In his poems Wilfred Owen wanted to show the pity of war. Discuss how he manages to do this in Anthem for Doomed Youth and The Send-Off

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In his poems Wilfred Owen wanted to show the pity of war. Discuss how he manages to do this in “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “The Send-Off”

“My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity. All a poet can do today is warn” This is what Wilfred Owen said when he used to write poems and he does as he said. His duty was to show the pity of war, his method was by writing poems and expressing war and his feelings in the poems. He does this very well because he was on the field, he was a soldier so he puts it in perspective.

In “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, Wilfred shows the pity of war by comparing various events in real life with those on the field. The word “Doomed” shows the many soldiers which will die or are already dead. He starts off by comparing the battlefield with a funeral. He says that basically they are being sent to their funerals by going to the battlefield because they are bond to die in the war. He compares the coffins with the trenches. He also compares the sound of the bombs in the battlefield to the bells in the church and that they do not receive the normal ceremonies but they die there in the battlefield, they are like animals, which he compares the soldiers as “cattle”. He also compares the normal burial to how they will die. They will not have a normal burial but die; they will not have a white sheet placed over their coffin. The only pale thing is the soldiers’ families which are left behind and are waiting for them to return back. In the end of the poem, he compares the blinds of those in Britain (at home) which are desperately waiting for the soldiers to return, with the slow dusk of the soldiers in the battlefield. He may also be referring to the blinds as the soldiers’ eyes close forever because of their death in the war.

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In “The Send Off”, Wilfred describes the soldiers leaving for war, from the sending-off ceremony and which they are sent to the war. “down the close, darkening lanes”, in the beginning of the poem, he starts it off with a sense of foreboding, which feels claustrophobic. It shows a feeling of darkness and fear, this also shows that the soldiers aren’t boarding the train from the primary entrance but from a “siding-shed” As if they were animals, ready for death by going to the war.  Wilfred shows that the soldiers aren’t aware of the pity of war, “they sang their ...

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