The Soldier"

English Essay

�The Soldier’ by Rupert Brooke

And

�Asleep’ by Wilfred Owen

Pg.1

These two poems show the difference of how death in the war could be written in many ways. The poets used a variety of language techniques and also the imagery being extracted by the reader. This will also help me to shape my understanding of war and hopefully lead to a change of perspective for people.

Both poets have used a wide range of language techniques in both of their poems. One of the techniques used is similes. In the first poem, The Solider “Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day”. While as in Asleep the line “From the intrusive lead, like ants on track” has more of a tragic side of the war, it shows how the soldiers have died in the battlefield. “..Like ants on track” gives the reader also an imagery effect to how the blood of the soldier has left the body and how it travelled down to like an ant travels in group or colonies. Whereas in The Soldier the simile used has more of a patriotic and honorable theme. That is because, as the soldier was prepared to die, he has thought of only England as the only country that means so much to him, and to die for it he was very honorable to accept his defeat. Rupert Brooke has structured his poem to more of how wonderfully this soldier had served his country dying for it instead of describing the death of a soldier that was showed in the poem of Asleep.

In �The Soldier’, “Give somewhere back the thoughts by England given,” this shows that the soldier is giving back the thoughts that he has received from England by that means, the pride and honors that he was given for fighting for his country and therefore since he is about to die in the war, he is buried in England’s soil “In that rich earth a richer dust concealed” is an evidence that is showed in the poem. “Under his helmet, up against the rock, after the many days of working and waiting,” this clearly shows how the soldier dealt war everyday. He had no place to relax and rest, except in the battlefield where thousands of soldiers whose lives have expired. There’s no time to put down his pack and relax, nothing else to think. It’s as if this is what he did everyday and to finally deal with it, he was ready to take death as an escape to leave the cruel consequences of war.

Wilfred Owen has used personification to the world “sleep” and gave it a physical type of form in the poem. “Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back”, the poet has given this sentence an imagery effect and he did this by using personification and verbs. But in the other poem of �The Soldier’ it shows that the