The third stanza focused on the man who had been hit by the gas being dragged along on a cart and the other soldiers following behind him. Watching him die. This was the part of the poem that Owen really wanted to shock people with. Phrases like “obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud”. The phrase “His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin” was to give an image of the expression on his face, a disgusting type of wretched look. “Such high zest” meant with such high spirits that it was good to give your life for your country.
The poem ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is based on how the soldiers of the war are not given a proper burial when they die. The poem opens with “What passing bells for these who dies as cattle” this meant, why aren’t there any church bells ringing for these poor men who were sent to war to die like cattle in a slaughter house. The tone in this righting shows just how angry Owen was about it all. I noticed that Owen doesn’t seem to write anything positive about war.
There was a repetition of R’s in the third verse “Rifles’ rapid rattle”. There wasn’t any choir apart from the demented shrill whistle of the bombs dropping around them. There wasn’t any candles held in boys’ hands but the glimmer in their eyes. The girls’ tears that miss them at home are their coffins because all the dead bodies were just thrown in a ditch. The only flowers that they’ll receive are in the mourning people’s minds.
Owens poems’ have a very dark theme about them; both of them were about death and were written as though he really felt strongly about both of them. It’s obvious that Owen has seen a lot of death in his time and has been possibly very disturbed by all that he saw ‘Dulce et Decormu Est’ was a very graphical and disturbing poem that amount of detail he put in about the way the young man died was very graphical. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ was slightly tamer but still seemed to have a disturbing theme to it about how no effort had been made to appreciate the young soldiers in the war.
‘The Hero’ by Seigfried Sasoon was about a Colonel telling a mother about her son dying and lying to her so she’d feel better about the way her son died. The son had really died a coward’s death trying to get home. The first Stanza showed the mother being upset but excepting the news “Jack fell as he’d wished” this meant that ‘Jack’ (her son) died in a heroic fashion. In the third verse she stated that the colonel wrote nicely. I think she said this to try and get her mind off her dead son. She said, “We mothers are so proud of her dead soldiers” she only said this because the colonel had lied in the letter.
The ‘Brother Officer’ left after telling her some ‘gallant’ lies about how brave her son had been. “That she would nourish all her days” meant that she would be happy thinking that her son had died bravely. The mother started to cry partly out of joy and sorrow that her son had died, but that he’d died a proud death “her glorious boy”.
The last stanza focused on how the Officer thought about Jack panicking down the trench, how he tried to get sent home and how he was blown into small bits and that nobody seemed to care at all. Apart from the one woman.
Normally some poems are quite complicated to understand and you need to read them over, but this poem was written in a plain way and was easy to understand. There were no similes or metaphors; it was very simply done. Phrases like “Blown to bits” and “folded up the letter that she’d read” its seemed like he was trying to write a short story in poem form. The next poem I read of his was more complicated.
The first verse was describing the stereotypical war major, “scarlet majors” symbolized the blood that the majors were responsible for and that the majors were bloated fools who are only prolonging the war. They sped ‘glum’ soldiers who were tired and depressed to war and die. He’d be seen with his puffy petulant face, which meant that his complexion looked healthy, and he was well. He got to drink wine in the best hotels. Seigfried ended the poem saying that while all the soldiers that were out dying in muddy ditches in the most horrific type of pain, the old generals could go home and just die of old age, while they had done nothing for their country but send young men to their deaths.
Wilfred Owen had a much more painful experience of war, which is why I think his poems are so much more graphical and disturbing. He has focused on the worst parts of war and why they were so bad. Seigfried focused outside of war and how it touched other people’s lives, Owen and Sassoon have very different writing styles. While Owens writing style stays fairly similar, Sassoon’s style seemed to change a bit in the two poems. I prefer Owens poems because his seemed more real, while Sassoon wrote about other people. Owen really believed in what he was writing about.
