To what extent does the poetry of war dispel the myths associated with the war propaganda of World War I?
Throughout the early 1900’s the war propaganda that was published to entice young men to enlist and join the war gave them false ideas about the front line. Young men and boys were told that war was one big adventure and encouraged to go to the great war and become a hero. Young men were fooled into believing that dying for your country was sweet and honourable however three men who fought in the war and experienced the front line drew from their personal knowledge to completely dispel these myths. Vernon Scannell, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfrid Owen suffered throughout the war and wrote the poems The Great War, Suicide in the Trenches
Owen writes about one of his experiences whilst he fought in the war with such vivid imagery and sensory details that the audience is transported to the battlefield so that they too can feel the rush of adrenalin as the words “Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!”(Line 9) are yelled to alert the young men to an attack. Owen’s last verse describing a young man’s death shocks the audience as they can almost hear the boy die “at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” (line 21 and 22). As Sassoon attacked the people who encouraged young men to join the war because they did not know the hell that these men would experience, Owen too, questions the public about their desperation to tell children who are looking for adventure, “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.” because Owen’s knows that it is not sweet and honourable to die for your country.
The poetry that the men produced after experiencing the war contradicts the propaganda that was released throughout the First World War. Horrifying scenes and unsanitary conditions were what the young men and boys faced once they were in the trenches fighting. It was here they faced the realisation that it was neither sweet nor honourable to die for their country and that war was not an enthralling adventure to see the world. The governments controlled the media; effectively controlling the