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Critical assessment of the twentieth century war poetry
Different views expressed in WWI Poetry
Critical assessment of the twentieth century war poetry
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Disabled by Wilfred Owen is a poem that reveals the life of veterans after war and how they struggle to adjust their new lifestyle. The poet is trying to suggest that the public betrayed the men who fought on their behalf by contrasting the man and the public before and after the war. War was said to be honorable and noble and soldiers were portrayed as masculine and courageous figures by the public. The character in the poem “thought he’d better join” which emphasizes his naivety and it can show how war was well promoted and was a popular topic with young men. However the next short sentence, “He wonders why…” creates a juxtaposition between strong will and intense regret. Regretful feelings, which are created by the ellipses, intensify the atmosphere of regret and remorse. This creates contrast between “though he’d better join” which indirectly conveys a sense of deceit. Another pair of quotation that contrasts the difference of his state of mind is “younger than his youth” and “Now he is old”. The repetition of the idea of youth suggest not only his young age before the war but also his naivety and innocence. This creates contrast with the adjective “old”. “Old” refers to both his physicality and mentality: his aging appearance and his tired and exhausted state of mind. He is metaphorically compared to an old person to illustrate the ferocity of war and how it took away his liveliness. The statement “One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg” refers to his passion for football matches and how he use to view wounds as an honorable mark. This contrasts with the extended metaphor of color and how war “poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry”. The imagery of blood, which is connoted by the words “pour” and “veins”,... ... middle of paper ... ...ntrasts with “institutes” which again symbolizes the loss of admiration and people’s indifferent attitude. Owen indirectly criticizes the society through contrasting people’s attitude before and after war. This poem is not written in a chronological order; it jumps between past and present. By moving between past and present, it creates a juxtaposition of before and after the war. This makes the reader sympathize with the soldier through the drastic contrast in terms of appearance, mental state and treatment. Owen uses this one disabled soldier to symbolize the entire nation—they were young, glorious and courageous but were not welcomed back after they fought in fatal battles. They struggled to adjust their lifestyles because it changes completely and the contrast between before and after tortured them and this suffering follows them for the rest of their life.
On the first read-through of Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est it seems to just be a poem describing a soldiers experience in World War I, but there is much more to the story than that. Through the use of several literary techniques, Owen is able to vividly describe the speaker’s experiences and at the same time make them relatable to the people reading the poem. He also is able to criticize the people who he thinks are at least partly responsible for “tricking” a younger, more gullible him into the situation in the first place.
Throughout the poem Owen has worked so that the reader feels different emotions throughout. As a reader I felt conflicted and confronted with the images first presented. The more you read the darker and more depressed your emotions became. I could feel the life, light and happiness being sucked out of you. Upon a greater analysis of the poem I feel the anger that Owen has towards the lies that the government had told not only him but the public as well. We still are lying to ourselves as a society of the death occurring in Afghanistan as a heroic event that should be celebrated. Today, though we aren’t as ignorant in what our soldiers go through, we still underestimate the seriousness of war and glorify our soldiers’ actions. In the 100 years since World War 1 nothing has changed.
Wilfred Owen expresses his feelings about war in “Anthem for a Doomed Youth”, which revolves around the events that took place in World War I. Throughout the sonnet, the speaker talks bitterly about modern warfare, noting the harsh sounds of war and questioning the treatment of the soldiers that perish. In the octave, the speaker wonders what can be done to honor the soldiers that died, but realizes negatively that the soldiers only receive death instead of ceremonies. In the sestet, the speaker expands upon this idea of a proper ceremony for the deceased soldiers, saying that the families must be the ones to properly honor their dead. Owen’s use of the Petrarchan sonnet with a Shakespearean rhyme scheme, helps him express his frustration about war and its subsequent treatment of the dead.
Owens work can be defined by his use of language to transport the reader to the frontline of the war. His works evoke great emotion in the reader to empathize with feelings and circumstances of the soldiers he wrote about at the time. In his poem, Disabled, Owen shows the life of a soldier after the impacts of war as many soldiers were left without limbs. In the eyes of society, they were no longer fully human. He depicts how they were treated as outcasts, ostracized and left to die a lonely death:
...is witness of atrocity and bleak ugliness stretched to the limit desperation would allow, their enthusiasm would be forgotten, shameful in fact. War is a game of sobriety, a thing to celebrate when finished, not a celebration itself. There is no more Romance in war, and no more Romance in Owen’s poems.
Wilfred Owen displays through the poem the realities of war, he shows the true life of a soldier, the struggles, he definitely has a negative attitude toward war. His main idea is to fight against the title of the poem which means “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”; he believes that the message is wrong, and that there is no need to die fighting for a piece of land. The thematic structure is divided into three stages: During the first eight lines, Owen displays the difficulties of being in war, he describes the conditions of the soldiers, he also explains how even when the
Poets from many civilizations and across vast amounts of time were always considered agents of change. Their remarkable poems gave them the power to play an influential role on human culture and society. One such poet is Wilfred Owen, who was a soldier for Great Britain during WW1. His writing described the horrors of war that he had seen and it was these antiwar poems which gave voice to the suffering soldiers in the trenches of WW1 and altered the British Empire’s view on warfare as a whole. Today, ladies, gentleman and students of the Brisbane Writers Festival, I am here to present an informative analysis on this man’s revolutionary poems “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “Disabled.” They are two of his many poems remembered in English history as some of his greatest works. The poems
In this poem Owen uses defamiliarization to make the reader question the death of a solider at war and how this compares to the death of a person at home. He uses comparisons, metaphors and similes to bring out the defamiliarization.
In conclusion, I think that throughout this poem Wilfred Owen has created a mood of anger and injustice. He has done this effectively by using poetic techniques such a imagery, metaphors, similes, alliterations and rhyme. To make the reader feel the same he shocks them with the true horror of the war and involves them in the poem by using words such as 'you'. Owen's true anger and bitterness comes clear at the end with the ironic statement at the end:
Wilfred Owen can be considered as one of the finest war poets of all times. His war poems, a collection of works composed between January 1917, when he was first sent to the Western Front, and November 1918, when he was killed in action, use a variety of poetic techniques to allow the reader to empathise with his world, situation, emotions and thoughts. The sonnet form, para-rhymes, ironic titles, voice, and various imagery used by Owen grasp the prominent central idea of the complete futility of war as well as explore underlying themes such as the massive waste of young lives, the horrors of war, the hopelessness of war and the loss of religion. These can be seen in the three poems, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and ‘The Last Laugh’, in which this essay will look into.
‘Disabled’, by Wilfred Owen, is about a young boy who experiences war first hand, which results in losing his limbs. The loss of his limbs cause him to be rejected by society and be treated ‘’like a queer disease’’. Wilfred Owens personal opinion on war is evident throughout the poem. Own expresses a negative attitude towards war due to own traumatic past, experiencing war first hand.
Wilfred Owen wrote about the distilled pity of war from his first-hand experience. Owen concisely features the carnage and destruction of war in both the poems, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Strange Meeting’ Owen uses these poems document the psychological and physical debilitation of war. In ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, Owen uses a various amount of literary techniques to visually depict the cruel and grotesque death from the mustard gas whereas ‘Strange Meeting’, portrays the speaker in conversation with a dead soldier that he is presumably responsible for killing, symbolically which emphasises the effect of the wartime trauma. Wilfred Owen’s poetry effectively highlights the carnage and destruction of war to educate the audience on the disillusionment of war.
The tone is bitter and intense in a realistic way. It is achieved by the vivid and gruesome images in the poem. Wilfred Owen 's use of imagery in this poem is by depicting emotional, nightmarish, and vivid words to capture the haunting encounters of WWI that soldiers went through. In the first stanza, Owen depicts his fellow soldiers struggling through the battlefield, but their terrible health conditions prevent them from their strong actions in the war. When Owen says, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags” (lines 1-2). This provides the readers with an unexpected view and appearance of soldiers, as they usually picture as strong, noble, and brawny-looking men. Soldiers sacrifice themselves to fight for their country and are exhausted from their unhealthy lifestyle. In lines 7-8, “Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots of gas-shells dropping softly behind,” they have lost the facade of humanity and their bodies are all wearied and weak on their march. This reveals a glimpse at the soldiers’ actions, as well as inferring to a psychological effect of the war. Then in line 5, “Men marched asleep,” the author is making abnormality to be one of the major purposes of the war, that it
...s that he gives them. Finally we see that the realities of war outweigh the romantic view of glory and honor. What Owen does is show the reader that people fight and die in wars and that it is not all bravado and the glory of battle.
In a nutshell, Wifred Owen had succeeded in bringing the readers through an exciting journey back to time when World War I began. Being cosily staying in a peaceful world today, most of us may have difficulties in comprehending the cruelty and hardship that one been through in a war. Owen’s poems are like a ticket that sends us back in time that allowed us to watch the war with our naked eyes. Owen had done a good job by describing a lot of vivid images through his writings that can help the readers to connect them with the theme of anger and frustration of the people due to the devastation of the war.