Ideas for our duet!

Ember and I looked at lots of different poems, pictures and books to inspire us for our duet.

We decided we wanted to start our duet, with us eating dinner and having a 'normal' evening at home, to represent what life was like before Ember, (my husband) left for war.

We looked at lots of poems, including one of my favourites, Wilfred Owens 'Dulce Et Decorum Est' which is beautifully written, but ends with the lines 'Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori' which is Latin for 'It is sweet and right to die for your country'.
I love this poem, because it depicts the harrowing events and the harsh reality of how ugly and wrong war is, yet it ironically ends with the Latin, and leaves you thinking about how bitter that seems. It seems like the message in the poem is saying, although people lose limbs, children lose fathers, mothers lose sons, wives lose husbands, people are killed, it's fine because it's the noble, and right thing to do. I'm a pacifist, and I personally hate any form of violence, and don't think it has ever solved anything, and don't think it ever will, so I like the irony and bitterness in this poem.

We also read lots of love letters between wives and husbands during the War, which proved very interesting. This helped stimulate us and our ideas for our duet. We researched how long the letters would take to reach one another, and how a lot of the letters were 'censored' by officials, because the soldiers were writing what the war was truly like, and a lot of the propaganda back home was suggesting that war wouldn't be bad, not at all like the harsh reality of it. Letters were rifled through, and scanned for any obscenities, and most letters were censored.