For Owen to put across his message he uses many techniques including irony, which is played in a big part of this poem. The title is ironic, and is in fact a quotation from the ancient roman poet, Horace. In translation, it reads, how sweet and fitting it is to die for ones country.
However, Owen see’s war as anything but beautiful or dignified in the way that death is dealt in battle. He explains that there is no cause which could deserve such attacks on the body and mind of soldiers, nor how they could be seen as sweet and decorous.
It is through this poem that Owen portrays his true feelings about the war and he does this through another technique, through onomatopoeia and visual words. Soldiers are often seen as proud, tall men. But in this poem, Owen portrays them as “bent double like old beggars” which shows the physical hardships they endured. The “hoots” of the shells and how they caused the soldiers to move, with an “ecstasy of fumbling” paints a vivid picture to the reader.
The language which is used in this poem also helps to address the realism of war. Verbs such as smothering, writhing, gargling shows the pain in which the man is going through as he suffers from the affects of the gas attack. His explanation of how the soldier was treated after death, as in being flung on the back of a truck, and how his blood was gargling in his throat was accurate. This enabled him to shock the people at his home country who had so far been relying on information that propaganda had provided.
The poet addresses the reader with mock affection, in the line “my friend” to directly engage the reader and end the poem with the ironic title. This poem holds the interest of the reader to shock them into thinking of the harsh realities of war instead of the heroism that it instead holds.
Anthem for Doomed youth is a sonnet, broken up into an octave and a sestet. This divides the poem into its core themes, with the octave conveying the ugliness and evil of the battlefield-graveyard, while the sestet focuses on the mourning friends back where the soldier comes from. This suggests the form of the poem, which has an orderly rhyming pattern and a concluding couplet. An anthem is seen as a long musical festivity of a certain theme; however the briefness of a sonnet suggests that there isn’t a lot that can be said about this certain theme.
The title of this poem at first glance, shows the promise of an anthem which we see as a song of praise. However, Owen uses this too his advantage through emphasizing that there is nothing to celebrate on the death of the youth at war. This is an anthem of doomed youth, which provides and irony as the youth are doomed to die in a war where they are slaughtered as cattle.
The beginning line of the poem, “What passing bells for these who die as cattle”, is devastating. The passing bells that he talks about are an old custom for when a person has died in the community. The slaughter of these young soldiers is so inhuman, that Owen likens it to the killing of cattle.
Owen uses onomatopoeia for this poem by having “stuttering rifles rapid rattle” to continue with the slaughter of these men. Also, the use of the word, rapid, indicates the speed in which the guns fire and also the speed in which death can take. In accompanying the death of a soldier, Owen comments on that there are no prayers or bells on the battlefield to escort the funeral of a soldier. Instead, there are wailing shells and bugles calling for them.
As seen in most funeral processions of the time, candles where lit and people wished the dead god-speed. However, Owen asks with a rhetorical question on who will hold a candle to help speed them on? The answer is of course that there is no one on the battlefield to do this as all funerary customs are forgotten.
Another technique that Owen uses is the line in which he discusses the “drawing down of blinds”. He likens this to the dusk of each day, while also drawing the similarities to the old custom of drawing down the blinds for a house in mourning. Also, when he speaks about the pallor of young girl’s brows will be their pall; he speaks of the shock of the loved ones of the soldier when they find out about his death. A pall is a cloth spread over a coffin and so this adds to a visual perception.
In a stark contrast, the recent death of an Australian commando in Afghanistan, with the guard of honour and the Australian flag draped over the coffin shows how death in battle can be glorified. However, after reading this poem, we can see that death cannot be glorified in anyway and how the two deaths are seen is extremely different.
It is in this poem that Wilfred Owen successfully conveys his criticism of the brutality of war and its harshness it has on the youth. He has tenderness in conveying the emotions of the loved ones of the youth, who has been left behind in grief.
It is through these two poems, Dulce ET decorum EST and anthem for doomed youth that Wilfred Owen successfully engages the interest of the reader. Thankyou.
