Wilfred on Wednesday

Yep, it’s another essay. This Level One essay was also written in an exam situation. What do you think?

Describe TWO interesting language techniques in EACH text. Explain how EACH technique helps you understand EACH text.

In ‘Dulce et decorum est’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ Wilfred Owen effectively uses emotive language and imagery to help convey his ideas about the harsh realities of war.

In ‘Dulce et decorum est’ Owen uses a gassing situation to portray how unglamorous war really is. The soldiers he describes as ‘Bent double like old beggars’ and ‘coughing like hags’. This use of imagery is interesting as it is not how we would imagine the fit young soldiers to be. Instead of being handsome young warriors nobly fighting for their country, they are prematurely aged and battling for their lives. He uses this imagery to dispel any ideas that we may have about war being beautiful and instead makes us understand that it is a truly horrific experience. He continues this use of imagery through the first stanza as he goes on to describe a soldier’s death after they’ve been gassed. He also uses emotive words such as ‘guttering, choking, drowning’ an ‘froth-corrupted’ lungs which plays on the readers emotions and made me understand that dying at war is in no way glorious. Wilfred Owen really wanted to portray how terrible being involved in war is which went against a lot of the propaganda of his time. He uses his imagery and emotive language effectively which really helped me to understand his ideas.

In ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, Owen continues with this same us of imagery and emotive language but in a more somber tone. He wanted to portray what a waste of life war is by focusing on death as a whole. In the opening line ‘What passing bells for these who die as cattle?’ Owen uses his imagery technique by comparing the men going to war to beasts being led to slaughter. This made me understand that they were just leading the men to their deaths with as much ceremony as animals. In the line ‘No mockeries for them, no prayers, no bells’, I realised that these soldiers who died in war never got a tribute to them – they weren’t noble sacrifices for their country, just dead people.

In the second stanza Owen takes a new approach and moves to the home front in the midst of war. Here he wanted to compare how the soldier’s bodies were dealt with in war compared to the elaborate funerals and traditions normally practiced in the time. He uses descriptions of images rather than sounds for this stanza and a lot of emotive language. In the lines ‘The pallor of girls brows shall be their pall’. ‘There flowers the tenderness of patient minds’. He uses his language to play on the readers emotions and it helped me to understand that every mans death on the battlefield there were women left behind with no closure, and the line ‘each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds’ made me realise that it is not just the soldiers who are involved in war, but in some way or another everyone is effected.

Owen uses the techniques of imagery and emotive language to successfully build up images in the readers mind and to convey his ideas. Through this effective use of language he made me understand that war isn’t beautiful or noble but simply a sickening waste of life.

Remember the Wikis!

Remember to use the wikis. For Year 12 we have two wikis loaded with notes, slideshows, videos and last but certainly not least your work. All your ideas and essays are there. Read ’em, watch ’em and learn from ’em. If you forget how to access them go through the English Resources section on moodle. While you are there check out all the interactive resources that have been added.

Revise online

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This website has recently been developed to make their NCEA revision guides available to you in online form. The guides are intended for students preparing for NCEA assessments. They include a large number of appropriate questions from previous assessments with suggested answers, as well as an indication of the probable assessment level of each question, i.e. Achievement, Merit, Excellence. The guides for English are available for Levels 1-3.

The company is offering you the opportunity to access these guides for free until the end of the year. If you are interested go here and register.

Moodle it

Remember to keep checking moodle for revision material. I have just added two powerpoints on The Kite Runner to the 201 site.

Wilfred Owen Essay

Today I have another student essay for you to look at. This one was written in text conditions in 35 minutes. What do you think? Any comments? What’s good? What could be improved?

Write a detailed account of how your studied texts interested you by their choice and/or use of words and phrases.

In “Dulce et Decorum est”, Wilfred Owen uses graphic verbs and innovative descriptions to describe the absolute pity of war, to try and convince his original readers of wars futility.

Owen continues in this vein in “Disabled”, by using simple statements and blatant understatements to create an image of a young man, destroyed by war. In his poem “Anthem for doomed youth”, Owen shares his philosophy on the blindness of his culture to the horrific deaths young men faced during the war by rhetorical questions, and bold controversial statements. All these features of Owen’s poetry fascinated me, because it showed just how Owen had put his mind, heart and soul into convincing his unbelieving country that the war was an evil, soul destroying scar on the history of man.

In “Dulce et Decorum est”, Owen begins by describing young soldiers who are “knock- kneed” and “coughing like hags”. Owen completely destroys the clichéd image of young sprightly soldiers representing the epitome of upright masculinity, and replaces them with a sorry image of prematurely aged young men who are now completely physically derelict.

Owen carrys on to attack any preconceptions of war being a “walk in the park”. The use of explicit verbs such as “guttering , choking, drowing” present the readers with an alternate reality of pain and suffering, only found in the blood stained pits of war. The reader now, after only the first stanza, is confronted with the forcefulness of Owens ideas and is taken aback, yet enthralled with these blood-chillingly, almost unreal, images. These descriptions made me realise just how oblivious “the people back home” must have been to the wars utter tragicness, if Owen felt so compelled to create such profound work.

In “Disabled”, Owen also uses “shock-tactics” to convey his urgent ideals. The phrase “legless, sewn short at elbow” uses a blantant understatement to describe the remains of a young man’s body, in a short, simple and abrupt sentence. The fact the Owen vividly described his whole body in one sentence, and leaves the reader with a pitiful, war-torn image as well, emphasises his skill and prowess at conveying his compelling ideals.

The line, “he lost his colour, far away from here”, shows Owens ability to give his message in a non conventional manner. The words “he lost his colour” immedietly bring an image to mind of blood slowly draining out from the young man, as he begins to pale, and then the words “far away from here”, place this deathly occurance into a muddy hole, and make the reader feel the man’s loneliness that he felt while suffering this fate. Owen’s ability to bring you into the poem and see and experience the horrors he unfolds, made me feel helpless, to just imagine, although his intended readers would have had more ability to act on this knowledge and would have been compelled to do so, if they felt the horror and disbelief I experienced.

In “Anthem for doomed youth”, I felt that Owen had a real sense of the events around him and that he had come to conclusions of his own concerning the war and how this affected those back home. The line, “No mockeries for them, no prayers nor bells” shows Owen’s philosophy on the reality of peoples attitude to the war. The fact that Owen calls the prayers and bells, that occur for those who die, a mockery, shows his belief that the conventional rituals for the dead of war, simply made death into something soft and sombre, when in fact it was likely that the soldier died a horrible and painful death, and Owen is not afraid to speak out his views. This made me realise that Owen disregarded conventional methods and beliefs, and simply write what he felt needed to be said about the unnecessary destructiveness of war and about how blind the public was to this.

In all three of these poems Owen has used various techniques and methods to make his message clear and I feel that if I had been in his time, my view would have been changed. His un-conventional descriptions made me realise how strongly he felt about the war and how much he was determined to inform the people of the “truth”.

Schindler’s List Essay

This essay was written in 30 minutes in test conditions and the student who wrote it really wants some help to improve it. He thinks it is around the achieved level but he is not sure. What do you think?

Identify what you consider to be the director’s main purpose AND explore, in depth, one or two main visual/oral techniques used to achieve this purpose.

Steven Spielberg’s main purpose in the film Schindler’s List is to show the eternal moral dilemma: how an individual responds to power and temptation. This is achieved through the two characters, Oskar Schindler and Amon Goeth, how each character responds to power and temptation and the parallels between the two characters. Amon Goeth, the films central representation of evil, is depicted as not just a monster but a complex man beset by indecision and even temptation to do good as shown in the ‘forgiveness’ sequence where he attempts to “pardon” himself and others. Goeth makes this attempt at goodness after Schindler states, “power is when we have every justification to kill and we don’t.” But Goeth always denies his humanity and falls back on the side of evil. This complex portrayal of such a monster is shocking but shows that individuals respond differently to power.

The film starts off showing many parallels between these two main characters, Amon Goeth and Oskar Schindler. It is shown through many cross-cutting scenes that both men are charismatic, Nazis, in places of power and both have a fine sense of style. The viewer is made to feel these two men are very similar, that both have the potential for good and bad. But it is scenes such as the basement scenes where Schindler and Amon find themselves in almost identical situations that we are able to see how the different choices each one has made is effecting him. Where Schindler embraces the Jew, Helen Hirsch, by giving her a “kiss of pity” Goeth denies his humanity and beats her. Goeth makes excuses for his human feelings towards Helen Hirsch stating “they cast a spell on you, you know the Jews.” Where Schindler embraces his human feelings, Goeth denies them, denies them, discarding them as a weakness.

We are shown the extent at which moments in the film have changed each character when Schindler, previously money driven, gives up his fortune to save Jews where Goeth decides the fate of Helen Hirsch over a pack of cards. Schindler also shows he has made good moral decisions when he hoses down the Jews in the trains while Goeth sits there shouting “This is very cruel Oskar, You’re giving them hope, you shouldn’t do that. “That’s cruel!” Both have gained different outlooks on life through the different ways that they responded to temptation and power.

The outcomes of their decision shows the beneficial and humane way to respond to temptation and power. Goeth is last seen as a pathetic figure still in a fantasy world as he states “Heil Hitler” just before he is hanged. This shows there is no remorse of those who abuse power. In contrast Schindler becomes a saviour as the Schindlerjuden present him with a ring inscribed with the saying “whoever saves a life saves the world entire.”

The purpose of Steven Spielberg in this film was to show the moral dilemma of how an individual responds to temptation and power. He successfully achieved this through the characters of Amon Goeth and Oskar Schindler as he showed the parallels between the two and the choices they made that determined their fates.

Extended Texts Essay

I have added a student’s essay on John Marsden’s novel ‘Letters from the Inside’ below. This Level One essay was written in exam conditions in 25 minutes. The question is from the early days of NCEA and I think that it is less challenging than recent ones but it is a good one to kick off your revision. It would be great if you had some comments to make on the essay, so don’t be shy!

Describe an idea that interested you in the text. Explain why this idea interested you.

“Letters from the Inside” by John Marsden is an unforgettable novel that presents many important ideas through its text. Perhaps the most important of these is violence and its harmful effects.
Violence affects both main characters in this book in different ways. Mandy and Tracey both experience some form of violence that deeply impacts upon their lives long after the damage is done. Mandy encounters violence within the home by her brother Steve. Steve is a disturbed teenage boy who has no friends, will apparently drop out of high school and has turned into a weapons freak. Steve is very abusive and violent towards Mandy, beating her up when no one is home. We know that Mandy is frightened of that part of Steve’s nature that he can’t control when she says “you know, the most frightening thing in my life is Steve;” yet she has no one she can turn to for help. Mandy’s parents “working their lives away” do not realise the extent of the problem and suggest it is “only a phase” Steve is going through. Mandy takes to locking her door and turns to Tracey for help.
Tracey; so familiar with violence in her own life, chooses to ignore Mandy’s problems with Steve and offers no real advice. Mandy continues to be afraid. She sees Steve’s behaviour worsen as a result of everybody ignoring her.
Although we are left guessing as to why Mandy stops writing it is hinted that Steve has killed the whole family, with his gun which he spent hours cleaning, on Christmas Eve. Terrifying – some may venture even to say immoral – as this scenario is, it is not in the least far-fetched. I became curious as to how the Steve’s of the world are allowed to remain unchecked and ignored. I was also frustrated because everyone was seeing that “whenever Steve gets mad – and you never know what could make him mad, it could be any little thing – the only way he ever reacts is violently’. Steve had been suspended from school for bullying, yet nobody really helped Mandy or Steve when Mandy explained about her brother being unable to control his terrible temper. Marsden wanted his readers to realise that unless we rethink our attitudes towards violence people like Mandy, innocent people, will keep dying because people like Steve cant accept the consequences of their actions.
Tracey is another victim of violence. She recounts frightful incidents where she had witnessed her mother being hurt and beaten by her father. “Then I read to the end and found it was my mother who he’d murdered.” Clearly, Tracey’s father was an abusive man who killed her mother. For Tracey violence was normal, something that was simply always there. Tracey, however, dealt with violence in a way that was very different to Mandy. “I did some stupid things, like sleeping under the bed,” she tells Mandy in one of her letters.
Tracey continued the pattern of violence and ended up in Garrett, a girls’ maximum-security detention centre. Although we are not told Tracey’s crime, the length of her prison sentence indicates it was very serious. Tracey has probably killed somebody or hurt someone badly.
This idea of the cycle of violence interested me because sadly, violence in this sense is becoming a more and more common reality. In the case of Steve and Mandy we must never brush violence off with the “boys will be boys” approach. Mandy’s parents left it too late. Violence and its effects is a strong theme throughout the novel. A shocking novel “Letters from the Inside” carries an important message: we must always take violence in any form as a serious issue. Violence exists as a horrifying truth in our world. It is time to come to terms and deal with it. This means that as a society we need to rethink our attitudes towards getting limits to acceptable behaviour.

The Soldier’s Poet

Go here to read a really interesting article about Wilfred Owen from the Telegraph. It is by Jeremy Paxman and it is well worth reading. I have put an extract below. Thanks to Mikey for the tip.

Jeremy Paxman on the extraordinary achievement of Wilfred Owen, who abominated war yet died a great warrior.

For me, he is the greatest of all the war poets. But there is nothing original in my enthusiasm.

	Owen developed intense respect for the soldier

I don’t suppose there’s a thoughtful student in the land who is unaware of Wilfred Owen’s best-known poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est”.

Indeed, it tells us something about our pervading cynicism that Horace’s words are now taken more readily as sarcasm than at face value.

It is often assumed – as a student, I made the mistake myself – that the poem’s author was some sort of bitter, jaundiced pacifist. But the enigma of Wilfred Owen is that he was anything but that. The fascination of his life is his embodiment of contradictions.

It is true that he was not among the first to answer the call to bash the Boche. Indeed, he seems to have been a rather fey and precious young man, first as a vicar’s assistant in Berkshire, and then as an English teacher in France.

When he finally decided to join the Army (through the Artists’ Rifles, to fit with his own idea of himself as a poet, despite the fact that he was unpublished, and, frankly, not very good, either) he was repulsed by the coarseness of the men among whom he found himself.

But his letters to his mother – our main source of information about his life – show how much he changed. Initial distaste at the vulgarity of the sweaty, noisy men among whom he was obliged to live became a genuine love.

By the end of the First World War, he had become not only their advocate but a true military hero himself.

Dulce et Decorum Est

I have added this animation of Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. The poem has been animated by Jim Clark and read by Alan Mumford. The notes that follow are from Wikipedia and were added to the Youtube entry.

“Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem written by British poet and World War I soldier Wilfred Owen in 1917, and published posthumously in 1920. Owen’s poem is known for its horrifying imagery and its condemnation of war.

The 28-line poem, which is written in loose iambic pentameter, is narrated by Owen himself. It tells of a group of soldiers in World War I, forced to trudge “through sludge,” though “drunk with fatigue,” marching slowly away from the falling explosive shells behind them. As gas shells begin to fall upon them, the soldiers scramble to put on their gas masks to protect themselves. In the rush, one man clumsily drops his mask, and the narrator sees the man “yelling out and stumbling / and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime”. The image of the man “guttering, choking, drowning” permeates Owen’s thoughts and dreams, forcing him to relive the nightmare again and again.

Owen, in the final stanza enforces that, should readers see what he has seen, they (the government) would cease to send young men to war, all the while instilling visions of glory in their heads. No longer would they tell their children the “Old lie,” so long ago told by the Roman poet Horace: “Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori” (literally, “It is sweet and right/honourable, to die for your country”).

Dedication
Throughout the poem, and particularly strong in the last stanza, there is a running commentary, a letter to Jessie Pope, a civilian propagandist of World War I, who encouraged-“with such high zest”-young men to join the battle, through her poetry, e.g. “Who’s for the game”.

The first draft of the poem, indeed, was dedicated to Pope. A later revision amended this to “a certain Poetess,” though this did not make it into the final publication, either, as Owen apparently decided to address his poem to the larger audience of war supporters in general. In the last stanza, however, the original intention can still be seen in Owen’s bitter, horrific address..

New wiki

I haven’t talked about our wikis lately but remember that they have a wealth of information on them. Go to moodle and check them out.

On the sidebar you will see that there is an RSS feed to my new wiki on ‘The Kite Runner’. I have just started it so there isn’t too much there yet but I will add revision notes on a regular basis. The wiki is all about revising – a great place to go to for that last minute study!