Additional Suggestions and Insight
Students could arrange the selections in chronological order. We could briefly review the selections and have the students discover similarities and differences in the three styles. For a final assessment students could write an in class essay. Some suggestions to include are "Dulce et Decorum" by Wilfred Owen or "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger. This would depend on what poems were presented by the students and how smoothly the unit has flowed. Many songs have been recorded concerning war - George Cohen's "Over There", Joni Mitchell's "The Fiddle and the Drum", and "I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier" to name a few.
While preparing this unit, I was amazed at how much war poetry I discovered from World War I and how relatively little, in contrast, from World War II. Several reasons for this were pointed out to me. During World War I the elite, especially the British elite, fought along- side their soldiers. Naturally, the well- to- do were educated in the major British lineage of literary prose and poetry. Further, even ordinary men were familiar with the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress. Add to this the enormous debt and obligation they must have felt to excel based on their forefather's contributions (Fussell 37).
By contrast, World War II losses were beyond comprehension. Fifty-five million died. More civilians died then soldiers (Overy). America had just come out of the depression. People wanted to forget. They knew hard times. The world wanted to bury the dead. For many their youth had been full of hunger, their young life was given to the war effort, and now was not a time for remembering but for moving on.
I hope to get the students to understand some of these points, and to have them discover others as they research war poems for their group assignment. Creating curious life-long learners and thinkers is every teacher's goal.
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