Whereas “Anthem for Doomed Youth” outlines his opinion that deaths in war are for a meaningless cause and the soldiers may as well be cattle dying, as he describes in the first line. He continually compares death in war with a normal death, which is accompanied by a funeral and other rituals. He lists all the things that soldiers lack when they die - bells, prayers, mourning, candles etc – and all they hear or receive is the continual “stuttering rifle’s rapid rattle”, “monstrous anger of the guns” and “demented choirs of wailing shells”. The message of this poem is that war causes immeasurable loss of life with no valuable cause. Soldiers going to war are going off to die with no expectation that they will die: they think they are going to fight for their country and they will come home soon to glory and honour. The last line of the poem is evidence for this: “And each slow dusk a drawing of blinds”; The soldier’s families patiently wait for them to come home but most never do.
WB Yeats also shows his opinion of war in his poem “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”. He states that it is a good action to take if there is a worthy cause, yet he still criticizes those who go to fight for no reason, having nothing to lose, knowing they will most likely lose their life. He writes about how people like Major Robert Gregory went to war for “a lonely impulse of delight” and he did not care about any “cheering crowds” or “duty”. Major Gregory enjoyed flying so he decided he had nothing to lose and he may as well lose his life doing something he enjoys. He did not see any meaning or point in the past, future or present and saw it all as a “waste of breath”.
The message that WB Yeats is trying to portray through this poem is that there is no sense in going to war if you don’t have any cause to fight for or don’t think that it has any reward. He does not necessarily dislike war, he just dislikes the soldiers that fight for no cause. He gets this point across very clearly and easily.
The rhythm of “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” is very monotonous because there are no stanzas or phrases included in the poem. The rhyme is also just a very basic ABABCDCD pattern so this makes will make the reader find it very basic and it almost give you image of Major Robert Gregory thinking about going off to war without taking anything accept his own selfishness into consideration.
“Anthem for Doomed Youth” is very different in this way. Although it has no stanza pattern and it is all just one, it has two sections that stand out to me: The octet at the beginning and the sestet that starts after halfway. Both of these sections start off with a question, then the rest of it is the answer. The set out of the poem is a sonnet, which is a very significant point. Sonnets are usually written for love poems such as “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer Day?” or supernatural poems about death or maybe even reincarnation. This poem is about death and war etc. so I think it was an intelligent and well thought out idea to write it as a sonnet.
Wilfred Owen uses tones and moods quite a lot to put forward his ideas and make readers understand his views on the matter. I think “And bugles calling for them from sad shires” would fall into this category, although in certain lines it would be rather angry with his chosen audience for the poem: the people in power sending young people off to war. I think the two question lines in the poem are the angriest as they are primarily aimed at them. The fact that these two sentences are interrogative also adds to the mood of the poem in that it is pressurising the audience to answer. The first line is an extremely bitter grammatical mood just to purposely get the poem started the way he wants it to be understood. The rest is particularly interrogative and is strongly aimed at the reader also to make them question either his views or the authorities.
WB Yeats has an awful lot of negative tone, solely aimed at soldiers who share the same views and purposes as Major Gregory. “The years to come seemed waste of breath” clearly demonstrates this. You can tell that Yeats wanted his poem to be disagreed with because it is all thoughts of Gregory and because Yeats’ had a negative opinion of him. The title: “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” symbolises the tone and attitude of the whole poem to me, not only because it is plainly declarative, but also because it is so obvious of what the poem will be about as it is very blunt. There isn’t very much emotion to speak of the whole way through the poem because Gregory’s thoughts weren’t supposed to have been very thought out: “Those I fight I do not hate, Those I guard I do not love”. He decided he would go to war because he didn’t think he had anything to lose, as the first line clearly shows, “I know that I shall meet my fate”. It does not seem like he cares where, or when, or even how.
When Yeats (Major Gregory) speaks of his life or the people he is leaving it is almost always negative. To me it seems he doesn’t care about anything at all, and he sees the future present and past as a “waste of breath”. Part of the reason he is going to fight is because he knows he shall meet his fate and doesn’t think he has anything to lose. Some of it is because he pictures life as a waste of breath and some of it is because he is just plain selfish because he isn’t going to fight for his country but only for “A lonely impulse of delight”.
I think WB Yeats does a great job of using language and imagery to show how Gregory’s views were all wrong. The lines “Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds” are a great example of this. There is an imagery of glory, honour and pride throughout it and this will help the readers realise this is not what Gregory is fighting for, if they have not already. The alliteration used in repeating the word “nor” emphasises this greatly: nothing except his impulse of delight could make him go and fight. “Somewhere in the clouds above” would almost definitely make the audience disagree with what Yeats is saying on behalf of Gregory. Firstly because – unless they were suicidal – they would not want to “meet their fate” immediately at their own choice and the picture painted in your head after reading the first two lines is not a pretty one (being shot down in the air an crash landing to your death).
Anthem for Doomed Youth’s imagery is so very different because it is mainly based on Wilfred Owen’s trench experiences so you get samples of that: “rifles’ rapid rattle”. BUT there is another side to the imagery used in Owen’s poem; religious imagery from funerals: “candles may be held”, “from prayers or bells”. There is quite a lot of them used basically because the theme of the poem is to recognise the bitter, unknown deaths of soldiers and to compare them with regular deaths along with funerals and the mourning of neighbors or relatives. After all, the only positive thing the soldiers get is “boys eyes, shining with the holy glimmers of good-byes”.