I still have a few doubts on the use of the present after "as if" and on other statements. Thank you for your cooperation.
1) They are hobbling along on their bloody feet, as if they are (why not were?) hurt or blind. They are so tired, they walk ask if they are (why not were?) drunk.
2) Wilfred Owen enlisted as a soldier in 1915. He was sent to France where he saw his first action. He was injured and sent to hospital to recover from shell shock.
3)There he met the poet Siefried Sassoon, who read his poems and encouraged him to write. Owen returned to the front in August 1918.
4)On November 4 he was killed in a German machine gun attack. In June 1918 he was preparing Disabled and Other Poems for publication. He was writing the preface to the book that has now become essential in discussing much of the poetry of World War I. He claimed that his subject was War, and the pity of War.
5)He believed that the poet’s task was to warn and be truthful. His poems describe men who are clinically alive although their bodies have been destroyed.
6) His technical innovations of para-rhymes and his extensive use of assonance and alliteration characterize his poems .
"Write about literature in the present tense unless logic demands that you do otherwise. (Even though a story is written in the past tense, we say that the main character writes to her brother because she thinks she knows something important. Even though Robert Frost is long gone, we say that Frost suggests or uses or says. And in his poems, we say that a phrase or word suggests or means or implies something (all present tense verbs). However, Frost moved his family to England and he died in 1963, etc.)."
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/literature.htm
1) They are hobbling along on their bloody feet, as if they are hurt or blind. They are so tired, they walk as if they are drunk.
2) Wilfred Owen enlisted as a soldier in 1915. He was sent to France where he saw his first action. He was injured and sent to hospital to recover from shell shock.
3)There, he met the poet Siefried Sassoon who read his poems and encouraged him to write. Owen returned to the front in August 1918.
4)On November 4, 1918, he was killed in a German machine gun attack. In June 1918, he was preparing Disabled and Other Poems for publication. He was writing the preface to the book that has now become essential in discussing much of the poetry of World War I. He claimed that his subject was War, and the pity of War. [<~~Notice that he did NOT write war-protest works. He was writing about the pity of war, the sadness of war, the senseless loss of war.]
5)He believed that the poet’s task was to warn and be truthful. His poems describe men who are clinically alive although their bodies have been destroyed.
6) His technical innovations of para-rhymes and his extensive use of assonance and alliteration characterize his poems.
1) In the sentences given, the use of "are" after "as if" is grammatically correct. When using "as if," we can use both the present tense ("are") and the past tense ("were") depending on the context. However, in these specific sentences, the present tense is used to describe a hypothetical or imagined situation. The present tense emphasizes the ongoing nature of the action, suggesting that the people are currently experiencing these states. The past tense could also be used here, but it would convey a slightly different meaning, implying that the people were previously hurt, blind, or drunk.
2) This sentence describes a sequence of events in the past. The past tense ("enlisted," "was sent," "saw," "was injured," "sent," "recover") is used to indicate actions or states that occurred in the past.
3) Similarly, this sentence also describes past events. The past tense ("met," "read," "encouraged," "returned") is used to indicate actions that happened in the past.
4) In the first sentence, the past tense ("was killed," "was preparing") is used to describe actions or states that occurred in the past. The second sentence describes a continuous action in the past, so the past continuous tense ("was writing") is used to convey this.
5) The past tense ("believed," "described," "have been destroyed") is used to describe Owen's beliefs and the descriptions in his poems, which all took place in the past.
6) In this sentence, the present tense ("characterize") is used to describe the ongoing characteristics or features of Owen's poems. It suggests that these features are still relevant and present in his poems today.
It's important to note that the choice of tense depends on the specific meaning you want to convey and the context in which the sentences are used.