What Technique Does Auden Use to Tell the Story in ‘1 September 1939’?

11. A poet can work its magic on the reader by “choice of images, music of the language, idea content, and cleverness of wordplay” (Foster 17).

Auden’s poem is a criticism of human perceptions and how we use them to detect, or suppress human suffering. In the first half of the poem Auden “compares versions of indifference by portraying youth and age, animals, and humans” (Shmoop, 2014). In the first few lines of the poem, Auden comments on the perceptions of the “Old Masters” and how they were never wrong in their discernment of suffering. He then compares the old masters perceptions to the perceptions of children and animals and how they are unaware of,

W. H. Auden's poem however is quite different. "Musee des Beaux Arts" is written in free verse, meaning that the poem is essentially "free" of meter, regular rhythm, or a rhyme scheme. Like the specific structural considerations of the sonnet form, the seeming lack of structure which free verse offers is purposely employed and works to illuminate the poem's meaning. In Auden's poem, the long irregular lines, subtly enforced by the irregular end rhyme pattern, create a casual, conversational air more prosaic than poetic, and a somewhat nonchalant tone which is reflective of the compassionate world illustrated in Brueghel's art. For example, in Auden's poem there is a subtle rhyme scheme that is throughout the poem. The poem's first line rhymes with the fourth but the fifth rhymes with the seventh. So although there is a rhyme scheme it is a non-traditional. This concept imitates the painting in the way that when looking at the painting you know that Icarus is drowning somewhere, but you do not see him until you really start concentrating on the images painted on the canvas. The casual, easy-going argument the tone suggests is ironic for the

In the poems ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson and ‘Exposure’ by Wilfried Owen, both poets incorporate ideas of patriotism to convey a message about the futility of war. This is revealed in many similar and different ways:

The poem “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark “ to me is about us ,humans , overcoming setbacks.There is always going to be people or things that will try to get in the way of us being successful . The negative energy which the poet symbolized with “ darkness” will try to stop your success . Success is symbolized with “ light “ or “eyesight” which will overcome the darkness in this poem . Us becoming accustomed and or use to the darkness is us becoming use to the negative energy that tries to stop us from becoming great at our talent or whatever activity you are pursuing . In Emily Dickinson poem “ We grow accustomed to the Dark” ,she talks about how we get use to the darkness meaning we get use the people that want you to fail or the major setbacks that are coincidentally thrown in your direction while we are working our way to the stop.

In the final stanza, he makes the reader sad as he assumes the inevitable will happen and she will die. He expresses this through metaphors such as a “black figure in her white cave”, which is a reference to the bright white hospital rooms and although he is the black figure he thinks she just sees a shadow which could be the grim reaper or even death himself, coming to end her journey. No one wants to deal with the sorrow of losing a loved one for good, as

In “September, 1918”, Amy Lowell shows her readers an interesting and illuminating poem. That war can be an ugly time and the people that experience it often seems to live in a “broken world” (19). To fight an evil, sometimes war is needed, nonetheless it is still costly to the people living through the war. Some in a literal sense, like soldiers fighting in a war, while some in a physical sense by the world that they now see and live in. I find the poem truly interesting though, in how the author shows that even in war we can still hold onto hope for more promising days. Lowell portrays a melancholy mood throughout her poem that makes her readers thinking about war but also the hope of it being over.

As noted in an article by Laura Woltag, “Connecting with texts through the study of literary devices helps readers to deconstruct these texts. Literary devices provide a conceptual framework for analysis that allows readers to interpret how these techniques affect their readings of texts” (Woltag). When reading a poem people should not read it to simply go through the motions, rather they should read it and

In fact, there are many critics who believe that this poem was Auden’s own epitaph on Hitler- a personal ode to the man who had wielded such power in the years of his dictatorship and played no small role in shaping the world as we know it today and they had known it then.

Firstly, Auden builds the theme of apathy through the use of allusion and imagery. This allusion occurs in the beginning of the second stanza when the author writes “ In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may / Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,(14-16). This allusion is referring to the failure of Icarus due to his ignorance to

For thousands of years mankind has been obsessed with the subject of war, from the clash of swords to the bitter thunder of artillery mankind has brought upon itself an immense amount of suffering. Good evening teachers and students I am here today with the aim of convincing you on why Wilfred Owens poetry must not be ignored but instead explored to find the deeper meaning of his poems. The poetry of Wilfred Owen was different to that of other war poets of his time as it revealed the horrors and agony of the so-called Great War which were concealed by the Church and British Authorities for the purpose of deceiving the youth. The idea of romanticising war goes strongly against Wilfred Owens moral purpose, thus his Poetry is didactic and condemnatory. Throughout his short life he had first hand experience with the scourge of war. From this he aimed to debunk those romanticised notions of the glorification of war that were present at the time by challenging poets such as John Keats who glorified war. Owen effectively conveys the truth of war through his use of techniques such as imagery, ambiguity and many others in his poems of "Dulce Et Decorum EST" and Anthem For doomed youth.

Throughout the poem, W.D. Auden did an exceptional job incorporating the several examples of figures of speech. By including these devices, Auden drew deeper connections to the overall themes of death and love with the readers. For example, “let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/ scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead” is an illustration of personification (Auden, 5-6). Auden personifies an airplane to mourn over someone and scribble in the sky. Both human like characteristics suggest that the speaker wishes for everyone to know that his loved one has passed, so that everyone can mourn over the deceased, like the speaker. Another example of this is shown through a series of metaphors in lines 9-12 “…my North, my South, my East, my West,/ My working week and my Sunday rest,/ My noon, my

Throughout Wilfred Owen’s collection of poems, he unmasks the harsh tragedy of war through the events he experienced. His poems indulge and grasp readers to feel the pain of his words and develop some idea on the tragedy during the war. Tragedy was a common feature during the war, as innocent boys and men had their lives taken away from them in a gunshot. The sad truth of the war that most of the people who experienced and lived during the tragic time, still bare the horrifying images that still live with them now. Owen’s poems give the reader insight to this pain, and help unmask the tragedy of war.

Among his “praises,” for example: “When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went” (24). In this, it becomes clear to the reader that you do not want to be an average citizen; you do not want this to be your elegy. Some critics argue this, however, as Auden stating that there is nothing disgraceful in being unknown. The poem is, above all, a satire of the way conformity hinders the individual and leaves ridiculous and solely external distinctions between human beings.

The stanza establishes a form of isolation between the persona to the place that they live, as they believe that in this unknown territory, ‘[they] think / in a language of [their] own and talk in’ (Stanza 1, Line 4/5) those who lives in the territory. Almost every reader can relate to this theme of isolation as a common theme that a person would experience in their lifetime would be moving to a new area that they have never been to before. This goes for the persona, as even after ‘living in the strange, dark city for twenty years’ (Stanza 1, Line 1) the persona feels out of sync with the system. With effective writing and a great use of imagery (whether it is auditory or visual), Duffy writes in an extremely clever way in which the reader can definitely have sympathy for the narrator of the poem. The author aims to achieve a strong connection between