Defamiliarization in Relation to Winfred Owen's Poem Anthem for Doomed Youth

In this Essay I will discuss defamiliarization in relation to Wifred Owen’s poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. I will examine how his use of defamiliarization affects the reader in their understanding of the poem.
To defamiliarize is to “make (something) unfamiliar or strange” (Definition of Defamiliarize. www.oxforddictionaries.com. 29 Nov 2013). This involves making the words seem different to the reader that they have a hidden meaning, it makes it strange to the reader. It encourages the reader to think more about the text and to delve into the depths of the unknown. According to Shklovsky (Lemon and Reis 3-25) the use of defamiliarization encourages perceptibility rather than automatization, the normal ways of viewing the world are replaced with often shocking perceptions of reality.
In Owen’s poem we see the use of defamiliarization, the poem is about death war and it makes us see this in a different perspective. In the opening line of the poem the soldiers are referred to as cattle, that they don’t get the bells for the church when they die. Using this simile Owen makes us think about the soldiers as cattle being slaughtered, something that is done day in day out and usually without much compassion, it makes us perceive the soldiers as cattle being put forward for slaughter when they go to war. This is making strange the idea of soldiers going to war, it pushes us out of our comfort zone to really think about what soldiers have to go through when they die at war.
In the second line the guns are given human destructive qualities, not something that is the banal. They are described as being “monstrous”, that they possess powers of superhuman strength. Owen compares the church bells to the “rifles’ rapid rattle”, that they...

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...ow that people do not want to take responsibility to what is happening at the war that they want to remain indifferent and not be an actor in making decisions for what is to occur. This line could also refer to the grief people feel that even behind closed doors that there is much grief being experienced. It makes the reader question what happens after the war is over, how do the families continue after the death of a loved one?
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.

Works Cited

Definition of Defamiliarize. www.OxfordDictionary.com . n.d. Web. 29 Nov 2013
Lemon, Lee T and Marion J Reis. Russian formalist criticism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. Print.