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The Next War By Wilfred Owen

Decent Essays

With the knowledge of war you have today, would you be willing to volunteer to sign up for the front line?
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.

Through sensory imagery, he portrayed the severe everlasting conditions. Owen’s treatment for shellshock at Craig Lockhart mental hospital influenced his writing and he was undergoing the treatment when his first poem was published. His poems continued to be published even after his death in November 1918, one week before the ceasefire.

Owen presents the horrific subject matter through ‘Strange meeting’, ‘The Next War’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. The shift in Owens tone explores his bitterness and shows that he begins to accept the looming fact of his own impending death.

The mental implications of war on the soldiers challenged the way they functioned day to day. In the ‘Next War’ Owen demonstrates the mental implications through personifying death and engaging the responder with sensory imagery.

‘He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed’ as a result an image is created, the responder sees that Owen’s mental condition has him viewing everything as death. This was caused by his PTSD and Shellshock, which was what prompted his treatment at Craig Lockhart, but it really reveals to the responder that these implications last a lifetime.

Just as the ‘Next War’, ‘Strange Meeting’ also

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