Symbolic imagery is used slightly in the poem to add to Whitman’s beliefs because the imagery help the readers visualize Whitman’s picture of America. To exemplify his poetic flair, Whitman employs stylistic sound devices to set up the scene and to add to the overall feeling of the poem. Work, Whitman, and wonderful America are key words that are approximations because work is a part of Whitman due to his myriad occupations, and Whitman is a part of wonderful America that has thus inspired Whitman to compose the poem, “I Hear America Singing.”
Unity and Death When people are not in unity death can be the result. This theme is used in each work because in each of these stories, someone dies because they aren’t getting along. There is war in the Gettysburg Address, the guy in “An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge” had been to war, and in Whitman’s poem “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Grey and Dim”, a guy is in a war camp, so basically they all involve a war somehow and it corrupts a lot of the peace in the world in these stories. The title of this poem is “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Grey and Dim”. The author is Walt Whitman.
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).
When faced with the death of others, Billy “simply [shrugs] and [says] what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes’” (Vonnegut 26). Billy’s apathy towards death is a coping mechanism for himself due to all the tragedies in war. This is meant to come across as disturbing to the audience because someone of regular mental health would be horrified. Billy Pilgrim believes he has knowledge of his own death, as well. He claims to have seen it several times; he is shot by a fellow soldier while giving a speech about his experiences (134).
Owen betrays the men of the young generation being brutally slaughtered, like cattle, and were fated to death. Owen recognizes the feelings of the family and friends of the victims of war, the people mourning over the loss of their loved ones. Owen also uses personification in the poem, “monstrous anger of the guns” which reinforces the concept of the senseless slaughter of the soldiers. This makes the audience think about the war, and the image of heavy machine guns can be pictured in their minds, bringing them into the poet’s world of poetry. As seen in both poems, ‘Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ Owen brings the audience into the his world, making them feel and think like him, knowing what he has experienced and what he dreads, and therefore successfully involves the reader into the world of poetry.
Furthermore the word “stained” implies that the photographer has been permanently affected, causing him to lose his innocence, like the veterans in “Mental Cases”. “Mental Cases” is about the effects of war on soldier’s mental state. The poem paints a picture of horror and pity for the war veterans. The soldiers are described to be “baring teeth that leer” which suggests animalistic qualities by showing their teeth defensively. The “multitudinous murders they once witnessed” is an alliteration to emphasize the mass killings.
By 1917, his poetry had changed from blind patriotic disillusion and encouragement, to bitterness and anger. “Dulce et Decorum Est’, and “Disabled” were poems he wrote during his time in Craig Lockheart hospital, where he was suffering from shell shock. He had seen the tragedy and graphic brutality of trench warfare, and the trauma he had seen and experienced had sunk in. Both the poems focus on one main person or event. Wilfred Owen wrote these poems to highlight the reality of war, they were ‘protest poems’ to propaganda declaring fighting for soldiers as an honor.
Anthem for Doomed Youth Owens Anthem for Doomed Youth is written from a soldier’s perspective and is influenced by his own experiences in the First World War. He viewed war as a waste, as in his time of duty he saw countless deaths that did not have to occur. He writes of the suffering experienced by the soldiers and the agony of their families. Written in two stanzas, Own in the first stanza focuses on the imagery and sounds of the battlefield, while the second stanza highlights their families. Owen’s poem focuses on the death on battlefields and shows how those who die in war often do not receive the normal ceremonies that are used to honor the dead.
Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce est Decorum et” paints a horrific image of the blood-shed and horror behind war. Owen uses his personal traumas to illustrate the graphic image that is undisclosed when people first join. Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Man He Killed” tells of one man’s experience of killing a man and living with the consequences afterwards. The speaker is forced to attempt to justify his actions to himself.
In ‘Anthem of Doomed Youth’ Owen shows another version of the suffering- the mourning of the dead soldiers. When Owen asks “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”, his rhetorical question compares the soldiers to cattle as they die and suffer undignified. Owen uses this extended metaphor to confront us with the truth, that there are too many fatalities in war. As such, the soldier’s deaths are compared to livestock, to emphasise their poor treatment and question our perspective about soldiers dying with honour. With an overwhelming death toll of over 9 million during WWI, Owen depicts how the soldier’s die with the repetition of “Only the...” to emphasise the sounds of war that kills soldiers in the alliteration ‘rifles’ rapid rattle.’ Owen also illustrates the conditions that the soldiers died in and how they were not given a proper funeral in the cumulation ‘no prayers nor bells,/ nor any voice of mourning.’ Owen painfully reminds us that we have become complacent with the deaths of soldiers, seeing them as a necessary sacrifice during human conflict.