Comparison of 'Attack' written by Seigfried Sassoon and 'Anthem For Doomed Youth' Written by Wilfred Owen.

Authors Avatar

17/10/02

‘Attack’ written by Seigfried Sassoon.

‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’ Written by Wilfred Owen.                                

The essay is to compare Attack and Anthem For Doomed Youth.

In both poems the poet has described life in the World War 1 but at different stages. In ‘Attack’ he is about to go into battle from a trench whereas in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ he is being more general, but they are both cataclysmic.

The first line in ‘Attack’ is about the actual battle-taking place at dawn, so straight away you know what’s happening and it sets a mood, which is calm but is also goading.

In ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ the first line is a rhetorical question, which is about men during the war that went into battle and died, but bells are ringing in their honour. Then the rest of the stanza is like the answer to the question by telling you what was going on during that time.

Both of these lines set your mind to think about life in the war and what’s going to happen next.

In the second line of ‘Attack’ it’s very atmospheric, because it goes on to say that the troops massed in to battle in the ‘glowering sun’, which is personification because glowering is a human life form and the sun can’t glower. In the second line of ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ it uses personification by quoting ‘ anger of the guns’. Its personification because it is giving guns a human form ‘anger’. The guns are angry because its war and they’re firing at the enemy and it isn’t a nice sound.

Join now!

These lines open the poem out more by describing some of the details what it was like, such as the sun and gunfire.

The line three of ‘Attack’ it uses alliteration and sibilance. The words used to alliterate were ‘smouldering, spouts, smoke and shroud’. Smoke is a metaphor; shroud is a cover for a dead person but in this case it’s an image of death by being a cover for all the dead bodies so it’s a simile as well. and smouldering is burning slowly. The third line in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is about gunfire ‘Rifles rapid rattle’ ...

This is a preview of the whole essay