Comparing two war poems.

This time we have analysed two poems which deal with the subject of war from two different perspectives, "Children in wartime" by Isobel Thrilling and "The end of summer" by Roger McGough. Some of our writers have given their opinion on which of these two war poems describes the horrors of war in a more powerful way.

Here you can read the poems:                                    

The End of Summer

It is the end of summer

The end of day and cool,

As children, holiday-sated,

Idle happily from school.

Dusk is slow to gather

The pavements are still bright,

It is the end of summer

And a bag of dynamite

Is pushed behind the counter

Of a department store, and soon

A trembling hand will put an end

To an English afternoon.

The sun on rooftops gleaming

Underlines the need to kill,

It is the en of summer

And all is cool, all is still.

Roger McGough

Children in wartime

Sirens ripped open

the warm silk of sleep;

we ricocheted to the shelter

moated by streets

that ran with darkness.

People said it was a storm,

but flak

had not the right sound

for rain;

thunder left such huge craters

of silence,

we knew this was no giant

playing bowls.

And later,

when I saw the jaw of glass,

where once had hung

my window spun with stars;

it seemed the sky

lay broken on the floor.

Isobel Thrilling

Máximo Rivi

After having read “Children in Wartime” and “The End of Summer” and having analyzed the poems thoroughly, I have reached the conclusion that when being asked which poem expresses the horrors of war better, I consider “Children in Wartime” a superior example of the dreadfulness of warfare and what people, particularly children, have had to suffer in consequence of man’s ambitions.

In both poems, the use of imagery is recurrent. In “Children in Wartime”, we can see the use of imagery right in the first lines, where the author writes “Sirens ripped open the warm silk of sleep”. After reading this, the image of “warm silk” comes to mind as something pleasant or soothing; however, the previous words, “sirens ripped open”, give a whole new perspective on the poem and changes everything inside of the reader’s mind, giving him a bittersweet taste right from the start. Later in the poem, we find some very powerful imagery used again when the author writes “thunder left such huge craters of silence”. Since thunder cannot leave “craters of silence”, we understand the author is using imagery again. These words convey a powerful feeling of loneliness, of silenced desperation, where the victims of “thunder”, the victims of flak and bombardment, are either dead or praying to survive the attack, which has taken the words out of their mouths and has created these “craters of silence” among the sufferers.

 In “the End of Summer”, imagery is not as plentiful as in “Children in Wartime”, but we can still appreciate some by the end of the poem such as in line 13, where the author writes “The sun on rooftops gleaming underlines the need to kill”. “The End of Summer” starts in a comfortable, if not happy, scenario; Children are returning from their first days of school after satiating holidays, the days are cool but it is still summertime, and the atmosphere created by the author is that of true ease and warmth. Unbeknownst to the children, in a department store there is a terrorist about to detonate a bomb, thus the lines “the sun on rooftops gleaming underlines the need to kill”. Since it was dusk, the sun was in that position where it adopts a deep reddish tone and it becomes larger and somewhat more intense. When the author talks about the sun “underlining the need to kill”, it is refering to the sun’s intensity and its red concentrated color which was simultaneously gleaming on the Department Store’s roof where the bomb was bieng planted.  

To conclude, I chose “Children in Wartime” as a better example of the losses and the consequences war brings to those affected by it. Although both poems achieve the goal of transmitting a sour feeling of death, “Children in Wartime”, through metaphors and similies, strikes the reader (or at least it stroke me) with a more profound effect.

Francisco Martinez

Both ‘Children in wartime’ and ‘The end of summer’ refer to war, and in my opinion the latter, by Roger McGough, is more powerful in its descriptions. This is because it shows how a normal afternoon can be ruined, and how innocent lives can be ruined in seconds. This poem shows a more “poetic” version of war; it shows how in an indirect way, war takes the lives of many people. The poem is devided in two parts chronologically, the first part describes a normal summer afternoon in London, and the second shows how the people’s lives are ruined by terrorists. The title of the poem is also significant, “The end of summer” shows that the summer is finishing, but not only is the summer over; many people’s lives are over that same day, the day when the summer comes to an end.

Juan Diego Serrano

Definitely “Children in Wartime” expresses better the horrors of war. The author uses very powerful words and phrases like “Sirens ripped open”. It also uses powerful metaphors such as “When I saw the jaw of glass” which presents a broken window as a mouth wanting to eat you. It also explains the horror of bombs with an excellent metaphor: “thunder left such huge craters of silence”.

Sybrand Veeger

 Both poems, "Children in Wartime" and "The End of Summer" express horror in excellent ways; but "Children in Wartime" expresses it in a context that is related to war, so it is obviously better. However, this does not mean that "The End of Summer" is a great poem, it is just that it is not meant to be interpreted as a war poem. In fact, it aims at the horrors of Terrorism; an episode that took place in London.

  In one case we can see full descriptions of a bomb attack in WWI and how people dealt with these horrific, but true occurrences, and on the other hand we have a beautiful summer day, which is completely shattered by a "trembling hand". However, when it comes to wartime-horror descriptions "Children in Wartime" is the winner.