A key conflict that Owen and Sherriff explore in their literature is that many soldiers may have ambivalent feelings about their duty to fight for their country and their instinct to escape danger. In "Journey's End", Sherriff describes this through the character Hibbert who "can't stand" the trenches anymore and tries to use his "neuralgia" as an excuse to leave. The broken syntax of "I'll continue, now I think" expresses his hesitant feelings about wanting to escape to the safety of the hospital and stay to fight with the rest of the men. Using the adverb “slowly” to describe how Hibbert moves away from the shelter highlights his reluctance to desert. Sherriff himself suffered from neuralgia, but in letters sent home he expressed his belief that he should continue to fight like other soldiers, and Hibbert is arguably a less sympathetic character demonstrated by his whining, while Stanhope remains acquiescent despite the stress of war, so perhaps Sherriff. uses the opposing behaviors of Stanhope and Hibbert to criticize the men's doubts about their duty to fight, seeing it as dishonorable.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Owen explores this struggle in the first line of “Spring Offensive” – “Stopped in the shadow of a final hill”; the verb “to stop” grabs the reader's attention and expresses the soldier's hesitation to launch into battle. Furthermore, the infinitive “halt” is a military command, this juxtaposition illustrates the warlike feelings of soldiers who follow orders or become deserters and lose their honor. Critic Adrian Ceaser argued in “Take Like a Man: Suffering, Sexuality, and 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 a means to wisdom. " I would dispute this criticism as it is widely known that Owen was a pacifist, even writing to his mother "Passivity at all costs! Suffer from 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 men for their country. His antagonism toward the death and suffering faced by the soldiers is clear from the sinister connotations invoked in the metaphors "Obscene as cancer, bitter as rumor // Of vile and incurable wounds on innocent tongues." This illustrates Owen's contrasting views with Sherriff in that he adamantly believed that it was wrong for soldiers to fight in war and that they had a duty to themselves to remain innocent, and not towards their country. The conflicting emotions brought on by survivor's guilt are a concern shared by Owen and Sherriff. Owen ends “Spring Offensive” with the line “Why don’t they talk about the comrades who went down?” » ; ending the poem with such a poignant message suggests that he felt deeply about how surviving war soldiers should feel about those who died, which could be interpreted as them not being able to speak because They felt guilty for having survived. Although Owen took a more reflective view in “Spring Offensive,” in contrasting ways in “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen immersed himself in the poem. In this depiction of war neurosis, the dead soldier torments Owen in his dreams, punishing him for watching him die. Owen uses the first person plural,explicitly including himself and a reader living in 1914 in his accusation. “He throws himself at me, chokes and drowns. If in some suffocating dreams you too could walk behind the cart we threw at him! Owen's survivor's guilt manifests itself in these lines, having escaped sharing the man's fate, Owen could not avoid in his own mind sharing responsibility for his suffering. The "you" against whom he directs this angry rhetoric is ambiguous and could refer to the establishment that made major decisions regarding the war, General Kitchener, the Minister of War in 1914 who was in charge of the recruiting drive. , or Jesse Pope, a woman Owen greatly hated and who wrote popular jingles for the Daily Mail that would evoke feelings of shame in men who didn't. conscript. Arguably, Owen is referring to all of these people and believing them all to be guilty of the man's agony, probably suggesting that the soldiers should not shoulder the burden alone but can place the blame on others. Sherriff characterizes survivors' guilt through Raleigh's reaction to Osbourne's death. When Stanhope asks Raleigh if he is going to eat, he responds by exclaiming; “How can I sit and eat this when… – when Osborne – is lying there.” The italicized "may" and the fragmented speech used here describe Raleigh's struggle to understand why he did not die with Osborne and whether he deserves life, considering food to be vital to sustaining life. Raleigh also tells Stanhope "You resent me for being here"; he could suggest that Stanhope resents him for being "here" in life instead of Osborne, reinforcing the idea that he feels guilty for having outlived Osborne. Sherriff may have internalized this as a reflection of his own sense of survivor's guilt: Captain Archibald Henry Douglass, a man with whom Sherriff fought, appears to be represented by a few 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", in the same way that the men in the play coined Osbourne as "Uncle"; as he was the son of a clergyman, an experience given to Stanhope. The conflict of faith is explored in both "Journeys End" and in Owens' poetry, but while Owen depicts the struggle of men in their Christian faith; Sherriff depicts the soldiers' conflicting feelings of faith in what they are fighting for. On the surface of Owen's poetry, it is evident that 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 the love of God seems to die"; the verb "to die" implying a spiritual death of soldiers who no longer believe in the love and protection of God and in "Futility" when the soldier wonders if God created men just so that they could die at the war “Was that why the clay grew”. It could be argued that Owen is attempting to convey the conflict between the soldiers and the church institution, highlighting the hypocrisy of the Church's beliefs which seem complicit in the brutality of war; the head of the Anglican Church even wrote a pastoral letter published in the Church Times on January 1, 1915 declaring "no home or hearth will act worthily if, through timidity or self-esteem, it withholds anyone who can loyally endure a la man's share in the great enterprise of the earth that we love. ". This particularly resonates in “Anthem for doomed Youth» where the violence of trench warfare contrasts with the passive atmosphere of the church. “The monstrous anger of the arms” which “deliver their hasty prayers” suggests that the anger of men against the Church, which supports the war but brings them no consolation for their sacrifice, is so powerful that it stifles whatever faith they have. had. Owen's struggle to challenge the rhetoric of his time that all capable men should fight for their country, came from his own rejection of religion, even writing to his mother in January 1913 "I have murdered my false belief ". In “Journeys End,” Sherriff appears to criticize the purpose of war and the institution that sanctions it by having his characters question their faith in the war they are waging. While discussing the trench explosion with Osbourne, Raleigh wonders "it all seems rather – silly, doesn't it?" » The fact that Raleigh questions this suggests that he is conflicted about his faith in the battle he is fighting. Italicizing the adjective “idiot” highlights the impractical nature of war. Trotter bluntly declares “it was murder” when he speaks of a deadly raid against the “Boche”; the use of the loaded noun “murder” implies that the men lost faith in what they believed to be the justice of destroying their “enemy.” While the colonel continues to have blind trust in his superiors, even ignorantly suggesting to Osborne and Raleigh that "a lot could depend on the arrival of a German." This can mean victory in the entire war. » ; Stanhope questions this by objecting to the Brigadier's decision "But surely he must realise-?". This would resonate with a viewer in 1928, as many of the play's audience would have lost their loved ones to futile raids that didn't help win the war but lost valuable men. Owen and Sherriff explore the conflict between humans and nature, as it can act as their enemy and guide them in their struggle on and off the battlefield. Nature's personified attack on soldiers is particularly prevalent in "Exposure". Immediately the reader can see the influence of nature on the soldiers in the first line: "Our brains ache, in the icy and merciless east winds that knife us"; the sibilant “s” combined with the hard consonants “d” and “t” create an edge against the wind that stabs men. We could interpret the attack of the wind as a signal of attack from the human enemy to cause fear in men because they are made “nervous”. Nature used as a signal can also be seen in "Journey's End", as the "faint rosy glow of dawn" deepens "to an angry red", marking Raleigh's rapid descent into death. In the “spring offensive,” nature encourages the deaths of soldiers; the pathetic error used in the sentence "And instantly the whole sky burned... With fury against them" makes the reader understand the slim odds the soldiers faced when they went to war, as even the omnipresent sky seemed to be against them . Indeed, Owen perhaps believed that those left at home could not understand the suffering of the soldiers, so by arousing pity in them through his powerful language, they would be able to understand the soldier's anguish. It 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 lack of time for the men as they move closer to their imminent death; the “pale ray of sunlight” signals the early morning and “the sunlight has disappeared from the ground, but still shines brightly” marks.