The sentry

Owen’s poem has the clear intention of showing the true nature of war to the reader, which is mainly achieved by contrasting reality against the ways in which war is so

On 21st October 1915, ladies and gentlemen, board of the ‘Poetry Now Festival’, you and I, have enlisted in the Artists ' Rifles Officers ' Training Corps. As honourable soldiers we’re aware that as time passes, our imaginative existence has changed dramatically by a number of traumatic experiences. We, are ALL Wilfred Owen. One of the most enduring phenomena spawned The Great War created a literal response which evoked from its immediate participants, the soldiers. Owen writes with intense focus on war as an extraordinary human experience. The poems also document other experiences, such as human cruelty and suffering which are carefully structured to convey meaning, and through the use of figurative language conveying the sights and sounds of the battlefield and of trauma. With reference to ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, ‘The Next War’ and ‘Anthem Of Doomed Youth’, Owen’s intention were to arouse an awareness of the fluctuations of fortune and mood during war and to promote an understanding that a these shifts were reflected in an enormous body of literature. Owen successfully portrays the relationship between the changing perceptions of authority/government, as the young soldiers begin to feature in the delightful and

Miller examined the poem further to find Owen’s message to the reader, claiming, “In the final stanza, the poem once again shifts, now from the poet's dream to his address to a reader, presumed to be a person on the homefront who has experienced nothing of the horror of war and who still believes that war is glorious and ennobling” (Miller). In agreement with the statement of Owen aiming to dissuade the british population from running into the war blindly, Miller refers to Owen’s audience and how he set the poem out as a warning and message of what war truly consists of. Owen writes in an unsettling form and structure, fluctuating the poem to be slow and fast, contributing to make the reader who never experienced the hardships of war, and trying to shepherd them away from their pro war mentality. Analyzing the poem, Miller explains, “ Although he cannot literally bring this haunting about, through his poem and its grotesque details, he can force his reader to confront the ugly reality of war that masks behind fine phrases and edifying sentiments. Thus, Owen lingers over the sounds and sight of the dying body, destroyed by the poisonous gas,” (Miller) he wants the reader to know Owen did not shy away from detail and wanted to discomfort his reader. The poem

War is painful. Soldiers are put in a lot physical and mental extremities. Owen and Yeats were mentally suffering from all the commotion. In verse 15-17, Owen describes his feelings as if it were a painful dream. The use of diction helps to more clearly define what the he is saying. Words like "guttering", "choking", and "drowning" not only show how he is suffering, but a terrible pain that no human being should bear. Yeats felt the same as Owen. Though they were fighting in two different scenarios, they shared a common outlook. In verse 9-12, the law, his civil duty, nor cheering crowds of supporters was no motive for Yeats to be in war. All Yeats felt was “a lonely impulse of delight.” Yeats uses the only

Owen tells us of the horrific experiences soldiers endured through the war, focusing specifically on a memory of when a sentry was blasted from his post and consequently blinded. Owens strong uses of imagery makes the event more gruesome, and clear, making us understand the terrible event.

The soldiers are exhausted and unaware of the danger that surrounds them. And before they are able to make back to camp, they are attacked with gas and being to rush to put on their gas masks. But one soldier is not able to put his mask on quickly and inhales the lethal gas. In the beginning of the poem, Owen describes the soldiers actions by using similes like; “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”, and “coughing like hags” to compare the soldiers to old, weak, broken, and sick women. He also uses phrases like “Men marched asleep” and “Drunk with fatigue” to express the exhaustion of the soldiers as they continued on with their journey back to

The poem's abab rhyme scheme allows for a dreary tone in the first two stanzas, in accordance with the fatigued marching of the soldiers. The constant changes in point of view allowed Owen to embody the chaos of war. The increased use of dashes creates a crescendo of adrenaline for the reader, as the war expeditiously gets worse for the soldiers. At “Quick boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,” the dash is used to exhibit the turbulent atmosphere of war (9). The fourth stanza is significantly shorter than the other stanzas, the purpose of which is to elucidate the horror of seeing the young soldier “guttering, choking, drowning” (16).

Wilfred Owen employs sensory imagery to capture the horrifying nature of the soldiers’ deaths, making the poetry

Wilfred Owen’s poetry effectively conveys his perspectives on human conflict through his experiences during The Great War. Poems such as ‘Futility’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ portray these perceptions through the use of poetic techniques, emphasising such conflicts involving himself, other people and nature. These themes are examined in extreme detail, attempting to shape meaning in relation to Owen’s first-hand encounters whilst fighting on the battlefield.

Owen uses the contrast of the soldiers’ state pre-war and post-war to highlight just how much the soldier has lost through going to war. Physically, pre-war, the soldier is described as ‘younger than his youth,’ and has an ‘artist silly for his face.’ Suggesting that his beauty is worth capturing permanently in paint. The words ‘younger ‘and ‘youth’ emphasise this man’s innocence and boyishness, the tautology places emphasis on how young he is thus outlining his immaturity before the war and making his loss at war even more tragic. The contrast once he has returned where Owen

In the first stanza, the entire tone is dreary and completely void of any positive qualities. Owen utilizes many sensory devices to give us a specific and intended feeling of how the soldiers feel and to the extent of how exhausted they are. He creates vivid imagery through

Wilfred Owen poems ‘The Sentry’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ contain a myriad of both shocking and realistic war experiences on a microscopic level. Wilfred Owen a company officer talks about his egregious exposure to war and how war contaminates life and existence of humans. In both poems the 1st stanza implies the threats and life in war, which then springboards us to the physical effect of one specific soldier and the thirds stanza he relives the inescapable experience and ends the poem with a bleak, ironic statement. ‘The Sentry’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ have many similarities; they highlight the price paid by soldiers and relentlessly unveil the full scale of war 's horrors. There are two types of prices paid by soldiers due to war; one deprives humans of their sanity whereas one consumes the breath which makes us human.

Owen utilizes contrast of time (before and after the war) to create sympathy for the subject. Prior to the war, the subject in the poem had played football as seen in the lines, “After the matches.” “It was after football” and now, this same person does not even have the equipment to play football. He no longer has legs.

The second stanza describes the aftermath of a gas shell bombardment that hit Owen’s trench and it conveys an image of one of Owen’s men drowning in the depths of the gas. He used the simile “As under green sea, I saw him drown,” he also used direct speech such as “Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!” The simile Owen used is very powerful because it is a very good description of what actually happened to the man and that Owen could not help him. This causes despair amongst the comrades of the soldier because they want to save him but they cannot. The second quote is poignant because it transports the reader to the horrors of the trenches, thus making it an authentic experience.

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.