A key conflict that both Owen and Sherriff explore in their literature is that many soldiers may have ambivalent feelings towards their duty to fight for their country and their instinct to escape danger. In 'Journey's End', Sherriff interprets this through the character of Hibbert who "can't stand" the trenches anymore and attempts to use his "neuralgia" as an excuse to leave. The broken syntax of “I'll be fine, now I think” conveys his hesitant feelings of 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 the way Hibbert walks away from the bench highlights his reluctance to defect. The sheriff himself suffered from neuralgia but from letters sent home expressed the belief that he should continue to fight like the other soldiers, and Hibbert is probably a less sympathetic character demonstrated by his moans, while Stanhope remains acquiescent despite the stress of war, so perhaps the sheriff is using the opposing behaviors of Stanhope and Hibbert to criticize the men's doubts about their duty to fight, considering it dishonorable. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Owen explores this struggle in the first line of “Spring Offensive” – “Stand against the shadow of a last hill”; the verb “stop” captures the reader's attention and conveys the soldier's uncertainty in proceeding into battle. Furthermore, the infinitive "halt" is a military command, this juxtaposition illustrates the war feelings soldiers experience in following orders or becoming deserters and losing their honor. The critic Adrian Ceaser argued in 'Taking it like a man: Suffering, Sexuality and the war poets' discussing the poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est' that 'suffering authenticates the morality (of the poem),... Owen becomes the hero of his own poetry, 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 dishonor and disgrace; but never 'resort to arms'. He also wrote “The old lie: Dulce et Decorum Est Pro patria mori”; condemning the useless suffering of men for their country is clear from the sinister connotations invoked in the metaphors “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the ruminant // Of vile and incurable sores on innocent tongues”. This exemplifies Owen's contrasting views towards the sheriff as he firmly believed that it was wrong for soldiers to fight in war and that they had a duty to themselves to remain innocent, not their country. The mixed emotions that survivor's guilt brings with it are a concern shared by both Owen and the sheriff. Owen concludes the "Spring Offensive" with the phrase "Why don't they talk about the comrades who fell?"; ending the poem with such a poignant message suggests that he was keenly interested in how surviving war soldiers should feel towards those who died, which could be interpreted as them not being able to speak because they feel guilty for having survived. Although Owen adopted a more reflective view in "Spring Offensive", by contrast in "Dulce et Decorum Est" Owen immersed himself in poetry. In this description 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 lunges at me,dripping, suffocating, drowning. If in some suffocating dream, you too could walk behind the chariot that I threw at him." Owen's survivor guilt manifests itself in these lines, having escaped sharing that man's fate, Owen could not avoid in his mind sharing responsibility for his suffering. The “you” to whom this angry rhetoric is addressed is ambiguous and could refer to the establishment that made the most important decisions about the war, General Kitchener, Minister of War in 1914, responsible for the recruitment drive or even Jesse Pope, a woman who Owen intensely disliked and wrote popular jingles for the Daily Mail which evoked feelings of shame in men who did not. conscript. Arguably, Owen refers to all of these people, and believes them all to be guilty of the man's agony, plausibly suggesting that soldiers should not shoulder the burden themselves but can shift the blame to others. Sherriff characterizes survivors' guilt through Raleigh's reaction to Osbourne's death. When Stanhope asks Raleigh if he's going to eat, he responds by exclaiming; "How can I sit and eat it when-... -when Osborne is -lying out there." The italicized “can” and fragmented speech used here describe Raleigh's struggle to understand why he did not die with Osborne and whether he deserves life, considering that food is vital to sustaining life. Raleigh also states to Stanhope "You resent my being here"; it may suggest that Stanhope resents him for being "here" in life instead of Osborne, reinforcing the idea that he feels guilty for outliving Osborne. The sheriff may have incorporated this as a reflection of his own survivor's guilt such as; Captain Archibald Henry Douglas, a man with whom the sheriff fought, appears to be represented by some of the characters. When the sheriff 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 by his battalion mates as "father", similar to how the men in the play coined Osbourne as "uncle"; as he was the son of a clergyman, a background given to Stanhope. Conflict of faith is explored in both "Journeys End" and Owen's poetry, but as Owen describes the men's struggle in their Christian faith; Sherriff portrays the soldiers' conflicting feelings of faith in what they are fighting for. On the surface of Owen's poem, 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 God's sake he seems to die”; the verb "to die" implies the spiritual death of the soldiers who no longer believe in the love and protection of God and in 'Futility' when the soldier wonders if God created men precisely so that they could die in war 'It was for this reason that 'clay? grew tall'. It could be argued that Owen is attempting to convey the conflict between the soldiers and the ecclesiastical institution, highlighting the hypocrisy of church beliefs that appear to be complicit in the brutality of war; the leader of the Anglican church even wrote a pastoral letter published in the Church Times on 1 January 1915 stating that "no family or home will behave worthily if, with timidity or self-love, it restrains any of those who can loyally bear a role of man in the great enterprise of the land we love. ”. This is especially resonant in “Hymn for Doomed Youth” as the violence of trench warfare is contrasted with the passive atmosphere of the church. "The monstrous anger ofweapons" who "repeat their hasty orations" suggests that the men's anger at the church for supporting the war but giving them no comfort for their sacrifice is so powerful that it stifles any faith they had. Owen's attempt to contest the rhetoric of his time that all capable men should fight for their country, stems from his own rejection of religion, even writing to his mother in January 1913 "I have murdered my false belief." Sheriff seems to criticize the meaning of war and the institution that sanctions it by causing his characters to question their faith in the war they are fighting While discussing the trench explosion with Osbourne, Raleigh wonders “it all seems rather – silly , isn't it?" The fact that Raleigh questions this suggests that he is in conflict with his belief in the battle he is fighting. Putting the adjectiveThe word "foolish" in italics emphasizes the impracticality of war. Trotter states matter-of-factly that “it was a murder” when he speaks of a deadly raid against the “Boche”; the use of the noun "murder" implies that men lost faith in what they believed was right to destroy their "enemy." While the colonel continues to have blind faith in his superiors, even somewhat ignorantly suggesting to Osborne and Raleigh that “a lot may depend on bringing a German here. It could mean winning the entire war. ”; Stanhope questions this by arguing against the Brigadier's decision "But surely he must realise-?". This would have resonated with a viewer in 1928 as many watching the show would have lost loved ones to unnecessary raids that did not 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 especially prevalent in "Exposure." Immediately the reader can see nature's effect on the soldiers in the first line "Our brains ache, in the merciless icy east winds that stab us"; the sibilant 's' combined with the hard consonants 'd' and 't' create a cutting edge in the wind that stabs men. The attack of the wind could be interpreted as a signal of the attack of the human enemy to instill fear in men as they become 'nervous'. Nature used as a signal can also be seen in 'Journey's End' when the "faint rosy glow of dawn" intensifies "to an angry red", marking Raleigh's rapid descent to death. In the Spring Offensive nature favors the death of soldiers; the pathetic fallacy used in the sentence "And instantly all the sky burned... With fury against them" pushes the reader to understand the low odds that soldiers faced when they went to war, as even the omnipresent sky seemed to be against them They. This is because Owen may have believed that those who remained at home could not understand the suffering of the soldiers, so by evoking pity in them through his powerful language, they would be able to empathize with the soldier's anguish. This could also, perhaps, be a warning to future generations that there is no place for war in the natural world. In "Journeys End" the sun symbolizes the end of time for men as they approach imminent death; the “pale ray of sunshine” signals early morning and “the sunlight has gone from the… floor, but still shines brightly” marks the afternoon. As the show draws to a close, the sun "shines" "red" no longer shines for men; the 'red' shade of.