The language Owen uses throughout the poem is also simplistic and childlike, conveying the youthfulness of the soldiers. The matter of fact nature with which he writes the first line of the poem- it begins with the dialogue of the dying soldier and then states ‘he said, and died’ in a plainly stated way resembling child’s play and the way that children will speak their minds clearly, saying it how it is. This emphasises the fact that many of the soldiers are still young and they are dying in vain. Furthermore, there is a pantomime feel to the whole of the poem, further imitating child’s play and the over-exaggeration of things for children- for example the anthropomorphosis of the guns creates a persona of the enemy; ‘the Big Gun guffawed’, ‘the splinters spat’ and ‘the Bayonet’s long teeth grinned’, a feature of child’s play, as well as the onomatopoeic sibilant sounds like ‘splinters spat’ and ‘the gas hissed’ combined with the onomatopoeia of shells ‘hooting’, splinters ‘tittering’ and the guns’ ‘guffaw’ further demonstrates the childish imitation of sounds and therefore the youthfulness of the soldiers who are dying.
In essence, Owen is mimicking the romanticising of war (by those people like Pope, by using onomatopoeia, romantic dialogue and language like ‘‘My Love!’ one moaned’ and ‘his whole face kissed the mud’) and therefore displaying his bitterness for those views and his resentment for the waste of youth. Also, by using the language ‘Tut-tut! Tut-tut!’ Owen generates a certain feeling that the soldiers are like bad children- furthermore, the particular use of ‘The bullets chirped’ is important because it shows, through the childish imitation of the bullets and making them seem like birds, it seems incongruent with what the bullets are actually doing, illustrating both that people like Pope don’t know what really goes on in war and also that the soldiers are naïve to the guns in their youthfulness, emphasising that their deaths are wasteful. This point is further put across by the use of one ‘childlike’ soldier’s calling out for his parents, as if he had woken from a nightmare asleep in his bed as a child.
The imagery created within the poem is that of men dying in their childlike innocence. One we imagine to be calling out ‘Jesus Christ!’ and dropping dead, one we see to be calling out to his parents as he ‘smiled at nothing, childlike’ then dies like the other; Finally we have an image of another soldier ‘kissing the mud’ as he is ‘slowly lowered’ to his death, perhaps as if being lowered into a cot or held by parents, appreciated as his youthfulness is taken from him by war. We have images of the guns surrounding the observer in the poem ‘chucking’, ‘chirping’ and ‘guffawing’ as if in a childish game of hide and seek as they pursue their prey ‘leisurely’ and rob the soldiers of their lives one by one. Finally we have the image of the bayonets long teeth grinning, further illustrating the fact that this situation is all being projected as a game and that the men in the poem are all losing.
Progressing on from this point, the movement in the poem from soldier to soldier is comparable to the simplicity of the structure of children’s stories and also the way that children respond to things and think about things- a death is a death, and in this context men and their youthfulness are being wasted.
In comparison with Owen’s other poetry, he seems to be making a much more specific point about the waste of youth in The Last Laugh, Whereas in Disabled, although the bitter resentment of war and the consequences of war are still inherent, Owen more particularly addresses the ruin of youth rather than the waste of youth (the soldier has ‘thrown away his knees’ and ‘lost his colour’)- this is also seen in Mental Cases (In which the men’s ‘minds the Dead have ravished’ and who ‘rock’ in ‘purgatorial shadows’ in a mental hospital, most probably from Owen’s own experiences at Craiglockhart). The waste of youth is also hinted at in Anthem for Doomed Youth in the first line as the soldiers ‘die as cattle’.
In conclusion, Owen presents the waste of youth in The Last Laugh more specifically than in his other poetry and through the use of poetic devices to create childish imagery, language and poem structure that emphasises this. His tone in the poem is very matter-of-fact, in response to what he so desperately disagrees with in the misleading principles of propaganda and Jessie Pope. Lastly, he mimics this romanticism of war in The Last Laugh and this portrays his bitterness towards the waste of youth.
