Subject Areas |
History and Social Studies
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U.S. History - World War I |
Literature and Language Arts
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American |
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British |
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Poetry |
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Time Required |
| 3-5 class periods |
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Skills |
| close reading of a text
critical analysis and interpretation
historical analysis
Internet research
using primary sources
collaboration
comparison and contrast
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Additional Data |
| Date Created: 11/16/04
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Additional Student/Teacher Resources |
| Poetic Devices (PDF file) |
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Author(s) |
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Kellie Tabor-Hann
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Date Posted |
| 11/16/2004 |
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Poetry of The Great War: 'From Darkness to Light'?
Introduction
The historian and literary critic Paul Fussell has noted in The Great War and Modern Memory that, "Dawn has never recovered from what the Great War did to it." He argues that World War I, with its unprecedented trench warfare and mass devastation across the European landscape, left a dark cloud hanging over the world. Despite the patriotism, optimism, and idealism held by the young men who eagerly fought for their respective country, World War I was fraught with widespread destruction and loss.
The very symbol of dawn, which traditionally would bring with it the hope and freshness of a new day, was reconfigured in a war like no other in history. Instead of the symbolic hope and freshness of a new day, the WWI dawn often brought with it the profound reality of a landscape flecked with causalities and devastation as young soldiers peered from the dark depths of their trenches. With dawn as a common symbol in poetry, it is no wonder that, like a new understanding of dawn itself, a comprehensive body of "World War I Poetry" emerged from the trenches as well.
Perhaps the most widely read and anthologized WWI poet, Wilfred Owen fought and ultimately died in WWI. His famous poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" presents a raw portrait of the life soldiers often experienced during the War. Edgar Guest, who was born in England and raised in the U.S., was in his early thirties when WWI began. Though he wrote about The Great War, he never fought in it. He worked at the Detroit Free Press newspaper as a verse columnist and has been called "the people's poet."
Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and Guest's famous poem "The Things That Make a Soldier Great" enable close analysis of common poetic devices (e.g., meter, rhyme, tone, symbol, image, consonance, etc.) and of each poem's marriage of form and content. Different interpretations of WWI itself emerge from these poems, which ultimately offer a far-reaching literary supplement to our collective history and understanding of The Great War.
Guiding Questions
- What are some common poetic devices, and how are they used to present and interpret WWI?
- What is the relationship between a poem's form and its content?
Learning Objectives
- Students will explore the historical context of "World War I poetry."
- Students will be able to define and understand in context common poetic devices.
- Students will be able to compare and contrast poems via active class discussion.
- Students will be able to provide a well-supported, written analysis of the relationship between a poem's form and its content.
Preparing to Teach This Lesson
- Review the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and other useful websites. Download and print out documents you will use, including the PDF "Poetic Devices Worksheet," and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.
- Students should read the following poems prior to the second day's discussion:
- Review the WWI Photoessay from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Modern American Poetry to gain a general sense of the Great War.
Please note that some of these photos have potentially disturbing
images of wounded and killed soldiers
- For background context for World War I, review the EDSITEment lessons "A
Documentary Chronology of World War I" (see in particular the Chronology
of WWI) and the "The
Images of War" as a general context of the power of war images. If time
permits, consider using one or both of these EDSITEment lesson plans either
as a prelude or an extension to the current lesson plan.
- To gain a better understanding of WWI's defining aspect of trench warfare,
browse the EDSITEment-reviewed "Photos
of the Great War" (especially "Before
and After" pictures) and trench photos from the EDSITEment resource WWI
Document Archive and videos from The
Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed
Academy of American Poets site.
- Review the EDSITEment-reviewed WWI Document Archive, especially the Memoirs and Remembrances by soldiers. The lesson focuses on memoirs by Philip Curme and Patrick MacGill.
- Study the "A Wonderful Opportunity for You" American solider recruitment poster housed at the National Archives and Records Administration and the "Only Road for an Englishman: Through Darkness to Light" poster from the Library of Congress' American Memory Project.
- Explore poet-specific sites, including, for example, the following Owen
links from the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy
of American Poets:
Suggested Activities
1. The War in Context
If time allows, consider using the following EDSITEment lesson plans to provide
an overview of World War I:
- "A Documentary
Chronology of World War I." (See in particular the Chronology of WWI)
- "The Images
of War" as a general context of the power of war images.
For further overview of the war, consider having students review the WWI
Photoessay from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Modern
American Poetry to gain a general sense of the Great War. Students might
consider the following questions: What do these photos suggest about the
mood of the new soldiers? The mood of the civilians? What is the overall
feeling that these photos evoke? How would you describe the weaponry of
the photos of "The Somme, 1916."? Please note that some of these photos
have potentially disturbing images of wounded and killed soldiers
2. Poetic Analysis Warm-up Exercises
Symbolism and Imagery: "Through Darkness to Light"
- Many poetic devices, such as symbolism and imagery, can be used and understood
outside the context of poetry. Ask students to provide a general definition
for symbolism and imagery. The Purdue Online Writing Lab, available through
the EDSITEment reviewed Internet Public Library, provides a useful
worksheet detailing these literary terms. While imagery helps set the
tone and mood in a work, symbols tend to create a more pointed, one-to-one
relationship between a symbol and the feeling or object to which it refers.
In a western film, for example, the imagery of tumbleweed sets a tone of desolation
and tension, while the hero's white hat and the villain's black hat are symbols
of good and evil. Point out to students that symbolism in WWI posters can
help us understand the general mood of the U.S. and Great Britain during the
era of "The Great War"—before, during, and after the War. Show, for example,
the "A Wonderful
Opportunity for You" American solider recruitment poster housed at the
National
Archives and Records Administration and the "Only
Road for an Englishman: Through Darkness to Light" poster from the Library
of Congress' American
Memory Project. Using the NARA
Poster Analysis Worksheet as a guide, discuss the posters' textual and
visual rhetoric with your class at large. Then focus on the symbolism of light
and darkness as students discuss the posters in more detail.
- Symbolism and Imagery: Working with the posters and analysis
worksheet, ask students to point out and discuss the symbols and imagery
they identify in each poster. Additional considerations:
- For the first poster, focus on the circular image behind the solider.
Point out how that image evokes the sun (via its color, the circle,
etc.). Discuss the sun's symbolism within the context of this poster.
Then ask students to describe the soldier's mood by pointing to additional
aspects of the poster that lead to their conclusions [e.g., the soldier's
smile, his hurried pace, etc.]
- For the second poster, ask students to describe the textual and
visual references to darkness and light, and discuss how darkness
and light are used symbolically in this poster.
In the Trenches
- Mention to students that trench warfare was a defining aspect of WWI. Ask
students to keep in mind the symbolism of darkness and light as they are learning
more about WWI in and from the trenches.
- Show students the following trench photos from the EDSITEment resource
Photos of the Great
War and videos from The Wilfred
Owen Multimedia Digital Archive, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed
Academy of American Poets site, and
ask them first to imagine and then discuss what life in the trenches must
have been like (e.g., darkness, underground, cramped quarters, rats, sounds,
etc.). You might consider putting students into groups for this exercise,
asking each to examine a single photograph or film before returning to
a larger discussion about the war.
- Have student volunteers read the following first-hand retrospective
accounts of life in the trenches from the EDSITEment-reviewed WWI
Document Archive, and then lead a class discussion to sum up the symbolism
of darkness vs. light. Ask students whether certain symbols can change
over time. To give this question some context, you can discuss the image
of "dawn" in the second account of the trenches. The following questions
can help generate discussion:
- How does the soldier describe "yesterday's dawn" at the end of this
excerpt?
- How does his description of dawn change by the next day? Revisit
the "A
Wonderful Opportunity for You" poster, and compare MacGill's description
of dawn to the symbol of the sun in the poster. A larger question
is "In what ways did WWI change the symbolism of sun/light/dawn?"
- From WWI Document Archive:
- By Philip
Curme: By January the Battalion had moved to the front line—arriving
at night. "The darkness was continually illuminated, for a thousand
very lights hung from the black velvet sky. Rifle shots and the
traversing fire of machine-guns startled the air; monstrous rats
came to life from behind the sandbags, scampering boldly...through
the mud. A door opened or a sackcloth curtain swung aside, revealing
a candlelit dugout....Gradually imperceptibly, the black & white
pictures of the night were coloured by the sun. A dark phantasmal
mass became a hooded farm wagon, derelict. For a space the war
slept. By day there was stillness, broken now and then by a sniper
firing suddenly ...or by a bombardment scattering men & things.
Day was appallingly prosaic but night was beautiful & romantic.
When the lights shot up into the sky the trenches became like
fairyland." "Though only a thousand yards away from the German
trenches, this spot seemed far away from the war. The undergrowth
round the chateau was a riot of wild & garden flowers. Dogs barked
at the guns, the vagrant cuckoo called to its mate and nightingales
sang through the hours of darkness."
- By Patrick
MacGill: A RIM of grey clouds clustered thick on the horizon
as if hiding some wonderful secret from the eyes of men. Above
my head the stars were twinkling, a soft breeze swung over the
open, and moist gusts caught me in the face as I picked my way
carefully through the still figures in brown and grey that lay
all over the stony face of the level lands. A spinney on the right
was wrapped in shadow, and when, for a moment, I stood to listen,
vague whispers and secret rustlings could be heard all around.
The hour before the dawn was full of wonder, the world in which
I moved was pregnant with mystery. "Who are these?" I asked myself
as I looked at the still figures in khaki. "Where is the life,
the vitality of yesterday's dawn; the fire of eager eyes, the
mad pulsing of roving blood, and the great heart of young adventure?
Has the roving, the vitality and the fire come to this; gone out
like sparks from a star-shell falling in a pond? What are these
things here? What am I? What is the purpose served by all this
demolition and waste?" Like a child in the dark I put myself the
question, but there was no answer. The stars wheel on their courses
over the dance of death and the feast of joy, ever the same.
- Read out loud Isaac Rosenberg's poem "Break
of Day in the Trenches" (1916), available through the EDSITEment
reviewed resource Academy
of American Poets. Define the terms metaphor and simile, and ask
students what comparison Rosenberg makes to describe the trenches.
Ask students to make comparisons between life in the trenches and
more familiar settings/experiences, etc. How does Rosenberg feel about
life in the trenches? How is nature portrayed in this poem? In an
earlier exercise, students explored the use of light and dark in recruitment
posters—how does light and dark work as symbols in this poem?
Students should support their answer with concrete details from the
poem.
3. Close Analysis of Poetic Form
and Content
Poetic Devices
- Hand out the Poetic Devices
Worksheet. Work with students to define the literary terms, and ask students
to take notes in the definitions section of the worksheet. Norton's LitWeb
Glossary, available via links from the EDSITEment reviewed American
Academy of Poets, has some useful, brief definitions.
- Assign the following two poems for students to read for the next class period,
and ask students to find examples of each poetic device from the assigned
poems as they are reading the poems on their own time. Point out to students
that they should consider as well the effects a poem's lack of certain devices
has on the poem at large (e.g., the lack of meter, rhyme, etc.) Mention to
students that they should be prepared to discuss the poems during the next
class period.
- Poems:
- Poetic Devices:
- metaphor/simile
- symbol
- imagery
- rhyme
- meter/pacing
- tone
- alliteration
- consonance
- assonance
- Devote the second class period to close analysis of the selected WWI poems.
Start by reading out loud Edgar
Guest's "The Things That Make a Soldier Great" (1917). You should read
the poem out loud, and then have a student volunteer read the poem again.
Use the following questions to generate a class discussion:
- Meter: You can use this poem to give a basic overview of how
a poem's meter fundamentally is tied to the poem's syllable count per
line. Ask students if they noticed a consistent syllabic pattern. Count
the number of syllables with students, and then define meter as the number
of stressed beats per line. There is no need to go into an advanced lesson
on meter and scansion; instead, point out how Guest's lines have a consistent
pattern of "beats." Ask students to notice how the consistent beat of
Guest's poem evokes the consistent beat of marching soldiers, thereby
adding to the poems patriotic call for soldiers to join the fight. For
an extended lesson on meter, refer to the EDSITEment lesson "Listening
to Poetry: Sounds of the Sonnet." You can note that this poem is a
ballad (printed with long ballad lines of iambic heptameter), a form that
is meant to sound song-like.
- Rhyme: Use this poem to discuss rhyme. Ask students the following
questions:
- As you were listening to the poem, did you hear the rhyme scheme?
- How would you describe this rhyming? (Song-like or "sing-songy")?
- Where have you heard this type of rhyming? (Note that children's
songs, or nursery rhymes, often are in short ballad form).
- What emotional response does this poem's rhyme scheme elicit? How
do the meter and rhyme scheme contribute to the poem's mood?
- Write the first two lines of the poem on a whiteboard or chalkboard
as follows:
- The things that make a soldier great and send him out to die,
To face the flaming cannon's mouth nor ever question why,
- Now compare the poem as written above to "Mary Had a Little Lamb":
Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow
and everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go
- Tone and Images: Building on the questions above, be sure to
elaborate on the poet's tone. Ask students the following questions:
- How would you describe the poet's mood and/or the emotions the poem
evokes?
- What specific images contribute to the poet's tone (e.g., lilacs,
tulips, children, flag, home, garden)? Why or how do these images
affect the tone at large?
- Note that "[The established poet] Robert Graves criticised [Poet Wilfred]
Owen for not abiding by the rules of metre, and it is true that "Disabled"
seems loosely organised with its apparently arbitrary irregularities of stanza,
metre and rhyme. Perhaps Owen felt, not unreasonably, that a poet was entitled
to break the rules as long as he knew them first" [Noted by Literary
Critic Kenneth Simcox, 2001]. Keeping Owen's use of meter in mind, read
out loud Wilfred Owen's "Dulce
et Decorum Est" (1917). Have students read the poem aloud, or listen to
an actor read the poem at Encarta,
available through the EDSITEment reviewed website Internet
Public Library. Have students note and compare the titles of these poems;
"Dulce et Decorum Est" roughly translates as "It is sweet and proper to die
for one's country."
- Lead another class discussion about this poem based on the following questions:
- Meter/Rhyme:
- Ask students if they hear a clear meter and rhyme scheme when this
poem is read aloud? [Mention how the lack of consistent beats detracts
from the rhyme scheme that is actually present in the poem.] Ask students
to review the first stanza of Owen's poem, and compare it to the first
stanza of "The Things That Make a Soldier Great."
- Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed,
coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired,
outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
- The things that make a soldier great and send him out to
die,
To face the flaming cannon's mouth nor ever question why,
Are lilacs by a little porch, the row of tulips red,
The peonies and pansies, too, the old petunia bed,
The grass plot where his children play, the roses on the wall:
'Tis these that make a soldier great. He's fighting for them all.
- Does this poem sound song-like as "The Things That Make a Soldier
Great"? Why not? [Note that the heavy ballad beats are not present
in this poem]. What is the mood/tone of this poem? Discuss how this
lack of clearly organized beats changes the tone of the poem; it is
far from "sing-songy."
- Alliteration, Consonance, Assonance: Ask students to define alliteration
(repetition of initial sounds), consonance (repetition of consonant sounds
initially and/or within a word), and assonance (repetition of vowel sounds
initially and/or within a word). Focus of the first four lines of Owen's
poem: Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
- Discuss, for example, the hard "c" consonance of within the first
few lines of "Dulce" (sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing, like, cursed,
backs). Ask students what this consonance brings to mind (i.e., the
sound of coughing itself):
- As an example of assonance, point to the "u" sounds within the first
few lines (including the ending of lines 2 and
- Explain to students that this case of assonance, the "u" sounds
slow down and therefore draw out the lines. Again form marries content
as the soldiers "trudge" through "sludge."
- Pacing: Turn to the lines "Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy
of fumbling," to draw attention to the changed pace of the poem. Ask students
what effect the use of one syllable words has on the poem's pace.
- Additional Analysis: Break students into small groups, and have
each group discuss the last two stanzas of the poem for 10 minutes. Regroup
for full class discussion of the remainder of the poem.
Assessment:
Written Analysis: Comparison and Contrast Paper
Through Darkness to Light?
- Guest and Owen make two very different arguments about fighting in WWI in
"The Things That Make a Soldier Great" and "Dulce et Decorum Est." Compare
and contrast the poems in a typed, 3-page written analysis. Remind students
to be sure to use concrete details from each poem to support their key claims.
Ask students to focus on at least 3 poetic devices as they compare and contrast
the poems at large.
- Ask students to examine the poetic devices in other WWI poems, such as those
listed in "Extending the Lesson" below.
Extending the Lesson
You can extend the lesson by studying additional WWI poems, including the following:
Selected EDSITEment Websites
Standards Alignment
View your state’s standards
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