Comparing Dulce Et Decorum Est And Kenneth Fearing's Ad
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Often war is depicted as a path to glory and fame for the soldiers who fight the battles of war, where these soldiers are awarded with honor and pride for their victorious win. This notion is captured in poems like Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade and Julia Ward Howe's’ Battle-Hymn of the Republic where they praise soldiers for their glory and honor. However, the negative and darker aspect of war is often overlooked and not mentioned. The death, loss, and force of war is overshadowed by the more favorable, positive attitudes of war because it is distressing to analyze the inevitable hardships that go along with being a soldier. Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est and Kenneth Fearing’s Ad eloquently offer a thorough look…show more content… Fearing uses the stylistic writing of an advertisement to establish his message of wars wanting the lives of young men, who can easily be conformed to the deathly system of war and suffer its consequences. Early in the poem, Fearing describes what it entails to be a soldier. He writes, “If you’ve ever been a figure in the chamber of horrors,/ If you’ve ever escaped from a psychiatric ward,/ If you thrill at the thought of throwing poison into wells, have heavenly visions/ of people, by the thousands, dying in flames-/ You are the very man we want (4-8).” Repeatedly, according to Fearing, war requires soldiers to be torturers, who thrill at the sight of someone suffering, and who have to be demented to succeed in the business of war. In this respect, you are no longer a human with moral capacity, not worthy of glory or praise. He continues with his message when he asserts he type of men who become soldiers and the price they pay. Fearing lists, “No skill needed;/ No ambition required;/ no brains wanted and no character allowed;/ Take a permanent job in the coming profession/ Wages: Death (12-15).” Fearing, in a repetitive manner, insists that soldier recruiters look for men who don’t have “brains”, or rather men who don’t analyze the deeper implications of war. Soldiers in war also are not allowed to have any character or ambition, because war promotes conformity rather than individuality. Fearing concludes with the idea that men pay the price of their lives to fight in war. Thus, war has many harrowing aspects and you the consequences of war are