Analysis Of Wilfred Owen 's ' The Soldier On The Front Line '

From another perspective, the simile in the line further indicates that the soldiers had also lost their human rights, not to mention their basic funeral rights. The soldiers had been brutally slaughtered like cows. This hints at the extreme brutality and savagery of the war. Pointing out this fact, Owen reveals his dismay about the reality of war. In conclusion, using the rhetorical question and simile, he portrays the war as a place, where innocent youths are being wasted and discarded. He implies his negative and skeptical perspective on this aspect of

Then, "An ecstasy of fumbling / Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time / But someone still was yelling out and stumbling [. . .]. " Everyone has managed to put on his mask, except one unfortunate soldier. As the mustard gas seeps into his lungs, he begins to scream and jerk around, but it is too late for his companions to save him. "[W]atch the white eyes writing in his face / His hanging face / [. . .] at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs [. . .] / Of vile, incurable sores on the innocent tongue [. . .]. " Nowhere in the entire poem is there any mention of how wonderful and brave the soldiers feel at being given the chance to die for their country.

However, the result of the War had produced some outstanding poets and Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was a of the war poets who was widely regarded as one of the best poets of the World War One period. He wrote out of his intense personal experience and memory as a soldier and wrote with unrivalled power of the physical, moral and psychological trauma of the First World War . Heavily influenced by Keats and Shelly, a young Owen intrigued to become a poet began to absorb himself in poetry. He did not go into religious life like his mother. Instead, he left for Bordeaux, France to teach English in the Berlitz School after the war had erupted. Although he thought of himself as a `Pacifist', he enlisted in the Artist's Rifles in October 1915 and later in 1917 changed to France. There he began writing poems about his war experiences. Owen finally suffered from shell-shock in the summer of 1917 and was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital and met his friend Siegfried Sassoon, who shared his feelings about the war and who became interested in his work. Reading Sassoon's poems and discussing his work with Sassoon revolutionized Owen's style and conception of poetry .

Wilfred Owen’s poetry is shaped by an intense focus on extraordinary human experiences. In at least 2 poems set for study, explore Owen’s portrayal of suffering and pity.

This technique serves to emphasize the solemn and serious content. In stanza one, Owen describes the soldiers as they set off towards the army base from the front line. The simile "Bent double, like old beggars"(1) not only says that they are tired, but that they are so tired they have been brought down to the level of beggars who have not slept in a bed for weeks on end. Also, the simile "coughing like hags"(2) helps to depict the soldiers? poor health and depressed state of mind. Owen makes us picture the soldiers as ill, disturbed and utterly exhausted. He shows that this is not the government-projected stereotype of a soldier, in gleaming boots and crisp new uniform, but is the true illustration of the poor mental and physical state of the soldiers. By telling us that many of the platoon are barefoot, Owen gives us an idea of how awful the soldiers? journey already is; it then gets even worse. Owen tells us that the soldiers, although they must have been trained, still do not notice the deadly mustard gas shells being fired at them from behind; such is the extent of their exhaustion.

Wilfred Owen can be considered as one of the finest war poets of all times. His war poems, a collection of works composed between January 1917, when he was first sent to the Western Front, and November 1918, when he was killed in action, use a variety of poetic techniques to allow the reader to empathise with his world, situation, emotions and thoughts. The sonnet form, para-rhymes, ironic titles, voice, and various imagery used by Owen grasp the prominent central idea of the complete futility of war as well as explore underlying themes such as the massive waste of young lives, the horrors of war, the hopelessness of war and the loss of religion. These can be seen in the three poems, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and

By creating these nurturing, peaceful images of a beautiful countryside, Brooke evokes pride from his primary audience, which in turn creates a sense of nationalism. Furthermore, references to the themes of heaven and the afterlife create comforting images in the reader’s mind. Brooke describes a ‘pulse in the eternal mind’ for the ‘hearts at peace under an English heaven’, suggesting that those who die fighting for their country will find themselves in a heaven as idyllic as England. The paradisiacal images created by Brooke are a stark contrast to the gruesome images featured in Owen’s poem. Dulce et Decorum est is rich in similes that graphically illustrate the goriest details of war. The soldiers in the poem are described as ‘old beggars’ who are ‘coughing like hags’, which illustrates a loss of dignity, health and the innocence associated with youth. As the poem progresses, a soldier is the victim of a gas attack and is described vividly, with ‘white eyes, writhing in his face’ as ‘blood comes gargling from his froth-corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer’. Owen’s dark subject matter is further explored through his juxtaposition of ‘children ardent for desperate glory’ and soldiers marching like ‘beggars under sacks’. The use of these similes and images shocks the reader and conveys the ruthless reality of war.

This image is definitely not the glamorous picture of glory that, say army recruitment presents; worse, the soldiers are doing worse than civilians. As soon as the next stanza “[m]en marched asleep. Many had lost their boots” (5). They have lost their usual awareness and move mechanically; that doesn’t sound appealing! It gets worse: “[b]ut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind” (6). So now they’re limping, apparently wounded, covered in blood, and can’t even see? It worsens further, “[d]runk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind” (7-8). The soldiers are so exhausted it incapacitates them, and they can no longer hear the bullets being fired. This poem sounds like a distorted nightmare, except the speaker is living it, and even reliving the torment of the soldier’s death while he is unconscious. Owen’s wording expresses that the soldiers are merely men, deteriorating and inconceivably overwhelmed the opposite of positive war poetry containing glory and honor.

What is Wilfred Owen’s attitude towards Worlds War 1 and how is this shown through his poetry?

Similar to Anthem for Doomed Youth, the idea of dehumanisation in 'Dulce ET Decorum EST Pro Patria Mori' is also introduced early in the poem. The first lines, "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks", and "Knock-kneed, coughing like hags" both describe the condition in which young people of the war suffered through. The similes allow the audience to visualise the soldiers more accurately. They are portrayed somewhat so weak and devaluated, look and feel much older than they are; in general, not at all possessing the qualities

Wilfred Owen, a World War One poet, revealed the unsettling subject matter of war by using his own personal perspective to explore the harsh brutal reality of war.

army when he was 22 years old. He was injured in a shell explosion in

In Dulce, Owen depicts horror as the arduous physical and mental damage the soldiers experienced. The simile, “bent double like old beggars”compares the presumably young men to old and weak

Poems using strong poetic technique and devices are able to create a wide range of emotions from the readers. Wilfred Owen’s poetry effectively uses these poetic techniques and devices to not only create unsettling images about war but to provide his opinion about war itself with the use of themes within his poem. The use of these themes explored Owen’s ideas on the futility of war and can be seen in the poems: Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility and The Next War. The poems provide unsettling images and belief of war through the treatment of death, barbaric nature of war and the futility of war.

Throughout Wilfred Owen’s collection of poems, he unmasks the harsh tragedy of war through the events he experienced. His poems indulge and grasp readers to feel the pain of his words and develop some idea on the tragedy during the war. Tragedy was a common feature during the war, as innocent boys and men had their lives taken away from them in a gunshot. The sad truth of the war that most of the people who experienced and lived during the tragic time, still bare the horrifying images that still live with them now. Owen’s poems give the reader insight to this pain, and help unmask the tragedy of war.