Brits, Lord Kitchener Wants You (Icon 3). 1914. Alfred Leete

The creation of the First World War myth was aided by Owen's poetry. As Marzena Sokoowska-Pary (2021) recognises, myth is not "a synonym of lying," but rather a representation of the "history of the callously and senselessly protracted slaughter and suffering of young men" (pp. 382) that the profusion of war literature helped to propagate. "Literature has had a key influence in defining how the battle was subsequently perceived, remembered, and mythologized," write Marzena Sokolowska and Martin Loschingg (2014). (pg. 2). The public's memory and comprehension of the conflict were established by the myth of the war, which also provided an explanation for the ongoing fascination with poetry and film depictions of the conflict.

Many contemporary films that represent the First World Battle focus on the senseless carnage, horrifying conditions, and the courage of the soldiers as well as the folly of the war. This picture is based on a mythological, but accurate, view of the battle, as the aforementioned critics explore. The First World War troops are typically portrayed as "victims of the faulty purpose, mechanistic character, and dubious techniques of war," according to Helen McCartney (2014). (pg. 299). By explaining how the accumulation of war imagery over time contributed to the perpetuation of this myth, McCartney strengthens her case. "These unfavourable conceptions of the war in general, and the soldier in particular,... had become indelibly engraved on the British common imagination as a set of impressively stable beliefs," she writes (McCartney, 2014, pg. 299).

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