Analysis of Anthem for Doomed Youth

‘Anthem for doomed youth’ portrays the sad and tragic aspects of loss by generalizing it to focus on young men losing their lives on the battlefield to be deprived of their funeral rights. Owen expresses the horrors of war and openly criticizes the loss of life; the loss of young and promising men sent to their inevitable death. Owen effectively portrays the suffering of war to draw the responder’s attention to the victims who are only ‘boys’. Through the use of rhetorical questioning in conjunction with a simile Owen makes comparisons between the cattle and the solider, this is showcased through the line “what passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” In which the disaster of sending young men to die is emphasized through the solemn lament

One of Wilfred Owens greatest works is ‘’Anthem for Doomed Youth’’. The poem discusses the pointless deaths of soldiers on the battlefield. It tells the reader that the only prayers or notice that these dead soldiers get on the battlefield are those of guns, fighting, and more dying, not the normal ceremonies that are used to honor the dead, this can been seen in the first lines of the poem were Owen writes: ‘’Only the monstrous anger of the guns/ Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle/ Can patter out their hasty orisons’’

The nature of the metaphors with which the lyrical subject of the sonnet presents the nature of our world are grim and

1.) A sonnet is a lyrical poem that has fourteen lines. Sonnets were introduced in the 16th century, William Shakespeare’s time and era. William Shakespeare’s notorious “Sonnet 18” is by far my favorite sonnet that I have had the chance and pleasure to indulge in. Sonnet 18 is about the love and compassion the speaker has for his significant other.

First of all, one has to analyse the poem with regards to form and content. The Sonnet holds the Iambic

The opening sonnet in Astrophel and Stella begins Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,/ That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain- (Longman 987). Sidney begins in imitation of Petrarch in three ways. The poet’s beloved is unkind; so he is plunged into despair. Sidney has also adopted Petrarch’s habit of self-scrutiny. Thirdly the thought changes at the end of the eighth line. The octave tells of the poet’s futile efforts to write a poem; the sestet discloses why he had been unsuccessful. The poet looks to the Petrarchan tradition for inspiration to cure his writer’s block. Oft turning other’s leaves, to see if thence would flow/ Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain (7-8). But this method is unproductive because it lacks the support of imagination. But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay (9).

Whereby “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is with regards to the young soldiers who are being sent to wars in order to fulfill their national duties. W. Owen implies the idea that they are sent to wars with monstrous guns and yet they lose their lives in the battlefield, just like cattles in the slaughterhouse; strong but incapable of choosing their own destiny. It also brings up the idea of how these soldiers are viewed and paid back by their compatriots with no respect, recognition, nor remembrance, “No  mockeries now for them, no prayers nor bells; nor any voice of mourning” (5-6). Moreover, unlike the other poem, this poem does not use much of simile and metaphors but exploits  alliteration  for more that a few times, “Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle” (2), “ Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes [ ] Shall shine the glory glimmers of goodbyes.” (10-11). The tone of the narrator in this poem is solemn, sorrowful, and mournful towards the fallen soldiers of wars,  “each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.”

Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ are both poems that protest against and depict the subject of war. They both follow Wilfred Owen’s angst against those who encourage war and the savagery of warfare that he experienced himself. His poetry was devised to strike at the conscience of England during the World War.

To begin both sonnets, Sassoon and Owen develop stanzas which argue how they represent all war disgraces. Sassoon’s sonnet is composed by multiple heroic couplet rhymes, which makes the sonnet more fluid. This could relate to the lack of focus by part of the soldiers, as to show that everything was happening too fast in order for the soldiers to focus on anything else besides fighting: “why did he do it?... Starlight overhead” (“Trench”13), this is a very clear example on how soldiers cannot focus, since at the moment that the soldier starts thinking about the purpose of war, he gets distracted by a “Starlight overhead” (“TRENCH”13). Another really characteristic aspect of this sonnet is that it lacks of stanzas, as well as of voltas. This makes the sonnet even more fluid. Owens sonnet has a much more erratic rhyme scheme than Sassoon’s. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” has a Petrarchan

Literature, most especially poems, were able to show the true horrors and destructions war caused, be it mentally or physically. Through poems, those who didn’t go to war understood what the men went through, holding a deep pity for them. Sir Herbert Read – writer of ‘The Happy Warrior’ – was a surviving soldier of WWI, he went and fought the war at the age of eighteen/nineteen as an infantry soldier, and his poems often speak of his lost childhood. Wilfred Owen – the poet of ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and ‘Disabled’ – fought the war until he was twenty-one when he died, he is well-known as one of the greatest voiced for WWI, he spoke for the soldiers to show the pity of war. Richard Aldington – author of ‘Bombardment’ – wrote of WWI through many of his works after going there himself when he was around twenty-four years old, wounded on the western front only a year later.

Of all the issues in society, none is more persuasive and destructive than war. War tears society apart by destroying cities, homes and much more. The war poem Anthem for doomed youth by Wilfred Owens This classic WWI poem concerns the death of soldiers. As often in war, WWI soldiers typically fought without knowing the real political reasons behind the conflict and went through things that civilians could not understand. This poem aims at the horrifying events that occurred World War 1. This certain genre of poetry containing horrific and very graphic imagery and content was known War poetry this poem retells the armed and sheer helplessness of wounded and terrified soldiers during the events of World War 1.

Wilfred Owen’s representation of the soldier’s mental and physical suffering is confronting because his anti-war stance enables him to reveal the brutal and inhumane reality of the battlefield to the public in order to challenge the social paradigm of going to war is honourable and glorious, the idea that people held during WWI period. This representation of human suffrage is deliberately presented throughout Owen’s poem. His poems, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, written in 1920 and ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’ written in 1917 captures the destructiveness side on soldiers of war. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is an account of Owen’s first hand experience of war. This poem illustrates the physical distortion confronted by the soldiers as a result of war.

The theme of Shakespeare’s 29th sonnet is how he feels like a social outcast and is depressed. But when he thinks of a certain person’s love, he feels happy, and it takes him

In both poems, “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, Wilfred Owen explores the theme of war. Although there are some similarities there are countless differences. In “Dulce et Decorum Est” we get an image of the war and its grotesque effects on the human body; however, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is focused on how the soldiers were denied the funeral they deserved and contains more religion. Owen deliberately utilises irony in both of his titles.

Owen’s description of adolescent male soldiers being doomed augments his interpretation of young soldiers being extremely at risk within combat. ‘Doomed’ is a word that carries the effect and imagery of these young men being sent to their doom by propagandists and recruiters, and becoming denied of the remembrance they deserve as they lose their lives to the ruins of war.