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Anthem For Doomed Youth And Dulce Et Decorum Est By Wilfred Owen

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Wilfred Owen is today recognised as the greatest poet of the first World War, his poetry at the time was considered to be controversial as it revealed the truths behind trench warfare and contradicted popular attitudes at the time. The works of Wilfred Owen, and specifically, the poems of ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ are both successful in powerfully giving a voice to the soldiers of war and conveying the dark and inextricable truth behind war provoking the reader to consider ideas about how this truth is told, rather than the bias opinions from the homefront.

As composers like Owen choose to establish new truths for their reader, we are made fully aware of the impact on humanity and the losses we see occur. His …show more content…

Owen adequately places himself in the action of the text with the use of first person plural pronouns, this has a sympathetic effect on the reader knowing that the writer of the text has experienced the harsh conditions that are effectively illustrated in the text. The first stanza is compelling in the way in which Owen effectively creates the scene of war, he also effectively engages the audience to consider Owen’s main messages by the use of common literary techniques which are convincingly charismatic.

The poem is now witness to a change in tone and is written from the experiences that Owen faced when in France. The main objective for Owen now is to reveal the truth that war is harsh and gruesome and the effect that it has on soldiers dehumanises them. The volta in the text is witnessed at the start of the second stanza again creating the harsh and unknowing conditions of war. “Gas! GAS! Quick boys” is imperative dialogue used with repetition to resemble the unknown occurrences in war, but the common gas attacks. The use of the word ‘boys’ signifies the innocence of the soldiers, thus again provoking the reader to consider; is it sweet and honourable to die for your country?. Visceral Imagery is used in stanza two to describe a soldier ‘drowning’ in gas, the simile of “And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime” is so horrific that the reader is forced to have an almost

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