Wilfred_Owen

"Wilfred Owen’s poetry is shaped by an intense focus on extraordinary human experiences." Wilfred Owens poetry has an ‘intense’ focus on extraordinary human experiences and writes poems about the suffering and pity of men who go out to war. Wilfred Owen was a war poet who was enlisted in the war in 1915 and experienced the violent horrors of war and the ‘truth’ about war. Owen portrayed the harsh reality of war, the suffering and brutality of war. Owen wanted to inform, awaken and enlighten the reader about what war really was like. In his poetry he used techniques to enlighten the reader by similes, metaphors, imagery, irony and personification. This can be seen by the poems “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. The poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” (Dulce) is about a death by a gas attack and the suffering as a result. It portrays the horrific sights, sounds and feelings of a group of exhausted men at war who are caught in a gas attack and the suffering and pity of one man who experiences a horrific death of not being quick enough to pull up his gas mask. The first line and simile “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks” is straight to the point, it describes how tired and worn these men really are. The fact that the soldiers suffered is continued in the poem, with Owen covering all the senses, for example, ‘all went lame; all went blind’, ‘drunk with fatigue’ and ‘deaf even to the hoots’. These images continually convey to the reader the suffering of the soldiers, and . The calm tone of the 1st stanza of the poem quickly changes to that of panic in the line, ‘Gas! Gas! Quick boys!’ The repetition of the word ‘Gas!” emphasises the urgency of the situation and the use verbs ending with ‘ing’ such as ‘fumbling’ and ‘stumbling’ demonstrate heightened emotions and quick movement. Owen’s pity of the waste of lives can be seen through the repetition of ‘boys’ instead of ‘men’, emphasising how young the soldiers are. Hyperbole is used, for example, ‘men marched asleep’, showing the extent of the soldiers’ fatigue, and suggests short, sharp and mechanical movements. The central image of ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ is depicted in the simile, ‘as under a green sea, I saw him drowning’. Through that short yet powerful line, the readers feel a sense of hopelessness as the soldier dies, and there is nothing anyone can do. The readers are also addressed in the last stanza through the use of the word ‘you’, for example ‘my friend’. This dramatically forces the reader to reconsider their opinions of war and to feel sympathy towards the soldiers. However, the poem is based around the line ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, referred to as ‘The old Lie’. This ‘lie’ means that ‘it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’. The irony of this is shown throughout the poem, as Owen describes the horror and brutality of war, and how death is anything but ‘Sweet and honourable’. This is similar to the poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth” as the title itself represents irony as anthems are normally associated with celebrations, but the war and loss of soldiers is anything but a celebration. Throughout the poem Owns created pity of suffered soldiers. This poem focuses on the fact that the soldiers do not receive the proper ceremonial passing they deserve. The question, ‘What passing bells for those who die as cattle'’ makes reference to the soldiers as cattle, portraying a death of blood, pain and agony, and death in large numbers. Onomatopoeia is effective in representing the harsh conditions of war, as the soldiers had to endure the ‘shrill’ sounds of ‘wailing shells’. Alliteration also conveys this, for example, ‘rifles rapid rattle’, reflecting the sounds of destructive weapons through the heavy use of ‘t’ and ‘r’, as opposed to bells at a funeral. The comparison of funerals and battlefields is seen through the first stanza of the poem, where ‘candles’ are just ‘holy glimmers’ in the eyes of the soldiers, and funeral bells are replaced with the sounds of weapons. These comparisons emphasise how insignificant the soldiers’ deaths are, and how ignorant people are to that. In the last line, ‘each slow dusk’ refers to the end of something and in this case, the end of the war. Also in the last line is the ‘drawing-down of the blinds’, a custom that depicts death and is cleverly left until the end of the poem. Through these two poems, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, it can be seen that Owen’s main concerns were the pain and suffering of the soldiers and the insignificant waste of young lives.