Explore some of the ways in which Wilfred Owen presents the Natural world in his poems.

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PLAN:

-Intro

-Natural world as beautiful/protective/restorative.

     -Beautiful

     -Protective

     -Restorative

-Transitional Paragraph

-Natural world as Insurgent, cowardly and cruel.

-Conclusion

INTRO:

Owen’s presentation of nature is ambiguous. Through his poems he acknowledges the beauty and purity of nature on one hand, while on the other it is presented as cruel and subversive when associated with war. These two very different sides of nature are best portrayed in Exposure in 1917, Futility and Spring Offensive in 1918.

To begin, Owen describes the natural world as beautiful, restorative and protective. His references to beauty of nature and the recurring theme of the sun clearly shows how Owen is somewhat in awe of nature.

In the 3 first stanzas of Spring Offensive, Owen describes nature with such charm that the soldiers waiting to go into action are “marveling” at the grass, at nature’s purity. They can hardly believe such beauty exists amongst pain and suffering. The ‘May breeze’ calms them as they feel the pleasing ‘“summer oozed into their veins like an injected drug”. In this imagery we feel that this beauty is like a drug to them, they are under such pressure that they require anesthetic. “oozed” implies that they are grateful for a moment to remember happier times.

Nature is thought to have restorative power. An example of this is apparent in ‘Futility’. The poem is about a soldier (the speaker) who cannot believe that his comrade has died of the bitterly cold. In the very first line he says: “Move him into the sun”. The sun is considered at the source of all life, so the poet asks for the resurrection of the soldier. Having seen the sun “wake the seeds” once, he asks himself why it prohibits itself from doing so again. A different interpretation would be that god is actually the sun itself, because as the bible says it is he who is at the very origin of life.

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Nature also appears as a protective figure. In ‘Spring offensive’ it creates ‘shade’ as a barrier from the horror, made to provide respite. The pastoral imagery of the ‘little brambles’ clinging on to the men  ‘like sorrowing arms’ suggest that nature is a sorrowing force, it is transforming into a maternal figure. We find the same shielding figure in the sun, in Futility. Using the personification: “The kind old sun”, Owen presents the sun as a caring paternal figure, “old” evokes its wiseness. This again can be interpreted as a personification of god.

The war has the ...

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