. There is a persistent struggle shown in the lines of this poem that puts the narrator’s thoughts to show.  The narrator talks about the thoughts of war that he’s been trying to put away, but as he says they ‘come back to scare you’. In the first stanza he mentions that only the soldier who has lost control over his thoughts has become a mad soldier, but judging from his constant inner conversation he could very well fall into this category. The last line of the first stanza mentions something very interesting that stood out, which is the phrase ‘among the trees’, as it comes up in the second part as well. The narrator says that only when you’re mad you’re driven to ‘jabber among the trees’ and later on he says that only the ugly ghosts of old people are among the trees. This is interesting in itself, as he first describes a mad soldier to be driven in this mysterious place, but then he says that only old men that aren’t killed in battle are there. At these points it’s easy to detect the narrator’s fears: age and madness.

Another comparison is made in this poem that links the serenity of the narrator to rain. After he’s just talked about the mad men that have lost their stream of thought, he writes ‘Now light your pipe, look, what a steady hand. Draw a deep breath; stop thinking, count fifteen, and you’re as right as rain… Why won’t it rain?’. There are several elements in these sentences that outline the whole theme of the poem. First of all, the fear of being mad. The narrator calms himself down by talking calmly, and using the words ‘look, what a steady hand’. Somehow the fact that he can light his pipe without shaking proves to him that he’s steady as the rain, and normal as the rain. Then something striking happens as the narrator asks ‘Why won’t it rain?’. He begins to question his serenity and his tone hints his panic. Just a few lines after he creates a vivid image by wishing that there’d be a thunderstorm with buckets full of water sluicing through the dark. The dark represents his repressed feelings and fears that he’s been told to hide because he needs the strength of a soldier even if he’s not fighting. He wants the rain, his serenity, to slice through the dark, his madness.

The last part of the poem raises the attention of the reader because it conveys a whole other mood than the other parts. In this part the narrator expresses the wish that he wants the guns to stop shooting in the distance. His diction is quite loving, as he describes the gunshots to be ‘soft’ and the guns to be ‘whispering’. He’s physically away from the war, but the thoughts, the gunshots, are haunting him down which has as an effect that he gets crazy. In his last lines he says that he’s going crazy and start, staring mad because of the guns. He’s finally admitted to himself that he’s got a problem that he can’t ignore. He blames the war, but he praises the soldier that dies in battle. He’s obviously got a psychological issue repressed by the feelings of fear. His personality can be linked to the stereotypical type of the ‘Lost Generation’, as he doesn’t know where he belongs and he doesn’t see the purpose in life, other than to die in war and get it over with before you become old and ugly. 

Take it All

The poem ‘The bough of nonsense’ is about two soldiers that have come back from a battle. They feel like they’ve just lived through centuries and that nine parts of them are dead. ‘S’ seems to be down and exhausted after what he’s just experienced and he needs some comfort. Robert, who is the younger one, cheers him up by telling him to look at the bough of nonsense where nonsense has built its nest. Even though the tone is happy and ridiculous, they look like a hidden cynical cover of their frustration about their lives of a soldier. The bough of nonsense takes away the need for alcohol, the melancholy and the psalms, indicating that God is part of the pain that the soldiers want to get rid of. They feel betrayed and look at the world in a laughing way because they know just how ridiculous it is, and how much nonsense seems to rule the world. Injustices and crimes are the constant in their lives, as shown in the line ‘and whosoever worships in that place, he disappears from sight and leaves no trace’. The regime that has been rising is a temple with no ground, something people admire from the outside, but once they step in and realize what the temple is really made off, they fall and are never to be seen again. This could also mean that once someone has stepped into the world of war, there is no way out and one is absorbed as much as to not belong anywhere anymore and having no purpose besides from falling. The moment the soldiers are spending together is sensed to be unique and of short time, as ‘S’ says that ‘Before this quaint mood fails, we’ll sit and weave a nonsense hymn’. He knows that idyllic moments have become so rare and special, that one has to make the most of them, before they fall in ‘a deep grove all hushed and dim’. Their situation is clearly tragic, but both S and Robert keep their humor when they use words such as ‘monkey tails’, ‘yellow-bunched banana-trees’ and ‘pink birds’ to turn their situation as enjoyable as possible. It can be assumed that they are exhausted from the fight and haven’t had a lot to eat or drink in a while, and are therefore being a bit delusional, or maybe they’re intentionally saying all these things. The poem has a strong emotional message about the soldier’s feelings towards war and it can be interpreted in different ways. 

Look at me now

Bulls verses Steers. Who are the bulls, who are the steers?

The whole world can be divided into bulls and steers. There are those who are in control and those who are only powerful in a group. The bulls and steers are a brutal representation of our daily life. Some kill when they’re alone, but are calm when they’re in a group.

If there was one bullfighter in the book it would definitely be Brett. She is the worst heartbreaker and people like her shouldn’t be allowed to walk around and break people’s hearts when they clearly cannot handle another rejection. Just the fact that she lost her love at war, doesn’t permit her to act like she’s just come out of high school, thinking she can break all the high school boy’s hearts. She lets people so close, leaving them thinking that what they have is the best thing that has happened to them, but in the end all the running and racing and fighting of the bull is for nothing and she ruthlessly kills the bull, with not much respect like Romero.

If Brett is the bullfighter, then Cohn is a Bull for sure. He tries so hard, chases her no matter how sneakily she plays with his heart. In this situation, Cohn can be pitied, but I’d also say that he’s the person a lot of heartbroken people can easily relate to. The public thinks he’s pathetic, but let’s take a good look at ourselves because honestly, who are we to talk. Cohn even lets Brett kill him when he goes around beating people up like they’ve got anything to do with his misery, when he’s the only problem there is. His problem is love (never does anyone any good, let’s be honest).

Mike is a steer. He lets Brett play with his heart and doesn’t even care to fight. He just ends up whining about his oh-so-very miserable situation when he’s drunk out of his mind. He would be a weak steer, if there is such a thing. He’s only strong in a group, when he’s got all his friends around or when Brett is sitting next to him.

Jake is a confused bull. He accepts his situation, but still unconsciously races for Brett’s love. This chase might only be going on when he’s drunk, but he still feels these things. Jake and Brett can tell each other that they have accepted that not being together is the better choice, but in the end it doesn’t make them happy either, and they don’t find happiness with someone else.

Who are the bulls, and who are the steers? Well, good question. I suggest everyone take a good look in the mirror because you just might not be who you thought you were.