‘’the Experience of the Great War Stripped Men of Their Masculinity’’Explore the Ways in Which Barker, Sassoon and Owen Portray This in Their Writing.
‘’The experience of the Great War stripped men of their masculinity’’explore the ways in which Barker, Sassoon and Owen portray this in their writing.
Sassoon and Owen as poets and Barker as a novelist, explore through their works of literature the changing and challenging notions of masculinity experienced as a result of The Great War. Furthermore, all three writers suggest that the often overlooked reality of the conflict was the creation of a subversion of the stereotypical ‘heroic soldier’. Replacing this image through their work, with that of the truth, we see an exploration of the emasculated and dehumanised shell that many men truly became as a result of what they experienced in service. This extends throughout their texts, to explore the paradoxical nature of war itself largely causing more harm to its soldiers than it gains in military desires, and a practice that reshaped an entire generation of British men into no more than physical and psychological carcasses of their former selves.
However, each of the writers' narrative style is dramatically different in order to create evoking literature. In Barker’s case, the novel's structure creates a relationship between character and reader that allows the stripping of masculinity of The First World War veterans to be explored and a sense of reality to be conveyed to the reader. Barker as a contemporary writer creating literature for a contemporary audience, in contrast to both Sassoon and Owen, is able to encapsulate each poet’s texts within her own to greater its sense of reality. Never is this more evident than in Barker’s use of Sassoon’s Declaration as the opening to her own narrative. The shockingly honest and realistic nature of Sassoon’s words ‘I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops…which I believe to be evil and unjust’ serves a starting point for the thread of verisimilitude that Barker weaves, highlighting the reality of emasculation and war to a previously unaware 20th and 21st century
Sassoon and Owen as poets and Barker as a novelist, explore through their works of literature the changing and challenging notions of masculinity experienced as a result of The Great War. Furthermore, all three writers suggest that the often overlooked reality of the conflict was the creation of a subversion of the stereotypical ‘heroic soldier’. Replacing this image through their work, with that of the truth, we see an exploration of the emasculated and dehumanised shell that many men truly became as a result of what they experienced in service. This extends throughout their texts, to explore the paradoxical nature of war itself largely causing more harm to its soldiers than it gains in military desires, and a practice that reshaped an entire generation of British men into no more than physical and psychological carcasses of their former selves.
However, each of the writers' narrative style is dramatically different in order to create evoking literature. In Barker’s case, the novel's structure creates a relationship between character and reader that allows the stripping of masculinity of The First World War veterans to be explored and a sense of reality to be conveyed to the reader. Barker as a contemporary writer creating literature for a contemporary audience, in contrast to both Sassoon and Owen, is able to encapsulate each poet’s texts within her own to greater its sense of reality. Never is this more evident than in Barker’s use of Sassoon’s Declaration as the opening to her own narrative. The shockingly honest and realistic nature of Sassoon’s words ‘I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops…which I believe to be evil and unjust’ serves a starting point for the thread of verisimilitude that Barker weaves, highlighting the reality of emasculation and war to a previously unaware 20th and 21st century