Wilfred Owen Poetry.

The first poem that I am analysing is an “ANTHEM FOR A DOOMED YOUTH.” This poem is a sonnet that is not about love but war. In the first line of the poem Wilfred states that there is no funeral service for those who are killed like cattle, this is a great slimily to start the poem with as this brutal truth had never been used before. He then describes weaponry that you can almost hear through his use of alliteration “the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle” and the word rattle in onomatopoeia as it sounds like the noise a rifle would make. He then goes on to describe the sound a shell makes through onomatopoeia “choirs of wailing shells”.

  In the second paragraph he describes the effect on the family at home after their young one has died. The body of the young man would have been buried with the rest of the dead, but the funeral with the family still continues even without the body of the dead. Wilfred describes the pail faces of the women and the flowers that they bring as a gift from the patient ones who wait for their loved ones to return.

In the second poem “FUTILITY” which means pointlessness he describes a soldier that was once woken by the sun on his face, “Gently its touch awoke him once,” it did not this time. Wilfred then describes the soldiers past as he used to work in the fields in France. But the soldier was dead. In the second paragraph Wilfred describes the sun and asks why it wakes us in the first place if we are just going to die. The poem is a simple one that has a simple message; it is all pointless if we kill each other.