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Comparison of Dulce Et Decorum Est, and Refuge Blues English Coursework

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Comparison of Dulce Et Decorum Est, and Refuge Blues English Coursework
Compare Dulce Et Decorum Est and Refugee Blues

Both the poems are based at periods of War, but the difference being is that ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ depicts the very physical suffering of the soldiers in the muddy, bloody trenches of the First World War, (The Great War), and is written for the purpose of educating those on the home front, who are naïve to the suffering experienced by the soldiers on the front line, people referred to as his friends, who must be informed about the old lie, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Amore’. ‘Refugee Blues’ however is a less intense poem, which deals more with the emotional suffering of the Jews, although the Jews in this poem must also cope with the constant fear of physical hardship at the hands of the Nazi soldiers. There is a contrast also between the people in the poems, one poem tells the story of brave British soldiers fighting and dying at the hands of the enemy in Flanders Field, and the other tells the story of the life of civilians being hunted by German authorities. They are also based in different wars, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, in the first world war, ‘Refugee Blues’ however is based in the second world war. Both poems use language, and fitting techniques, in order to convey their points well.

In both poems there is a very regular rhyming pattern, In ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ the rhyming pattern is A, B, A, B, this is a technique used by the author to imitate the regular and constant marching of the soldiers.
However ‘Refugee Blues’ has a similar pattern to a twelve bar blues song, A, A, B. The significance of this is that the ‘blues’, is a series of very sad songs, confirming and emphasising the fact that ‘Refugee Blues’, and is itself a very sad poem. Both these methods are attempts by then authors to create a sense of pathos.

The stanza lengths in the poems have great contrast, the stanza length in refugee Blues, Is regular and constant, however Dulce Et Decorum Est, has different length paragraphs, and it

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