Owens Anthem For Doomed Youth

The opening line of ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is addressed as a question to the reader. This is very direct and makes the reader think about what is being asked before moving on. The indent into the second line could be a way of giving the reader more time to think. In the first line the soldiers are described as ‘cattle’. This is shocking as it is an example of dehumanisation of the soldiers to animals being taken to slaughter. The mention of the ‘passing bells’ is referring to the sounds of guns but it also links to the idea of cattle as animals are rounded up using sounds. This line suggests that the guns are directing the soldiers to their deaths.  This notion is a brutal thought to the reader and sets the tone for the rest of the poem.

In contrast the opening stanza of ‘The Soldier’ starts off as very mellow but equally distressing. It begins with an imperative where the first person narrative asks the reader to think about him if he ‘should die’. This is a very sad thing for a person to say as it highlights that soldiers went to war knowing that they may not return. However Brooke puts a patriotic spin on this later on in the poem where it says ‘in that rich earth a richer dust concealed’. Here the soldier is saying that if he dies on foreign ‘rich earth’, his body, ‘rich dust’, is somehow going to be worth more than the earth on that land. There is the sense that he is saying that where he dies, there will be a part of England in the earth. The repetition of the word ‘rich’ intensifies this idea.

Whilst Brooke attempts to bring some positively into the idea of dying in war there is no such thing in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. Owen uses very strong references to death at war and highlights the brutality of it. The second stanza of the poem takes a softer tone to the first where the reader is invited to engage with how families of the dead are feeling back at home. The words ‘glimmer of goodbyes’ is used which is what happens to the eyes of the deceased when they die.