Devices

Alliteration:
Deliberate repetition
of the same
consonant. (eg.
Careless cars cutting
corners create
confusion).

Tone: A particular
Onomatopoeia: The quality expressed in a
use of words (eg. Hiss, communication that
splash) that imitate gives h=the audience
the sounds associated a strong indication of
with the objects or the writer’s attitude
actions they refer to. towards the subject
Aural being discussed.

Devices

Rhyme: Words that Assonance: A vowel

have the same or very sound is repeated to
similar sound. The add emphasis. (eg.
effect is that it creates Fleet feet sweep by
emphasis. sleeping geese.)
 Personification:
treating a non-
living object as if
it was living. E.g.
The flower danced
in the wind.

THESE Metaphor: is a way

MANIPULATE to compare by
MIND PICTURES! saying one thing is
another thing. E.g.
:D ‘Tony is a volcano
ready to explode.’
Imagery
Devices

Symbolism: An
object (animate or
Simile: To make a
inanimate) used
comparison
to represent
between things
something else.
using ‘like or as’.
E.g. Dove s
represents peace.
 THESE
MANIPULATE
Juxtaposition: Placing WHERE AND
things side by side in
order to draw contrast HOW IDEAS
or comparison. E.g. the
young and the old, APPEAR!
peasants and
aristocrats.

Paradox: A
seemingly
Hyperbole: Use of
Structural contradictory
heightened
statement that may
exaggeration for an Devices nonetheless be true.
effect.
E.g. ‘sanding is more
tiring than walking.’

Oxymoron: the
combination of two
words that
contradict each
other. E.g. pretty
ugly or biter sweet.
The War Poets
The War Poets, also known as the Soldier Poets, includes
a group of young men who wrote poetry during and
about the First World War. The following are
considered the major poets:
 Wilfred Owen
 Sassoon
 Edward Thomas
 Isaac Rosenberg
 Rupert Brooke
 Charles Sorley

Five of these men (Brooke, Rosenberg, Thomas, Sorley

and Owen) were killed during the war.
The War Poets (Cont.)
Although grouped by history, they each have very
different views and philosophies on the war. Also each
has an individual style that speaks specifically about
aspects of war and human experience. Brooke, for
example, shows great enthusiasm and patriotism for
the war while Wilfred Owen shows the horror and
suffering of men fighting in the trenches, he is known
as the compassionate poet as he focused on the
sadness of war and its waste of life.
Wilfred Owen
During the war, Wilfred Owen was caught up in trench
warfare . Men lived in there dug trenches surrounded by
rats, lice and other vermin. They were constantly shelled
and snipers fired all day and night. Diseases became
common and a great killer, and many bodies were left to
rot. As the war dragged on the Germans developed gas
they fired to blind, kill the men in the opposing trenches.
These events that took place in the trenches were what
Owen experienced and is what influenced his writing. He
examines the physical, moral and psychological traumas
of the First World War in his poems.
Siegfried Sassoon
Like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon also expressed anger
and disgust against the war. He intended on conveying the
ugly truths of the trenches to an audience hitherto lulled
by patriotic propaganda. In his poems, he reacts violently
against sentimentally patriotic notions of the glories of
war and attacks senior military offices. He not only writes
poems to show his defiance against the war but he also
writes ;A Soldier’s Declaration’ because he believes that
the purpose of the war, has changed since it began in 1914
from a war of “defense and liberation” to one of
“aggression and conquest”, and argues that “men are being
sacrificed.”