Mental suffering was also greatly involved in war. Although it is not directly causing you physical pain it is as agonizing as physical suffering. A poem that shows mental suffering is “Strange Meeting”. The poem contains para-rhyme “hall/Hell” this is because if it rhymed perfectly it would not reflect the imperfect nature of war. Also assonance is used “distressful hands, as if to bless” the words “distressful” and “bless”, this has the effect of emphasising the slow soft reflective nature of the poem. In the first stanza the poet is referring to the person that he has killed, this shows that the real tragedy of war in that soldiers take no pleasure in killing their enemies but feel only sadness and pity. Owen then refers to a tunnel; this tunnel is hell that it only ends in the sleep of death, a nightmare that doesn’t end. “I escaped/Down some profound dull tunnel”. The poet also uses words like encumbered, this shows how weighed down both physically and mentally the soldiers were. This helps to distil the pity of war because it paints a picture in your mind. There are lots of words that are repeated, “The pity of war, the pity war distilled” this helps to show again that war is terrible for those who have to endure it. There is lots of irony in this poem “save the undone years” this is ironic because they don’t have any time left. In the third stanza there is a break in the line after the word “hopelessness”, this is almost a point for reflection on what little chance they have. The poet then goes on to talk about voices in the soldier’s head. The German’s voice is in the poet’s head like a monologue. In addition, they are in it together, they don’t know one another but they have some things in common. The German has a lust for life and so does the Briton but it will be taken away from them. “Pains” are then touched upon. Are they physical pains of being killed? They could also be the guilt of killing other young men. Or the pain of leaving loved ones. “With a thousand pains that vision’s face was grained”. There are so many different pains that could be felt; the soldiers are feeling all of these pains at once. There is a caesura to show his anger and resentment, “Nor tears”. He is saying don’t cry over it now because it should have been prevented in the first place. Wilfred Owen then again conveys his anger at the politicians and at other poets for not telling the truth. “Truth untold”. The politicians are using propaganda to conceal the truth about the war from the people at home. However, the soldier now dies with a true understanding which he shares with his enemy, because he has seen the reality, the myth for him has been destroyed. Wilfred Owen is saying that we owe the dead soldiers an understanding of truth.. The first line of the final stanza reads, “I am the enemy you killed, my friend”. This shows that these boys should be friends, not killing each other. The final line of the poem says “let us sleep”. Does this mean that it is now all over? This is one of the best poems to portray mental suffering in war. The poems contain caesuras which help slow it down and give it a sorrowful rhythm. It contains internal rhyme in places which adds to this effect. The poem repeats words “Courage was mine, and I had mystery./Wisdom was mine and I had mastery:” In their deaths these soldiers share a common humanity which Owen communicates very movingly.
Another poem that distils the pity of war through mental suffering is “Vergissmeinnicht”. In the first stanza there is a vision of the sun and sprawling body, we can see the sun and dead men. The poet talks about how the guns are daemons. “The frowning barrel of his gun/overshadowing”, the weapons have been personified, it seems as though the guns are enjoying killing people and are like evil daemons. The second stanza tells of how the soldier has been hit with an anti-tank weapon. Inside the German’s gun pit was a picture of his girlfriend, but now this photograph has been dishonoured. The killers of this man will remember the picture of the dead man’s girlfriend “Steffi”, this is highly ironic. The title of this poem “Vergissmeinnicht”, addresses future generations and tells them not to forget the horror of war. It is repeated throughout the poem that this German is a human being who is experiencing the same emotions as the enemy. The last stanza is full of ambiguity, the soldier both a lover and a killer, or a girlfriend and the soldier suffer together. The irony of this poem is that the killers of the German soldier will end up remembering “Steffi”, they have met the person they killed through his girlfriend. The tone of the poem is reflective and thoughtful. Words are repeated again giving an echoing effect adding to the feeling of sadness. “Three weeks gone and the combatants gone”. The repeated use of the word “gone” really emphasises the fact that many soldiers have been killed and that they are now gone.
The weapons are personified in some poems and the true power of them is shown, this is done very cleverly. Firstly in “How to Kill”, it talks of the playful and easy character of childhood and how it would be used and turned into war, the ball that the child plays with has been swapped for a weapon. “The ball fell in my hand, it sang/ in the closed fist: Open Open/ Behold a gift designed to kill”. This really makes one realise how young the men were that went and died for their countries in war, they had only just stopped playing children’s games. In the second stanza the poet talks about how the enemy, a German, has become a human being. The German mentions his mother and this helps to evoke pity as he is going through the same things as the other soldiers. Through this the poet distils pathos. The tone of this poem is very matter of fact, “How easy it is to make a ghost”. Death and killing seem so easy and so worthless. Death has also been personified, it has killed the men “has made a man of dust of a man of flesh”. In some places this poem contains para-rhyme, “Who is going to die/ The wires touch his face: I cry”, but there is no specific rhyming pattern.
In “Naming of Parts”, the interesting thing is that nature is trying to grow and the boys are being taught how to use a gun. There is a sense of growth throughout the poem, “The blossoms are fragile and motionless”. Japonica is winter and in winter everything grows slowly but it is coming nearer to spring when everything will spring into life and the plants will bloom. The growth indicates hope for the end of the war. Growth also indicates life; it is the “point of balance” for spring. However the death never ends, it kills growth. In war there is no balance between the two things, we haven’t got the “point of balance”. This is where there is both killing and growth so that one compensates the other. The “balance might even symbolise a perfect elegy. The soldiers are also ironically compared to bees. Both soldiers and bees are part of a highly regimented society. “The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flower”, the bees serve a vital role in giving life. Their activity results in pollination which sustains the balance. An elegy doesn’t try to cover up the suffering of war, but it does give hope to all those who are victims of war. The punctuation in the poem gives an “instruction” tone but the voice of the sergeant is ridiculed somehow, “Please do not let me”. The parody is achieved by simple, short brutal sentences and punctuation. The poem juxtaposes nature and death by using the same words. For example, spring is used for both warfare and nature, “They call it easing the spring”. This is highly ironic because nature is such a beautiful thing but it is being compared to war which is the total opposite. In the final stanza the sergeant says “ Silent in all of the gardens”, the nature has a sort of calmness. The sergeant’s tone is also calm. It is in the same tone as learning about a beautiful botany, but actually you are learning to use a killing machine. This is the irony of the title as well. It is a superb poem and illustrates the pity of war through nature.
In war poetry nature is often invoked, particularly through flowers. A poem that shows this very well is “Desert Flowers.” This poem para-rhymes “saying/slaying”. Primarily you don’t expect to see flowers in the desert making this ironic. The poet then uses a metaphor “the hawk every hour are slaying men.” This is really the planes that are killing the men. In this poem enjambment causes “the mind” to be stressed, it causes suspense for what is being slain. We hear the word “slaying”, yet the pause between the stanzas leaves it hanging until the last thing to expect comes: “the mind.” Also shown in this poem is how the bodies of the dead men are feeding the poppies. He also shows his anger at the government; he wants them to see the horizon “confound the detail and the horizon”, the outcome, but they see the detail which is the men as trees suffering. These references to nature help to distil the pity of war in a number of ways. Firstly it is the whole idea of the beautiful thing of nature being drawn in contrast with the horrifying thing that is war. Also the trees and plants are likened to soldiers, both in war do not really have a mind of their own, they are doing what they have to do to survive. The trees and plants are being destroyed however plants can grow again if they have been damaged but once the men are dead they are gone and can never return, “I see men as trees suffering”. The spring again is a sign of hope to these soldiers whilst they are being oppressed by the war machine.
This sonnet was found in Charles Hamilton Sorley’s kit sent home from France after his death in 1915. In war there are casualties on both sides therefore many people die and leave loved ones behind them. In some poems this is talked about, “When you see Millions of the Mouth less Dead” does this very well. Firstly in this poem the “Nors” or “Nots” makes things sound ambivalent and indecisive. “Say not soft things as other men have said” it is saying that I don’t want to say soft things. He is saying don’t say soft things to remember, because you will remember anyway. However, he negates it by making the “not” hard to hear. Also enjambment is used, this makes one line run into the next and this can make the poem read in different ways. “For, deaf, how should they know/It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?” He is deaf because he has no senses therefore he is dehumanised, he is dead. This distils the pity of war as you are no longer a real human person you just have the body of one. “Nor tears”, this is a caesurae, a break in the line. He is saying don’t cry over it now it should never been allowed to happen at all. The caesurae highlights the tears and honour. The “nors” are not stressed, so it is very easily missed. He believes that to give the dead soldiers honour is forgetting what really happened. Just to give honour to them is simply not enough. The poet also says that it is easy to be dead; it is easier than suffering and actually dying. In the last line, he says that the men have been transfigured, and it is important to remember the men as they were not what happened to them at war. This distils the pity of war very well as the poet is really trying to get across how much suffering the soldiers had, and just to give them honour is pitiful and not half of what they should receive. This is one of the best war poems ever written because of what it doesn’t say. The poem says that the men shouldn’t be mourned over, or given honour, or be praised this sounds almost cynical and disrespectful. However, the last line pays tribute to the soldiers, it says that, somehow, the dead soldiers have gained something from dying, “all his for evermore”. This poem refuses to pay tribute to the dead. The “face value” says that there shouldn’t be honour. All this honour does nothing to help the war. By telling people to not remember that they’ve lost people, they remember even more. Although he refuses to pay tribute, he understands the pain of losing them, this is the tribute. This is a sonnet and therefore has a specific rhyming pattern.
“Break of the day in the trenches” is a very ironic poem. It is free-verse and has no actual poetic form. The first line of the poem is “The darkness crumbles away.” This is ironic because the break of day is a beautiful sight but it is described as “crumbling”. The poet deliberately focuses on darkness instead of happy light. The only thing that is alive is “A queer sardonic rat”. Nature is then brought into the poem, “poppy to stick behind my ear”. A poppy represents the death of the soldiers, it is the symbol of remembrance but it grows on men’s blood. “Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins”. This poem is verse- free and has no actual poetic form. The pathos of this poem is that the men have less chance of life than the rat, and the rat will feed on the men when they die. Murder is a metaphor in this poem and the rat helps to symbolize this. Enjambment is used to help distil the pity “shrieking iron and flame/Hurled through sill heavens.” Also vowel sounds are repeated “and are ever”. In this poem the rat also symbolizes the leaders who don’t care about the young soldiers.
In the course of the two Great Wars the majority of a generation ceased to exist. Some poems pay tribute to these dead through an elegy, a lament, or sad song. An elegy should be a soft, mourning sound. However in “Anthem for Doomed Youth” the only thing that they get is the monstrous anger of the guns. The elegy should be solemn but it is monstrous, this makes the anger of the poet much more powerful. The poet is angry at all of the lives lost in the machine of war. In the second stanza of the poem the poet talks about candles. They are funeral candles, which signify a peaceful death. Instead, they die alone, without comfort. This is very different from the “Volunteer”, in which he dies satisfied and peaceful. He is also saying that the men have to give their own funeral to themselves, not physically but by themselves. The overall irony of this poem is that he can’t give the men a beautiful funeral. He won’t because he can’t. However, at the end he silently ennobles them, a tribute to them. This poem shows the anger of the poet and how he too doesn’t want war to be glorified as in some other poems. A total generation was wiped out and this shows how terrible war is and how destructive it can be. The poem has full rhyme “cattle/rattle” also it uses onomatopoeia to emphasise the monstrous nature of war “Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle.”
What comes across most powerfully from the poems of Wilfred Owen is his humanity. He feels no hatred for his enemies, only a sense of shared dreadful experience. His anger is saved for the people at home who have caused this war to happen. His poetry is based on years of experiencing frontline action. He was commended several times for his personal bravery but cared nothing for medals and glory. His poetry is written with the aim of sharing these dreadful experiences with all of us so that they will never happen again. He appeals directly to the reader “if in some dream you too could pace/ behind the wagon that we flung him in”. We are forced to acknowledge that the idea of war as a glorious thing is “an old lie”. It is perhaps not surprising to discover that Rupert Brooke died without experiencing front line action. Sadly Own died within months of the end of the war having fought in the trenches throughout. His poems deal with emotional and physical realities and not with vague idealistic notions such as those expressed by Brooke.
