“Stank old and sour.”
We can learn from this poem that physical conditions in the war were awful.
There would be high danger of dying and injuring yourself because bullets were being shot everywhere and gas attacks were occuring frequently.
“Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!”(From Dulce et Decorum Est)
We learn how the gas attacks effect the soldiers in the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ there is a section in the poem where Wilfred describes a gas attack.
“Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, A under a green sea I saw him drowning.”
The misty panes were Wilfreds eyes; they were misted because of the gas in the air. He describes the colour of the gas as ‘green’ and the amount of it as a ‘sea’ so it spreads quite a distance and widths as seas are generally known for being large. Green is known as the colour of envy and maybe the gas is representing the opposisitions jealously towards the enemy that they are winning.
In this poem Wilfred describes what the soldiers are like in their physical health,
“Coughing like hags.”
He is describing them as unhealthy old woman. They are supposed to be fit soldiers ready to do their country proud at war but they end up very ill and being described as woman. The woman were meant to stay at home from war whilst their husbands goto war but now they have turned into weak old woman too. The war has disintegrated everyone so it seems, according to Wilfred Owen.
In another poem titled ‘Disabled’ he describes how he is physically disabled now due to the war.
“He sat in a wheeled chair.”
The war has now physically disenhanced him and his point in Dulce et Decorum Est has been proved it is not good and beautiful to die for your country. It is not beautiful and good being disabled for the rest of your life. In disabled he uses irony to create sympathy too.
“My friend.”
He is no friend to anyone, all England has done is send him to war, and he has returned from his crusade disabled.
In ‘Futility’ another poem Wilfred has gladly wrote he describes how he is visually effected.
“Move him into the sun Gently its touch awoke him once. At home, whispering of fields half-sown, always it woke him, even in France.”
Instead of fields he sees dead bodies now; his eye lines are full of destruction and death and no longer peace and light. The sun seems to have an effect on bodies, bringing them back to life. The sun usually equals warmth, when the sun is out does it mean that good things are happening? Which brings me to my next point.
In Exposure another poem Owen wrote. He says
“Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds they knive us”
In this quote cold is involved, Owen seems to use weather to create a barrier between good and evil. Obviously the exposure quote is evil and the Futility quote is good. The sun represents good and the wind evil. The way his poetry effects me, is that I think there is a deeper understanding to it than finding where it has similies and irony etc.
The Sentry contains a lot of flashbacks, the whole poem is generally a huge flashback, and then again a lot of Wilfreds poems are.
“In posting next for duty, and sending a scout, To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about.”
This quote shows that Wilfred constructed this poem around a regular rhyming scheme. So, maybe his poem was not all true? Because since this poem had to rhyme, he would just think of words that rhymed with the one on the last line at the end. So his poems could have been about effect and techniques and not about his accurate experiences in the war. From the quote though, you do learn that it was hard to get access to a stretcher.
In Exposure Wilfred is imagining where he would like to be.
“Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed.”
He starts to imagine better conditions to be fighting in. He had experienced so many wicked things that his mind had begun to repel them and accepted better visions. Reality had become deluded and his mind had frozen into pure bliss instead of cruel reality.
In Anthem for doomed youth he mentions how his fellow soldiers die. HE has relationships with these soldiers, friendly relationships. They had spent ages together and shared mostly the same symptoms of being at war (all of the above I have mentioned).
“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of guns.”
He is saying that these men are dying like farm animals do in slaughter. Slaughter is a substitue for murder. Owen also mentions guns are killing these people. Seeing people die must contribute to all these physical conditions and mental states Wilfred dealt with. Therefore, relationships are possibly what influenced Wilfred to write all these poems. It was one way to express himself; he had no time to talk properly just joke around and laugh when he could. He was away from his family, so his way to contact them was by writing them. It was like a complex diary that someone would discover years later.
From these poems I learn a lot about the physical state of the soldiers, their mental state and the conditions they must have lived in. It could have not been all completley true though as he was an english soldier and he would have seen things worse than they were because he was actually forced to be in it. However, they create a lot of meaning and emotion in the reader if their minds can accept his language and technique.