“Anthem for Doomed Youth” is an elegiac sonnet. It is not an account of Owen’s experience in the war itself, but rather a judgement on it. The title is correct; “doomed youth” as some soldiers in the war were very young. The title can either be thought of as ironic, or in actual respect of the youth who gave their lives. The authorial stance is a narrative observer. This poem shows Wilfred Owen’s anger and bitterness towards the war and the church. It is written in an unorthodox way because thorough out the first stanza he ironically links a catalogue of the sounds of the war, the weapons of destruction, guns, rifles, shells, with religious imagery. In the second stanza the focus changes to the mourning people in Britain.
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” uses many poetical devises. The first stanza creates an appalling image of the soldiers limping back from the front. In this stanza the condition of the men is such that they can be compared to “old beggars under sacks,” the sack being their once smart uniform and “coughing like hags,”
“Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs.”
This line describes an image Owen will never forget. When the distress flares go up, it means that there is men dying who need help. They light up the area where soldiers lay dead or are dying, but Owen and his men have to “turn their backs.” Owen uses colloquial language to describe the men “trudge.” This shows that they are common people like anyone else. It gives the poem a more personal effect. Towards the end of the first stanza, the sounds of the words begin to soften, Wilfred Owen chooses to use feminine endings on the words such as gas and sh and also the word “softly” which is onomatopoeic. This brings the stanza to a soft end.
“Gas! GAS! Quick boys! –An ecstasy of fumbling”
This is a very sudden start to the next stanza. The word “gas” is onomatopoeic and the sound of the word brings alarm. It is also a real word that would have been used in that situation. The word “ecstasy” means the men are in an extreme state of delusion. They do not know what to do. The latter half of the second stanza creates a powerful underwater extended metaphor, where succumbing to poison gas is compared to drowning. Owen is telling us of one of an experience where he saw a man “As under a green sea, drowning”. This is a recurring dream that Owen has, where he sees the man drowning “before my helpless sight.” Owen was helpless to this man. He could do nothing to save him. This was very hard for Owen to face. Wilfred Owen often woke up in the night after this dream to see the man even after he has woken up. The forth stanza is an appeal to the reader to empathise with him. He wishes he reader to imagine the dreams and to realise what the war can do. “You too could pace” is an imitation of the famous war poster “Your country needs you”.
“And watch the white eyes writhing in his face”
This sentence uses assonance on the words “watch”, “white”, and “writhing” to create an effect of great pain.
“His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin”
This is a metaphor to describe that the men are as sick of fighting in the war as the devil, the most evil of all, would be if he was sick of sin. It must be awful! He describes how “blood comes gargling from froth-corrupted lungs” at every “jolt” of the wagon. “Jolt” is a very violent word that is used to shock the reader. Gargling is onomatopoeic; it describes that when the poison gas is inhaled, it rots away the lungs. The man is physically expelling his rotten lungs through his mouth. It is not a very pleasant thing to think about, yet Owen is forcing this image upon his reader.
“Bitter as the cud”
This is a simile describing the taste of the man’s blood and froth. Cud is partly regurgitated food, which animals, especially cows, return to their mouths to chew on. This is also an echo from “Anthem for Doomed Youth” where it says “those who die as cattle”.
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues”
The man’s mouth would be filled with blisters, and his mouth also rotting. The word “tongue” can also be linked to the lies told by the government, in the propaganda machine.
At the end of this poem he pleas to the reader, not to tell “children ardent for some desperate glory” that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. In this poem, nothing is hyperbolic; Wilfred Owen is simply describing his experiences of the war. This poem is different from “Disabled”, because this poem uses greatly metaphors, simile, onomatopoeia etc. to create graphic imagery of the war, whereas “Disables” uses leitmotif to describe the past and present.
“Anthem for Doomed Youth” ironically juxtaposes sounds of the war and funeral imagery in the octet of this sonnet. This poem is a sonnet, and therefore starts with a strong statement or a question. In this case it is a question.
“What passing bells for those who die as cattle?”
This is a very angry and bitter question. Owen is emphasising the fact that the British government were sending young men out to France to be put through hell, yet they did not care. In this line, the funeral imagery is “passing bells” which are bells rung at a funeral to pass the body into heaven. The imagery of the war is “die as cattle”.
“Only the monstrous anger of the guns”
This line personifies the guns, giving them the human emotion of anger, just as Owen is. The sestet of this sonnet changes its focus to Britain’s “sad shires”. These are the mourning women in Britain. It is dominated by religious images and allusions.
“Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes”
This line is telling us of the young boys at the front, crying and wanting to go home. Owen is telling the reader to look into the eyes of the soldiers or the pale faces of their women to learn the truth about the war. The last two lines of this poem use very quiet sounds, ch, s, sk, which evoke the silent inner thought of the individuals. It is a total contrast to the first two lines.
“And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds”
For the rest of their lives, whenever the families of those who were killed in the war draw their blinds, they will be reminded of the time when the news came because whenever news came of a death, the blinds would be half closed.
“Disabled” describes the life of a once perfectly normal, happy boy. Wilfred Owen uses colloquial language to show this, “It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg”. Wilfred Owen’s use of colloquial portrays the pity of the war, because it shows that the men dying in the war were normal. He also uses colloquial language in “Dulce et Decorum Est” with the word “trudge” to describe how the men were marching. Throughout the poem, the man’s past and present are compared and contrasted. There is a great use of leitmotif. Wilfred Owen uses bright colours to describe the man’s past “When glow lamps budded in their blue trees” and uses the colour grey to describe the man’s present being “And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey”. The word “ghastly” could mean that the man is like a ghost, no one notices him. This poor man is still only a young man, who used to lead a very normal life. He should not be sat in a wheeled chair waiting to die. In the days before he “threw away his knees” he was a very popular boy, who used to play football.
“Someone had said, he’d look a god in kilts”
He was just as any other boy his age; he wanted to please girls. He even had a girlfriend, but doesn’t anymore.
“Now he will never again feel how slim ∞ girls waists are”
The use of enjambement gives the effect that the man is dreaming. It then goes on to say “all of them touch him like some queer disease” at which point he ends the stanza. He ends the stanza at this point to make the reader stop and to realise how horrible his reality is compared to his past.
“For it was younger than his youth, last year”
“Younger than his youth” is describing the man’s face. It heightens the contrast before the caesural pause and then “last year” which brings the sadness back. This use of oxymoron tells the reader that just last year, the man was young.
“And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race
“And leap of purple spurted from his thigh”
These two lines tell us what he really should be doing. He should be racing girls, and the word “spurted” is like ejaculation of semen after he has made love to a girl.
The man thought that when he returned home, he would be the local hero. Only some people “cheered him home, but not as crowd cheer goal”. This was very depressing for him.
“Only a solemn man who brought him fruits”
The man did not want to receive fruits. He wanted girls. This poem shows the pity of the war, by comparing and contrasting life before the war, and life after the war.
“Dulce et Decorum Est” uses a sonnet form in the first two stanzas. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is a sonnet. The iambic pentameter is used, but becomes looser towards the end of the first stanza as a particularly dramatic moment approaches. The last two stanzas of this poem are written in a much looser sonnet form. The focus at the beginning of this poem is on a group of men marching back from the front. The focus changes onto one man who cannot get his gas helmet on in time. This makes the poem more personal, especially at the end when he addresses the reader himself, “you too”, “you would”.
“Anthem for Doomed Youth” is a true sonnet. It is written strictly in the iambic pentameter. The first quatrain focuses on the sounds of battle with some funeral images. It has an angry, bitter tone. The second quatrain uses the word “demented” which is the tone of the quatrain, which shows the madness of the war. It is bitter to the point of sarcasm. At the end of this quatrain, the focus changes to the “sad shires”. This is a contrast to the madness of the war, because it is used in the same line as “bugles”, which were played to jeer the men into the line of machine-gun fire.
The second stanza of “Disabled” starts off written in the iambic pentameter. Owen gets into this rhythm while describing the past times of the man until the comparison of the sadness of his present, when the rhythm becomes broken. This shows the pity of the war, as life before the war is represented by a good rhythm, but then after the war, the rhythm becomes broken. The start of the first four stanzas focuses on the happy life of the man before the war, but at the end of them, the focus changes to his horrible present, at which point the stanza changes quickly.
In his poems Wilfred Owen expresses of anger and bitterness especially but also sarcasm and sadness. “Dulce et Decorum Est” expresses feelings of anger and bitterness.
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
“Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we curses through sludge”
The first two lines are a bitter, scathing attack at the thoughts of the people in Britain who had been taken in by the propaganda machine. Throughout the poem Wilfred Owen is describing, in graphic detail, his own experiences of the war. This is an oxymoron to “Anthem for Doomed Youth” which is an elegiac sonnet, so it is not an attack on people but instead Wilfred Owen is feeling sympathy for the families who have lost loved ones. Wilfred Owen however is also questioning his own Christian faith, and in this poem he is attacking the church and the pointlessness of organised religion measured against such a cataclysm as the war.
“Can patter out their hasty orisons”
This line means the orisons, which are a part of church services, are irrelevant. “Disabled” is also like “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth” because it attacks the generals of the war.
“Before he threw away his knees”
The phrase “threw away” is also used to describe throwing away rubbish. It is as if no one cared that a young man has lost his legs and arms. It is very quiet, bitter anger. All three of the poems studied are attacks to someone. It can therefore be seen that Wilfred Owen despises all people who wish the war to continue and all people who think the war is a something triumphant
From this essay it can be seen that Wilfred Owen expresses his feelings of anger, bitterness and sadness towards the war, in his poetry. In each of the poems studied, in some way or another, Wilfred Owen attacks someone, whether it be the people at home, taken in by the propaganda machine, or the government who have the power to stop the war, but don’t. This is why Owen wrote his poetry. He wanted to put an end to the war.