Owen uses onomatopoeia in the words "Guttering, choking, drowning" to convey sounds of the fast flickers of life in the moments before a painful death.
He talks of the dead bodies and where they are put to be carried away to mass graves. The word "flung" shows the unimportance of the dead man's death to people - yet Owen goes on to describe the sickening sight
The images run through the narrator's dreams and the reader's imagination clearly, aided by the use of alliteration, and words like "writhing" and "hanging". It is suggested that even the devil wouldn’t agree with this much killing and sin. The deaths are just as unnatural as this idea of the devil being sick of sin.
Throughout the final stanza the poem becomes more and more gruesome. Owen continues to torment the pro-war writers by using powerful emotive words like "obscene" "bitter" "vile" and "incurable" to create images in the mind.
Finally Owen sarcastically addresses the writers such as Jessie Pope as "my friend". He tells them that they should be stopping people from going to war, rather than filling their heads with lies. Owen felt very bitter towards these pro-war writers, he knew that they had not experienced war and never would. The last lines are full of irony - this is a very dark poem, designed to make people feel bad about war.
In my opinion, Exposure is incredibly effective in keeping the reader on edge. The repeated use of “nothing happens” is very unsettling for the reader. There is no fighting in the poem which is unusual but gives the poem a strong sense of anticipation. Use of half rhyme adds to this effect: “silent” nearly rhymes with “salient” and “knife us” nearly rhymes with “nervous”.
Although the Germans are not attacking in the poem there is a different enemy – the weather. The poem suggests that in a way the icy winds are worse than the war itself and that even the elements are against the soldiers.
Phrases like “Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war” indicate that the soldiers feel distant and as if they are not achieving anything. It also shows the dissociation they felt with the rest of the world. They thought the war would be over quickly.
The third stanza reveals the soldiers’ feelings that everything is conspiring against them. They prefer the dark because the enemy can see them when it is light.
Personification is used when describing the snow. The snow seemed to get into every possible gap with “fingering stealth”. They can only dream of grass and sun. Words such as “drowse” give a feeling of disorientation and imply the soldiers are confused. Maybe they have died and gone to heaven?
The 6th stanza is a reassuring fairytale atmosphere but the soldiers are not allowed in: “on us the doors are closed”. They are turned back into the snow because they have done too many bad things.
The 7th stanza seems to imply that the country can only be saved if they sacrifice themselves. They have to make right their wrongs and demonstrate their love for God by dying. In order to bring back the Spring they must act unnaturally.
The poem is left unresolved with the words “But nothing happens”
In Anthem for Doomed Youth Owen uses traditional Shakespearean sonnet form.
The title indicates immediately that there is no hope for the young soldiers. They are fated to “die as cattle”, unvalued, and an innocent generation will be lost.
The poem makes comparisons to a funeral by using words like “mourning” but then goes on to suggest that it was more of a mass slaughter: “demented choirs of wailing shells”. The juxtaposition of "choirs" and "wailing shells" is a startling metaphor, God’s world and the Devil’s both as one. The poem has a sombre feel to it and picks out traditional parts of a funeral which the soldiers cannot have. For example they can’t have choirs or candles. They will not be carried along to the grave or have spreads of flowers. This creates a sense of hypocrisy because the Church has sent them out to war in the first place. As a country they asked people to risk everything but made it out to be clear and straight-forward. Yet at the end of it all the soldiers did not get the proper send off they deserved.
Onomatopoeia, personification and alliteration are used in describing the guns. Words like “stuttering” imitate the sound of the “rifles’ rapid rattle”. It seems that Owen is really trying to put the emphasis on the weapons which are taking the lives of these young soldiers by using personification when he describes them. The words of the poem are cleverly chosen to heighten the expression of the poem in the way it is read. The alliteration makes the sound interrupted and quickens the pace. This reminds of the panic and rushing of war.
However in the final line longer, slower words are used, dramatically slowing the pace of reading and making the words more expressive.
To conclude, Owen uses many different poetic techniques to convey the horrors of war and communicate with 20th and 21st century reader. His vivid language and honest approach to describing the war to the reader is very effective.
