The reality of conflict: what fighting does to the person doing it

What did doctors first think caused shell shock? In the First World War, soldiers came back shaking, unable to speak or sleep, and the obvious culprit was the shells. At first, doctors did think the blast of exploding shells was physically damaging the brain. Then they found the same symptoms in men who had never been near a shell burst. The damage was being done by the experience of fighting itself. Poets got there in their own way. Tennyson's six hundred ride into the valley of Death. Hughes's soldier wakes up already running. Owen's men are killed by the weather. Same anthology, three different answers to what fighting actually is. Tennyson, Hughes and Owen each decided what you should feel, and they do not agree.

The claim comes first: one of these poets wants you to be proud, and the others do not, and their methods are how they decide what you feel. Four moves show it. Move one, the old poem. Tennyson states obedience as a rule and admires it: "Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die". And he keeps the men a number: "Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred". That is how the state sees them, as parts of one machine, and the poem asks you to honour the crowd. Move two, the modern poem. Hughes puts his soldier inside the same kind of machine and lets him notice it: he almost stops, and sees himself in the "cold clockwork of the stars and the nations". Then the reasons Tennyson honours are the things Hughes's soldier drops while running: "King, honour, human dignity, etcetera Dropped like luxuries". Here are two sentences a student might write. The first: Tennyson and Hughes both write about soldiers charging at the enemy. The second: Tennyson keeps his men a crowd, while Hughes puts you inside one soldier's body. Which of those two is stronger, and why? The second. It compares a choice each poet made, not just the topic, and that choice decides what you feel. A crowd can be honoured, but one terrified body is hard to admire. The two endings split the same way. Tennyson's last lines turn the order on you: "Honour the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred!" Even the reader is given a command, and the command is to admire. Hughes ends on "His terror’s touchy dynamite." His last word on the soldier is fear, ready to go off, and nobody is asked to honour it. Move three goes further still. In Owen's Exposure there is no charge at all, and men die anyway. The refrain is "But nothing happens." That is conflict without an event. And the men do die. In the last stanza, "The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp, Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens." The refrain is said over frozen bodies, so the nothing is the horror. And move four lands the claim. Armitage's soldier in Remains has survived the fighting, and his wound is doubt: "probably armed, possibly not", said twice, once on patrol and once at home.

So here is what the poets want you to feel. The old poem asks you to admire the obedience, and the modern ones ask you to notice the machinery. A question about conflict is really a question about what each poet decided you should feel, and the methods are how they decided it.

One examiner's report noticed exactly this contrast. It found it interesting to read responses that explored how Hughes had used an anonymous individual soldier to convey his ideas whereas Tennyson had focused on the anonymity of the six hundred, and the implications and effects of the choices the poets made. That is the habit worth copying: compare a choice each poet made, one man or a crowd, and then say what that choice does to the reader.

Now a practice question to plan for yourself: compare how two poets present what fighting does to the person doing it. Three steps help. Decide whether each poem gives you one soldier or a crowd. Ask what each poet wants you to feel, and how you know. Then put the two openings side by side. Pause it there and plan both poems: one soldier or a crowd, the feeling, the openings. One plan uses Exposure and Remains. The claim: both poems show fighting doing its damage away from the action, in the waiting and in the memory. Exposure gives you a group, the we of the trench, and the feeling is helpless dread. It opens on the merciless iced east winds, so the weather is the attacker from line one. Remains gives you one man, and the feeling is guilt that will not settle. It opens on a casual patrol story, so the horror creeps in through ordinary speech. The ending: a century apart, both poets show the real damage of conflict arriving when nothing seems to be happening, and Armitage carries it all the way home. Two wrong turns to avoid. A paragraph that lists metaphors and similes without tying them to meaning goes nowhere. And paragraphs about Owen's own service, or Hughes's father, take you away from the poems.

To finish, four questions on the strand, the last on a poem this video left out. Which poet asks you to be proud, and what does he praise? Tennyson asks you to be proud, and he praises obedience: theirs not to reason why. Now Hughes: what does his soldier drop like luxuries? King, honour, human dignity, etcetera: the very reasons Tennyson's poem honours, dropped by Hughes's soldier. Try Remains: which four words does Armitage give his soldier twice? Probably armed, possibly not. On patrol it is a judgement; back home it is a doubt he cannot put down. One more: Storm on the Island has no soldiers. How can it answer this strand? Through its war words. Bombarded, strafes and salvo turn a storm into an air raid, so it shows what living under attack does to people, without a single soldier. Doctors learned that shell shock came from the experience, not just the shells. These poems were making the same discovery, one choice of method at a time.

One sentence comparing a method rather than a topic means you'd back yourself on this, so tap like. Not there, bookmark it and try that sentence on two different pairs of poems.

Next in the chapter: What conflict leaves behind: memory, grief and the people who were never there. Hopefully that's next in your feed, but if not, search for ScholaFly E L four oh, nineteen.

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