How can poetry be used as propaganda? Discuss with reference to at least 2 poems, and examples of war photography. Megan Liang 9JMD Poems are highly ambiguous and often advertise different interpretations on warfare. During the period of the ‘Great War’, poetry played crucial role in the war efforts, even more so than pamphlets and articles. The articles of literacy work filled with abstract and spiritualized words, phrases and metaphors, helped conceal the monstrosity and severity of warfare. Soothing tones and reassuring wordings hid the loathsome truth behind modern warfare. There was no doubt that poetry was used as propaganda, primarily used to influence an audience to think, or view something in a certain way, or nature. Propaganda was also used to promote a political cause or point of view, this was often achieved by presenting selected facts that all encourage a particular view, or to produce an emotional response to the information presented. Propaganda was regularly manipulative, ambiguous and often trivialized the importance of certain events, for …show more content…
Pope evidently glorifies war within this poem, and she severely underplays the importance and horror of certain events, and manipulates the authenticity of war, and she informs the public about the version of war that is untrue and deceitful. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ written by Wilfred Owen, is a poem in which his representation of warfare is brutal in contrast to Jessie Pope’s version of a ‘jubilant’ war. ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ vividly depicts the brutality of warfare and gas attacks. As a soldier in World War One, Owen experienced the ignobility of war first-hand. By depicting the death and destruction that war causes in detail, he proves that war isn’t at all heroic, as it was made out to