Wilfred Owen: Truth of War Essay

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Glimpses of the gruesome reality in Kevin Powers’ war poetry take us in our imaginations back to the harsh and merciless environment of modern warfare, and offering us insights into the moral corruption of war. For many soldiers, war had blurred what they have been taught about social orders. War forced them to act in ways that were morally unjust. ‘Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting’ is Powers’ explanation to society proving how violent and chaotic settings corrupt people’s morality. In the poem, Powers alludes to Pvt. Bartle, a fictional character, who said, ‘war is just us making little pieces of metal pass through each other,’ which not only showed his casual tone and description of war – through carefree diction of ‘just’ and ‘little’ – but also the cold, hard fact that he had abandon the basic morality of civilised life. The anecdote of the German medical student, Stefan Westmann, stirs me emotionally, and deepens my understanding of how war corrupts morality. ‘My comrades…were absolutely undisturbed by this’ shows the ongoing violence around them had blinded and confused Westmann’s comrades by distorting their perception of right and wrong. They have been corrupted by the mindless simplifications of war propaganda – ‘we were told that the good soldier kills without thinking of his adversary as a human being.’ We see how fast basic moral principles disappear in war. Too often, in the extreme conditions of war, soldiers learn to think simply in terms of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, treating the enemy as if he were not even human.

‘All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true poet must be truthful’ – Wilfred Owen. Both poets experienced the first hand horror of war, and so their poems are more closely reflective of the views of serving soldiers. Owen and Powers are persuading us to prevent future outbreak of war on a largely innocent world. We are wholly unprepared for the horrors of war, and it will challenge our existing conventions, morals and ideals. By surveying poetry we enhance our understandings of the modern world.