World War One

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The first line in his poem describes the troops as being "like
old beggars under sacks". This not only says that the men are tired
but that they are so tired they have been compared to old beggers. "Coughing like hags" suggests that these young men who
were in their teens were suffering from illness due to the damp,
and fumes from the decaying bodies of their soldiers.

Another simile Wilfred used is "His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin'' suggests that his face is probably covered with blood which is the colour representing the devil. He also used a very powerful metaphor "vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues'' this metaphor tell you that the troops will never forget these horrific experiences. As you can see Wilfred Owen has used figurative language so effectively that the reader gets drawn into the poem.

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The lines Wilfred Owen uses create a image in your mind and can make you feel the pain and sickness for example in one of hes lines he says "If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud''

this shows us that so many men were brutally killed during this war, their death was so painful and slow it seemed like cancer. Lines like this one play a massiv role in poem it creates such a disturbing image to the reader that it makes them feel bad ...

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