Essay Analysis of Anthem for Doomed Youth

Even a century long time after his death, Wilfred Owen is still famous for his war poetry written during World War 1. In his poems, Owen uses various language techniques to vividly illustrate the horrendous reality of war. Hence, he communicates his own anti-war feelings, that are embedded beneath his techniques. However, although he is now known as an anti-war poet, for once, he had been a naive boy, who had been pressured by the propaganda and volunteered to fight in war.

“The thunder of the guns swells to a single heavy roar and then breaks up again into separate explosions. The dry bursts of the machine-guns rattle. Above us the air teems with invisible swift movement, with howls, pipings, and hisses.

“In Flanders Fields,” by John McCrae, suggests that dying for one’s country is glorious, even posing as a call to arms. McCrae’s imagery and diction conveys the tone of his views. In the first stanza of this poem, the line “Between the crosses, row on row/scarce heard amid the guns below” implies that as these soldiers have perished, war is still running amidst. The author’s imagery to convey this to the resemblance of “scarce heard amid the guns below” to the war going on and they [soldiers] can hear the war, symbolically. “We are the Dead...felt dawn, saw sunset glow” he mainly uses symbolism to emphasize their significance in war, that to show they are dead but won’t let their heroic deaths be in vain.

In the second stanza the distinctive experience of power is present. The use of the technique of imagery and emotive words “to pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows’ tells us that the soldiers were strong, loyal and had enough power within a degree to assist fellow soldiers. The use of personification to create sound “sob and clubbing of the gunfire” This leads the audience to understand what the soldiers were up against without even directly saying it. The imagery visually shows the scene in their

The Hardship of a Child Soldier Bang! Bang! “At that instant several gunshots, which sounded like thunder striking the tin-roofed houses, took over town. The sound of guns was so terrifying it confused everyone” (Beah 23).

Poetry composers evoke ideas of truth to help individuals and readers understand their ideas that have been portrayed through their work. Wilfred Owen was a war poet who served in world war one. In Owens poems of “Dulce Et Decourm Est” and “Anthem for Doomed youth”. Both poems explore the ideas of meaningless sacrifice and suffering as wells as the horrors of war. Owen used many poetic techniques to help him convey his ideas of war.

Fire!’” (Bierce 472). Although the narrator is clearly exaggerating for effect, with hyperbole, by claiming the military men “accurately measured” the “interval” of their words in order to be perfectly in sync, he brings to light that each soldier is almost robotically yelling the same choppy, memorized commands in unison with the others. Moreover, the use of overtly simplistic, “cruel,” commands further distances the men from the human qualities of empathy, as the narrator believes the men’s “cruel” behavior denotes that they disregard Farquhar’s sentiments and life to the point where they fail to empathize with him, and the soldiers declare short, one-word commands because they want to downplay and understate the significance of killing Farquhar. So, since the soldiers are so nonchalant about killing civilians, Bierce conveys that military life provokes the desensitization of a soldier towards death.

Wilfred Owen was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, England, on March 18, 1893. His family often moved around, but after being placed in Birkenhead Institute his intelligence attracted a teacher who encouraged Owen to indulge as much time as he had into literature. From then on he continued to write. In his early years, he wrote about politics and art, however, upon graduating from London University he was still confused about what he wanted to do with his life. The patriotic nationalism was at its exciting peak in England at this point, and

Owen similarly guides the tone of his writing very carefully, choosing the perfect words and punctuation to emphasize or stress certain aspects that he had in mind to be expressed. Owen also tries to give the poem a serious tone to it by exclaiming, Gas! Gas! Quick boys! But someone still was yelling out and stumbling As under a green sea, I saw him drowning (Gioia 782). He wants the reader to understand what serious obstacles the soldiers had to suffer through. War really was a time of pain and grief, not of glory. This idea is seen in Owens overall style of writing. He is rather honest and blunt about wartime. Basically, he wants his audience to feel the pain of what soldiers of any war had to go through. His final words are, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/ Pro patria mori. (Gioia 783). The translation of those words says, It is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. He just wants everyone to know that it is in deed a lie to believe that war and dying for ones country should be rewarded and glorified.

Wilfred Owen was a British poet and soldier during the First World War and was born in 1893. Unfortunately Owen died just before the war ended on the 4th of November 1918 at the young age of 25. He was killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just one week before the war had ended. A telegram from the War Office announcing his death was delivered to his mother's home as her town's church bells were ringing in celebration of the end of the war. He wrote the poem dulce et decorum est in 1917.

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?

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.

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.

The second stanza speaks of how it so often slips our mind that war does not only affect the men who are in direct combat. The young women too, suffer greatly in silence. Though so removed from the grime and blood of the battlefield, one cannot imagine the excruciating pain of having to part with their loved ones, with the knowledge that 'the holy glimmers of goodbyes ' might as well be goodbye forever. Every moment of the day, they agonize over the terrifying thought that their loved one has been shot or injured. There is no way of telling - and the guessing game is exhausting. There is no more joy or excitement in life as each 'slow dusk ' drags by, their only reason for existence condensed into a single purpose - receiving news from the battlefield. Often time, their agonizing wait ends in a heartbreaking death. This is signified from the line 'the drawing down of blinds '.