Journey's End and Wilfred Owen Poems

A key conflict that both Owen and Sherriff explore in their literature is that many soldiers may experience ambivalent feelings towards their duty to fight for their country and their instinct to escape danger. In ‘Journey’s End’, Sherriff portrays this through the character of Hibbert who “can’t stand” the trenches any longer and attempts to use his ‘neuralgia’ as an excuse to leave. The broken syntax of “ill go right along, now I think-“conveys his hesitant feelings towards wanting to escape to the safety of the hospital and remaining to fight with the rest of the men. Employing the adverb “slowly” to describe how Hibbert walks away from the dugout emphasizes his reluctance to desert. Sherriff himself suffered from neuralgia but from letters sent home he expressed his beliefthat he should continue to fight like the other soldiers, and Hibbert is arguably a less sympathetic character demonstrated by his whining, while Stanhope remains acquiescent despite the stresses of warfare, so perhaps Sherriff is using Stanhope and Hibbert’s opposing behaviors to criticize the doubts men have about their duty to fight, seeing it as dishonorable.

Owen explores this struggle in the first line of ‘Spring Offensive’ – “Halted against the shade of a last hill”; the verb “halted” arrests the reader’s attention and conveys the soldier’s tentativeness to proceed into battle. Furthermore, the infinitive ‘halt’ is a military command, this juxtaposition illustrates the warring feelings for soldiers to follow orders or to become deserters and lose their honor. The critic Adrian Ceaser argued in ‘Taking it like a man: Suffering, Sexuality and the war poets’ when discussing the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ that ‘suffering authenticates the morality (of the poem),… Owen becomes the hero of his own poem, and suffering is glorified as the means to wisdom’.

I would dispute this critique as it is widely known that Owen was a pacifist, even writing to his mother ‘Passivity at any price! Suffer dishonor and disgrace; but never’ resort to arms’. He also wrote “The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum Est Pro patria mori”; condemning the futile suffering of the men for their country. His antagonism towards the death and suffering that soldiers face is clear from the sinister connotations invoked in the metaphors “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud // Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues”. This exemplifies Owens contrasting views to Sherriff in that he unyieldingly believed it was wrong for soldiers to fight in war and that they had a duty to themselves to remain innocent, not their country. The conflicting emotions that survivor's guilt brings is a concern that both Owen and Sherriff share. Owen ends ‘Spring Offensive’ with the line “Why speak they not of comrades that went under?”; ending the poem with such a poignant message suggests that he felt strongly about how surviving soldiers of war should feel about those that died, which could be interpreted as they cannot speak because they feel guilty for surviving. Although Owen has taken a more reflective view in ‘Spring offensive’, contrastingly in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ Owen has immersed himself in the poem. In this description of war neurosis, the dead soldier torments Owen in his dreams, punishing him for watching him die. Owen employs the first-person plural, explicitly including himself as well as a reader living in 1914 in his accusation. “He plunges at me, guttering choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace behind the wagon that we flung him I”. Owen’s own survivors guilt manifests itself in these lines, having escaped sharing in the man’s fate, Owen could not avoid in his own mind, sharing the responsibility for his suffering. The ‘you’ he directs this rhetoric of anger at is ambiguous and could refer to the establishment who make the major decisions about war, General Kitchener the war minister in 1914 who was in charge of the recruitment campaign or even Jesse pope a woman Owen disliked intensely who wrote popular jingles for The Daily Mail that would evoke feelings of shame in men who did not conscript.

Arguably, Owen is referring to all these people, and believes them all culpable for the man’s agony, conceivably suggesting that soldiers should not shoulder the burden on their own but can pass blame to others. Sherriff characterizes survivors guilt through Raleigh’s reaction to the death of Osbourne. When Stanhope asks Raleigh if he is going to eat he replies exclaiming; “How can I sit down and eat that when-… - when Osborne’s – lying out there”. The italicized ‘can’ and the fragmented speech employed here, depict Raleigh’s struggle to understand why he did not die with Osborne and whether he is deserving of life, considering food is vital in sustaining life. Raleigh also states to Stanhope “You resent me being here”; he could be suggesting that Stanhope resents him for being ‘here’ in life instead of Osborne, reinforcing the notion that he feels guilty for surviving Osborne. Sherriff may have incorporated this as a reflection of his own sense of survivor’s guilt as; Captain Archibald Henry Douglass a man Sherriff fought with seems to be represented by a few of the characters. When Sherriff first met Douglass, he was drying a sock over a candle flame, a scene given to Captain Hardy in ‘Journey’s End’. Douglass was known to his comrades in the battalion as ‘Father’, similar to how the men in the play coined Osbourne as ‘Uncle’; as he was the son of a clergymen, a background given to Stanhope.

The conflict of faith is explored in both ‘Journeys End’ and Owens poetry but whereas Owen depicts the struggle of the men in their Christian faith; Sherriff portrays the soldiers conflicting feelings of faith in what they are fighting for. On the surface of Owen’s poetry, it is ostensible that the men have begun to lose faith in God as they are subjected to the brutality of war, while he does nothing. This is demonstrated in ‘Exposure’ in the line “For love of God seems dying”; the verb “dying” implying a spiritual death of the soldiers who no longer believe in the love and protection of God and in ‘Futility’ when the soldier questions whether God made men just so they could die in war ‘Was it for this the clay grew tall’. It could be argued that Owen is attempting to convey conflict between soldiers and the church institution, highlighting the hypocrisy of the creeds of the church which seem to be complicit in the brutality of war; the leader of the Anglican church even wrote a pastoral letter published in the Church Times on the 1st January 1915 stating “no household or home will be acting worthily if in timidity or self-love, it keeps back any of those who can loyally bear a man’s part in the great enterprise on the part of the land we love. ”. This is especially resonant in ‘Anthem for doomed youth’ as the violence of trench warfare is set against the passive atmosphere of the church. ‘The monstrous anger of the guns’ which ‘patter out their hasty orisons’ suggest that the anger of the men against the church for endorsing war but giving them no comfort for their sacrifice, is so powerful it smothers any faith they had. Owen’s strife to contest the rhetoric of his time that all men able should fight for their country, comes from his own rejection of religion, even writing to his mother in January 1913 “ I have murdered my false creed”. In ‘Journeys End’ Sherriff seems to critique the point of war and the institution that sanctions it by having his characters question their faith in the war they are fighting. While discussing the blowing up of trenches with Osbourne, Raleigh questions “it all seems rather – silly doesn’t it?”

The fact that Raleigh questions this suggests he is conflicted on his faith in the battle he is fighting. Putting the adjective ‘silly’ in italics emphasizes the impracticality of war. Trotter states matter of factly “it was murder” when talking about a fatal raid against the “Boche”; the employment of the loaded noun ‘murder’ implies the men have lost faith in what they believed was the righteousness of destroying their ‘enemy’. While the colonel continues to have blind faith in his superiors, even somewhat ignorantly suggesting to Osborne and Raleigh that “a great deal may depend on bringing in a German. It may mean the winning of the whole war. ”; Stanhope questions this by arguing against the brigadier’s decision “But surely he must realize-?”. This would resonate with a viewer in 1928 as many watching the play would have lost their loved ones to futile raids that did not aid in winning the war but lost valuable men. Owen and Sherriff explore the conflict between the men and nature as it can act as their enemy as well as guiding them through their struggle in and out of the battlefield.

Nature’s personified attack against the soldiers is especially prevalent in ‘Exposure’. Immediately the reader can see natures affect on the soldiers in the first line “Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us”; the sibilant ‘s’ combined with hard consonants ‘d’ and ‘t’ create a cutting edge to the wind that knife the men. One could interpret the attack of the wind as a signal for the attack of the human enemy to cause fear in the men as they are made ‘nervous’. Nature being used as a signal can also be seen in ‘Journey’s End’ as the “faint rosy glow of the dawn” deepens “to an angry red”, marking Raleigh’s rapid descent into death. In ‘Spring Offensive’ nature abets the death of the soldiers; the pathetic fallacy used in the line “And instantly the whole sky burned… With fury against them” urges a readerto understand the low odds soldiers faced when going to war, as even the ubiquitous sky seemed to be against them. This was because Owen may have believed that those left at home could not comprehend the suffering of the soldiers, so by evoking pity in them through his powerful language, they would be able to empathize with the soldier’s anguish.

This could also, perhaps be a warning to future generations that the natural world has no place for war. Throughout ‘Journeys End’ the sun symbolizes the running out of time for the men as they come closer to their impending death; the “pale shaft of sunlight” signals the early morning and “the sunlight has gone from… the floor, but still shines brightly” marks the afternoon. As the play draws to an end the sun ‘glows’ ‘red’ no longer shining brightly for the men; the ‘red’ hue of the sun which could be interpreted by a reader as representative of the blood shed as sacrifice by the men for the war. Contrastingly, Owen illustrates in ‘Spring Offensive’ how the sun can protect the men during battle. The rhyming couplet “summer oozed into their veins… Like the injected drug for their bones pains” shows how the sun can heal the men of their afflictions from fighting. In ‘Exposure’ the men drowse ‘sun-dozed’ as they remember the warmth and love they received at home, a welcome distraction from their ‘dying’. Similarly, Sherriff demonstrates how nature can distract the men from the reality of war. Osbourne and trotter discuss the beauty of nature to keep themselves distracted from thinking about “the big attack”; Trotter states “Ope we ‘ave an ‘ot summer’ which implies he has hope that he will survive to feel the warmth of the oncoming summer”. The natural idyllic images that would be imagined by the men from the line “geraniums, lobelia, and calceolaria – you know, red, white, and blue. ” would remind them of the comforts of home and give them motivation to continue their fight.

The line “the earth walls deaden the sounds of war” illustrates how nature can also shelters the men from the realities of war. This again demonstrates how nature guides the men through battle. Lastly, Sherriff explores the conflict between the ‘Comrades’ in the trenches, whereas Owen depicts the importance of ‘camaraderie’ for survival. A lot of conflict between the men in ‘Journeys End’ arises due to social divide in the army rankings. The characters presented in the play are mainly junior officers or subalternates, they are public school legacies and therefore bring a set of beliefs and values from the English middle class. These men formed the officer class and there is a clear distinction between them and the ‘men’. One of the most uncomfortable confrontations between Stanhope and Raleigh comes when Raleigh, dazed and bemused after his first taste of battle, admits to having been ‘feeding with the men’ rather than having dinner with his fellow officers. Whilst reprimanding Raleigh, Stanhope says ‘My officers work together. ’; the fact that ‘together’ has been written in italics reinforces the separation between the officers and the men; an audience in 2018 may not relate as much to this notion due to the breakdown of social classes compared to an audience in 1919 to whom which division of social classes was still an important societal concept. Sherriff may have highlighted this concern as he was rejected to join the war as an officer because he went to a grammar school, so perhaps he was critiquing the class-based hierarchal structure of the army.

Contrastingly, Owen demonstrates how the men work together through any conflict they face. In ‘Spring Offensive’ the men ‘raced together’ towards the battle and their impending deaths. They find “comfortable chests and knees” so they can sleep ‘carelessly’. The narrative viewpoint in ‘Exposure’ is first person plural which brings a sense of collective experience and comradeship between the speaker and other soldiers against the adversity they face from the ‘winds’ that knive them and the ‘bullets’ that “streak the silence”. Owen even wrote a letter to his mother stating ‘‘you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here” illustrating the love and appreciation he himself had for his comrades.