In this essay I will be looking at and analyzing a poem by Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth and a poem by Jessie Pope, The Call.

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Luke Judge English Assignment

Poetry Analysis

In this essay I will be looking at and analyzing a poem by Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth and a poem by Jessie Pope, The Call.

        Anthem for Doomed Youth is a sonnet comparing a normal funeral with the treatment the dead received during world war one, and about the meaninglessness of death during the war and how there was never the time to treat death properly.

In Anthem for Doomed Youth there is a question at the beginning of each stanza, which is then answered in the rest of the stanza. This shows symmetry and structure. Owen asks the question ‘what passing bells for those who die as cattle’ this is a metaphor implying that the men that die are like cattle in a slaughterhouse. The passing bells were rung after someone's death to announce it to the world and to send them on their way. He then answers this question with ‘ Only the monstrous anger of the guns’ meaning that the only thing sending the dead on their way is the sound of gunfire. ‘Only the stuttering rapid rifles rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons’ Here Owen uses alliteration and personification to say that the rifles are saying their prayers for them: this is very emotive as it makes the reader wonder if many of the solders had lost their faith in god whilst on the battle field.

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        The title Anthem for Doomed Youth says to me that this poem was meant to be a kind of a tribute to the solders that died in world war one. He uses many sounds in this poem adding to the theme of the anthem: here he writes about bells, choirs, bugles, wailing shells and angry guns the last two of these are personifications of objects, which is interesting as he is giving life to these objects making them human but he does not mention any solders in this poem only refers to them using metaphors.  

        In the second stanza ...

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