World War I Poems- comparison

There are many similarities among the different World War I poems. In Robert Graves', A Dead Boche, and Arms and the Boy, by Wilfred Owen, the two poems complement each other and resemble many of the ideas behind World War I poems. [The two poems written at the bottom of this blog for your own reading pleasure]

One of the things World War I covers is the monstrosity of the war:

• In these poems, I think that the two create an image not just of the monstrosity of the war, but how the people themselves are monsters, and have lost their moral balance
• A Dead Boche (Robert Graves)
• He begins with saying that he's found "a certain cure for lust of blood", already showing that many yearn for blood
• Then, he describes something "propped against a shattered trunk", something that is unpleasant "in a great mess of things unclean".
• It's described even more: "a dead Boche" - a German soldier
• Some words:
• "scowled and stunk"
• "with clothes and face a sodden greeen,"
• "big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired"
• "dribbling black blood from nose and beard"
• While describing the German soldier, it seems that the Boche is the one who is mutilated and scary- but then if you think about it, the soldiers who dreamt of "blood and fame" are the ones who have done this. While the Boche may be scary, we [the soldiers] are the monsters who have done a lot of horrors.
• Arms and the Boy (Wilfred Owen)
• The beginning really characterizes the boy as someone who is kind of monstrous. I mean, the title, "arms and the boy" really introduces it. Arms, being weapons, and boy, being something that should be innocent. But he's not.
• The boy has a "bayonet-blade", "keen with the hunger of blood", "blue with all malice", "like a madman's flash", " and thinly drawn with famishing for flesh". I mean, if that doesn't speak for itself, what does? The boy is defined as something that needs to kill.
• Some other words:
• "blind, blunt bullet-leads", "nuzzle in the hearts of lads", "cartridges of fine zinc teeth", "sharp with the sharpness of grief and death"
• By "nuzzle in the hearts of lads" Owen compares innocent boys with those who participate in war- and how they have changed and how much war can change soldiers and make them brutal.

Another one is the contradiction between the glory and fame propaganda about the war and the actual ferociousness of it:

• Almost all the poems we've read have had this idea, and how the soldiers join for glory but end up dying instead, and the world lives with a false ideal.
• A Dead Boche (Robert Graves)
• The poem begins with the false ideal and then proceeds to belittle it.
• Graves quickly destroys the fallacy:
• "songs of War", "hear of blood and fame" --> "'War's Hell!'"
• alliteration and rhyme help here, because it makes the poem smooth and sing-songy, and so it contrasts the false tone with the true tone of war.
• Also, by saying "you've heard it said before" he adds in how many feel this way. The "songs of War" are not really songs.
• Arms and the Boy (Wilfred Owen)
• This poem is actually the opposite, in the way that it begins with describing the boy as someone cruel, an war as an angry beast, and then ending with a last stanza on after telling the truth about the boy's actions, how he will be viewed at home.
• He's not a monster, but a hero:
• "there lurk no claws behind his fingers supple", "and God will grow no talons at his heels, nor antlers through the thickness of his curls"
• Again, there is this rhyming pattern, which shows the iron. Expand upon it really, as he's already established the irony that the boy has done sad things and yet "God" is supporting him still.

There are a lot of allusions, usually:

• There is also the idea of God, and whether or not he supports the war or not, or even exists. But at least there are always mentions of the actualities of war (eg. battles, or certain weapons/soldiers)
• A Dead Boche (Robert Graves)
• "Mametz Wood" is a battle led by the Welsh, which Graves was a part of
• The Battle of Mametz Wood was part of the larger scheme of the Battle of Somme, the woods being one of the main areas of the Somme. So introducing this battle already gives a lot of connotation and tone of horror. Supposed to be quick, the soldiers were filled with hope before the battle and completely slaughtered b the end of it.
• "Boche" --> It means German, and is an "offensive slang" according to dictionary.com. So this has a lot of connotations as well, to those who know the war: a Boche, initially considered the enemy and disrespectful, is not the monster...
• Arms and the Boy (Wilfred Owen)
• Well, there's God, obviously: "And God will grow no talons at his heels, nor antlers through the thickness of his curls"
• Perhaps there is a more specific allusion in the bible or some other holy text, but the overall gist of it is that God does not consider the boy, who has committed a lot of atrocities, an animal, but a human: honorable and just.
• Throughout the poem there are lots of connections to specific weapons-
• "bayonet-blade" "blunt bullet-leads", "cartridges", "zinc teeth"
• And so the poem brings this in to contrast with the purity of what boys usually represent.

So those are the ones that come to mind when I read these two poems.


A Dead Boche - Robert Graves


To you who'd read my songs of War
    And only hear of blood and fame,
I'll say (you've heard it said before)
    'War's Hell!' and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:

Where, propped against a shattered turnk,
    In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
    With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big bellied, spectacled, corp-haird,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.

Arms and the Boy - Wilfred Owen

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads
Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads,
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.