READING MODULE 6
6th / April / 2006
By: GASPAR JULIO NAVARRO AMADOR
SUBJECT: Critical comparison between Rupert
Brooke’s poem ‘The Dead’, and Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘The Dead-Beat.
Rupert
Brooke’s poem
‘The Dead’
1 Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
2 There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
3 But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold
4 These laid the world away; poured out the red
5 Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
6 Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
7 That men call age; and those who would have been,
8 Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
9
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
10 Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
11 Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
12 And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
13 And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
14 And we have come into our heritage.
(Ref 1)
Wilfred Owen’s poem
The
Dead-Beat
1 He dropped,-more sullenly than
wearily,
2 Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat,
3 And none of us could kick him to his feet;
4 -Just blinked at my revolver, blearily;
5 -Didn't appear to know a war was on,
6 Or see the blasted trench at which he stared.
7 'I'll do 'em in,' he whined. 'If this hand's spared,
8 I'll murder them, I will.' A low voice said,
9 'It's Blighty, p'raps, he sees; his pluck's all gone,
10 Dreaming of all the valiant, that aren't dead:
11 Bold uncles, smiling ministerially;
12 Maybe his brave young wife, getting her fun
13 In some new home, improved materially.
14 It's not these stiffs have crazed him; nor the
Hun.'
15 We sent him down at last, out of
the way.
16 Unwounded;-stout lad, too, before that strafe.
17 Malingering? Stretcher-bearers winked, 'Not half!'
18 Next day I heard the Doc.'s
well-whiskied laugh:
19 'That scum you sent last night soon died. Hooray!'
(Ref 2)
In this paper, the main object of
comparison is the way in which two different poets explain death, from their
personal points of view. These two poets have been classified
as ‘War Poets’. This means that during WWI both authors were involved with some
episodes of the war. These military episodes are reflected
in their poems. (Ref 3)
These
two poems have been especially chosen for being so
cruel and sad. Although both poems deal about war and death, their sources are
from a very different background. On the one hand, there is the poem ‘The
Dead’, by Rupert Brooke. This author is classified as
a war poet, although, he did not write about his experiences at war, because he
was not actually at war, a part from one time. Therefore, R. Brooke is classified as a pre-war poet. (Ref 4)
In
his poem he does not reflect the real scene of the war experience, but a
general sentiment about romantic death. This poet can be seen
from a romantic point of view, more than from an experimented point of view.
With all, Rupert Brooke represents the thoughts of many men and women at the
outbreak of the war. (Ref 1)
In
Brooke’s poem ‘The Dead’, the title places the reader in another world. This could be called after-life world. Everything the author sees
in the WWI is dead. Every representation of this war is
related to chaos, destruction and death. The first line shows what this
Great War meant. On the one hand, there is the sound of bugles, which
symbolizes military marches when battalions are called
to war. On the second hand, there is a mention to the quantity of casualties
produced by the military confrontation represented by ‘the rich Dead’. This means that the number of dead was huge, that is, rich in
number. Another meaning of this expression is that all those casualties
are rich, in terms of having reached death in a glorious way. In addition, the
punctuation mark of exclamation, symbolizes the military emphasis of an order.
There is a contrast between the word ‘rich’ (line 1), and the word ‘poor’ (line
2). Thus the number of casualties is huge and rich, but each one of those
corpses is lost, ‘poor’ and ‘lonely’. In ‘But, dying, has made us rare gifts
than gold / These laid the word away’ (lines 3-4) the
author mentions how different it must be to die, and compares it to the
improbability of being gifted with gold, which is the most valuable metal. In
the words ‘red’ (line 4), and ‘wine of youth’ (line5), the writer makes a
metaphor out of this related to life and blood. For the author everything finds
its end at war, which is the death. This can be reflected in line 5 and 6 ‘gave
up the years to be / Of work and joy’ or in line7
‘age’, which represents the years of life. The only thing that dead soldiers
have left for their memory is their descendants, their children, which will
give them immortality, as in ‘those who would have been, Their
sons, they gave, their immortality’ (line 7-8). This symbolizes the loss of
possible subsequent generations. (Ref 1)
In
the second stanza, there is a personification of the abstract terms ‘Honour’,
‘Love, and Pain’ (line 10) and ‘Nobleness’ (line 13). As we can appreciate, all
these words match with high standard human status and behaviour, chivalry, etc.
They, rule the ‘earth’ (line 11) like
a medieval lord. This ‘Honour’ is given to those who
have died at war for their courage, though the price they have to pay back is
to rest in ‘the earth’ instead of resting in heaven. That is their ‘royal wage’
(line12). In the last line, the author means that what has been rightfully
accomplished, which is the goal of death, it is theirs.
As
we can observe, the author uses the first person through the poem, which gives
to understand that he belongs to the group of the heroic victims of the war.
(Ref 3)
In
the second poem ‘The Dead Beat’, Wilfred Owen shows the readers the horrors and
madness that can be seen and suffered at war. The main
difference between Brooke’s poem and Owen’s poem is that the first author
describes something really abstract for him and at the same time he does it in
general terms, describing a general situation. The second author describes a
real situation, which daily used to happen in front of him during his days in
the front. The cruelty of the situation becomes livelier, when relating a real
event. (Ref 2)
The
title ‘the Dead-Beat’, means that at war there are thousands of casualties and
this is a non-stop process while the confrontation is on. We understand that
this two hyphenated words evoke the rhythm of the heart. In this sense, there
is a parallelism between life and its relation with the beating of the heart
and the war, which while it is taking place it is
alive, and death after death of every soldier becomes the heart of the war.
W. Owen tells us how one of his
partners is wounded in a blast and how he falls down:
‘He dropped,-more sullenly than
wearily,
lay stupid like a cod,
heavy like meat’
(Lines 1-2)
This
guy is shocked in such a way that although being
awakened he does not react to any stimuli or behaves rationally:
‘-Just blinked at my revolver,
blearily;
-Didn’t appear to know a war was
on,
Or see the blasted trench at which
he stared.’
(Lines 4-5-6)
His
last wish and sight was to murder the enemy:
'I'll do 'em in,' he whined. 'If this
hand's spared,
I'll murder them, I will.' A low
voice said’
(Lines 7-8)
There
seems to be a critic to war, which at the same time discredits the heroic and
romantic way of dying shown by Brooke. For Owen, to die at war is not noble and
honourable at all and he criticises war in a satirical way.
On
the one hand there is the economic rewarding of being a soldier to which the
author ironically laughs at in:
‘Maybe his brave young wife,
getting her fun
In some new home, improved materially’
(Lines 12-13)
This
means that the soldier’s family got wealthier at the expense of his death.
The
author tells us how brave the soldier was and makes out of the line number 14
his last homage. At the same time this line could be another critic to
‘It's not these stiffs have crazed
him; nor the Hun’
In
the last lines, Owen tells how he and his partner managed to take his wounded
friend out of the trench, and the end that he had:
‘We sent him down at last, out of
the way.
Unwounded;-stout lad, too, before that strafe.
Malingering? Stretcher-bearers
winked, 'Not half!’
Next day I heard the Doc.'s
well-whiskied laugh:
'That scum you sent last night soon died. Hooray!'
(Lines 15-19)
In
this the last scene, the author shows us ironically how impersonal and
irrelevant the death of someone in a war can be for those who get used to witness this situations. In this sense, the
underlying meaning is how war can turn a human beings
into an empty shell with no sentiments, no regrets or remorse. This can be seen in the last two lines of the poem, in which a
dramatical situation about the death of a friend turns into a comedy when a drunken
doctor communicates the news to the author, making fun of it, showing no
sensitiveness to him at all.
(Ref 5)
REFERENCES
1
- Paul Groves, Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), 22/07/2005
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/brooke/
10/04/2006
2
- Paul Groves, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), 22/07/2005
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/owen/
10/04/2006
3
- W.W. Norton and Company, The Norton
Anthology of English Literature: The 20th Century: Introduction,
2003-2006
http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/20century/welcome.htm
10/04/2006
4 - Anniina
Jokinen, Sonet
Central, 18/02/1999
http://members.aol.com/ericblomqu/wwi.htm
10/04/2006
5
- RPO Editors, Department of English,
and University of Toronto Press, Poet Index for Representantative
Poetry On-Line,1994-2002
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/indexpoet.html
10/04/2006