The main points of these two poems is that they focus around the happenings of World War 1 and the young men involved and how futile the war was. In both texts, the authors write their poems in honour of the soldiers who died and incorporate into their poem what life and after life was like for the soldiers. Larkin writes in his poems that lives were lost in the wars and that there will “never [be] such innocence again.” This refers to both the men who died and how the war affected life outside of the battlefield. In Flanders Fields has a similar message, in which McCrae writes, “We are the Dead.” Although much more blatant, the phrase refers to the men who died in the war as well. Another similarity between the two poems is the mention of …show more content…
McCrae does use imagery in his poem too, but it is not the main technique used. Larkin and McCrae use the reader’s emotions to make their poems more effective. They use ‘love’ and ‘innocence’ in past tense, meaning that there once was love and innocence, but no longer. Words like these are powerful and using them in the right way can make a poem very emotional and these two authors have done that. By reaching out to the readers emotions, the authors connect to the reader and thus make the poem more effective and the message brought across. McCrae’s poem is much simpler than Larkin’s, and this makes it more memorable and attractive to read. In Flanders Fields and MCMXIV (1914) are two poems which are visually different in certain ways, but they are similar in the message that they are putting across. Both poems address the issues of the war and how it had affected people, but John McCrae’s poem, In Flanders Field, connects with the reader and is more effective because of