~ Anthem For Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
- Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayer nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Overview
. Anthem - short musical composition, usually sung.
. Stark anthesis is used to present a shocking lamentation against the barbarity of war.
. This anthem voices the sounds of battle.
. Death, violence and sacrifice are central subjects.
. This poem is an extended metaphor (funeral).
. Personification is used as the main technique.
. Tonal shifts from anger/bitter – elegiac mood.
Structure
. Sonnet, 14 lines, 2 stanzas, 2 quatrains, 1 sestet.
. ABAB CDCD.
. 10 – beat iambic pedometer rhythm.
. Rhetorical questions to start each stanza.
. Ends in rhyming couplet.
Themes
. Doomed Youth – negative, emotive.
. Waste/pity – loss of life, waste.
. Funeral – recurring image, extended metaphor.
Language
. Descriptive language.
. Demonic force – torture, consume.
. Emphasis on the funeral.
. Simile, metaphor, personification.
. Juxtaposition – sets the scene.
Rhyme and Rhythm
. Tightly controlled within sonnet structure.
. Para-rhyme, used to heighten mournful tone.
. Slower rhythmic beat in final quatrain.
. Sound mirrors emotion.
Symbolism and Imagery
. Funeral symbols.
. Religious connotations of faith, salvation.
. Romanticised images of fallen soldiers.
. Visual depiction of the mourner’s face.
. Integrates the themes of doomed youth and funeral.
. 1st stanza – warfront.
. 2nd stanza – homefront.
Detailed Analysis
Stanza 1
. ‘Anthem’ – song for helpless young boys.
. ‘Doomed Youth’ – assonance.
. Rhetorical questions to start both stanza’s ‘What passing bells for these who die as cattle?’ ‘What candles may be held to speed them all?’
. ‘Only the monstrous…’ ‘Only the stuttering…’ – repetition of the word ‘only’ stresses the nature of their deaths.
. ‘Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle’ – personification, alliteration and onomatopoeia combine as methods to make war seen more brutal, violent and cruel.
. ‘Can patter out their hasty orisons’ – sense of speed. ‘orisons’ – prayer at funeral.
. ‘No mockeries’ – Christian rites seen as ‘mockeries’.
. ‘No prayers now for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any…’ – negative connotations are stressed by the alliterative repeated use of ‘no’ and ‘nor’.
other hand, John Mc Crae was in the 2nd wave of poets. He viewed war
Individuals everywhere grimace at war. Images of the strike of the gun, the burst of the bombs, and the clash of the soldiers all elicit a wince and a shiver. Moviegoers close their eyes during gory battle scenes and open them again only once the whine of the bullets stops rattling in their ears. War is hell, as the common aphorism goes, and the pain of war is equally hellish. Most individuals naturally accept this conclusion despite never experiencing war themselves. Without enduring the actual pain of war injuries, individuals still argue the importance war and its miseries. Individuals rely on media and entertainment for education about the suffering and evils of war. Writers provide an acute sense of a soldier’s physical and mental burdens through vivid imagery and relatable metaphors. Books can express the seemingly inexpressible pain of war through graphic descriptions. Individuals may then assess war—its how and why, its causes and effects—with greater insight. The writer may use the audience’s acquired understanding of war’s pain to address the significance of suffering. Through the clarity and horror of war descriptions, a writer may successfully convey the pain of war and his or her perspective and purpose to a general audience. Through the use of startling imagery, both Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried and Laura Hillenbrand in Unbroken effectively recreate the pain of war for an audience which could not otherwise fathom its magnitude. However, while O’Brien uses his descriptions to criticize the evils which cause the pain, Hillenbrand employs her equally vivid images to praise the resilience which results from the pain.
... horrors of war such as, his parents who still view war as glamorous and idealistic. War takes a heavy toll on soldiers who fight in it and in these dangerous moments anybody would have gone insane. It takes a very special type of soldier to be able to handle both the psychological and physical challenges that a soldier has to face in everyday battle. A soldier such as this must be capable of handling the sight of a mutilated comrade and not immediately chatter to pieces. The author conveys this message in his extreme use of words with negative connotation such as shells, typhus, dysentery, and trenches. In this portion of the novel a great deal of emphasis is placed on the word death which is repeated several times and standing on its own it holds a great deal of negative connotations. Therefore, due to the severity of the situation and the extensive use of words with negative connotations the overall tone of the novel appeared to be very depressing or serious. This selection also demonstrates just how mythical the character of war that many individuals who have not experienced the tragedy of battle believe to be true by illustrating just how appalling and grim war is in reality.
Since the beginning of history, human society has centered around war. People throughout the ages have attempted to understand why wars occur, and the effect of war on the people who fight in them. Authors have utilized the power of language to attempt to grasp the struggle and the horror of war, and make it accessible to the public. For example, Hemingway’s “In Another Country” and Bierce’s “Coup de Grace” both provide a glimpse into different aspects of war. Although they both pertain to the idea of war, “In Another Country” focuses on the psychological trauma of war while “Coup de Grace” showcases the horror of war. This is visible in the theme, setting, and characters of both stories.
Both Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” as well as “next to of course god america i” written by E.E. Cummings preform critic on war propaganda used during the first world war. Besides this the influence war propaganda has on the soldiers as individuals as well as on war in more general terms, is being portrayed in a sophisticated and progressive manner. By depicting war with the use of strong literary features such as imagery or sarcasm both texts demonstrate the harshness of war as well as attempt to convey that war propaganda is, as Owen states “an old lie”, and that it certainly is not honourable to die for one’s country. Therefore, the aim of both writers can be said to be to frontally attack any form of war promotion or support offensively
How Wilfred Owen Uses Language and Imagery in His Poetry to Communicate his Attitudes of War
portrays them to be. The speaker chooses words such as “bent double, like old baggers” and “knock-kneed” (Owens 1-2) to expose the discomfort and effects that war has on young soldiers. The soldiers are discreetly compared to crippled old men which emphasizes just how badly war has affected their bodies, stripping them of their health, making them weak and helpless like “old beggars” (Owen 1). Furthermore, the speaker expresses his experience as a sold...
Owen expands on the shelling in lines 3 and 4, noting, “Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle/ can patter out their hasty orisons” (Lines 3 and 4). Owen repeats “only” to build momentum and to truly explain the sounds of the guns. He uses alliteration in “rifles’ rapid rattle” and onomatopoeia in “stuttering” and “rattle” to imitate the harsh and repetitive sounds of rifles. The alliteration creates a sense of the rapidity and frequency of the firing. Owen again personifies the guns, this time by using “stuttering” like the stutter of people. To him, the guns represent people and the people appear as animals. He compares the shelling to the guns rattling out prayers. Ironically, these prayers do not help the soldiers; they wound or kill
World War One had an inevitable effect on the lives of many young and naive individuals, including Wilfred Owen, who, like many others, joined the military effort with the belief that he would find honour, wealth and adventure. The optimism which Owen initially had toward the conflict is emphasised in the excerpt, in which he is described as “a young poet…with a romantic view of war common among the young” (narrator), a view which rapidly changed upon reaching the front. Owen presents responders with an overwhelming exploration of human cruelty on other individuals through acts of war and the clash of individual’s opposed feelings influenced by the experiences of human cruelty. This is presented through the horrific nature of war which the
The boy awakes from a night of being lost in the woods, a product of pushing the lines of his invisible enemy deep into their own territory and the fright of an unfamiliar animal. He arose to a sight that he is unable to comprehend; that what he is seeing could even be a creation of war. What the boy is confronted with is a horrific and stomach churning scene of “maimed and bleeding men” (Bierce 43) that “crept upon their hands and knees.” (43). Being confronted with the ghastly scene the boy’s ideals of war blind him to the reality of what he is witnessing. An idea that Bierce portrays that even with the sights of battle many men are blinded by their own machismo and idyllic of
...h narrators see more horror than they could imagine was possible. Each day is quite likely to be their last and they are under no illusions what sort of horrific death could be lurking over the top of the next attack.
Sassoon shows many examples of how the soldier in this poem gets pulled back into war-like terrors by meaningless things. The soldier is simply sitting in his home yet gets flashbacks of war and it haunts him. In this poem Sassoon is using a soldier as the example of repression as someone who has experienced war and the impacts it has on life after. “The poetic evolution related directly to Sassoon 's war experiences was initially gradual. His poetry became more serious and evocative in the early days of the war, but continued to inhabit the fatal logic of soldierly glory in poetic uniform” Avi Matalon claims (30). Poetry was influenced greatly by World War I and left poets creating new pieces that they never would have imagined
Edgar Allen Poe’s alliteration and repetition of words support the poem’s flow and musicality. Poe begins with the alliteration of the m sound in “merriment” and “melody” (3). The soft m sound, also known as a liquid consonant, helps to keep a quick and continuous pace for the poem. Similarly, the alliteration of the s sounds in sledges, silver, stars, and seem, emphasize the calming sounds of the bells (1-2, 6-7). The s sound helps express the soothing and comforting effects of the bells, essentially contributing to the merry tone of the poem. Furthermore, the alliteration of t...
While Sassoon’s influence on Owen was very effective they still are greatly different from each other. Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon are two talented war poets who meet each other in a hospital near Edinburgh both suffering from shell shock. Shell shock is psychological disturbance caused by prolonged exposure to active warfare. Owen was a few years younger than Sassoon which made it look like Sassoon was a mentor to Owen. Sassoon had college education at Marlborough and Clare College but did not take a degree. Owen was not educated to the level that Sassoon was. Owen actually became increasingly critical of the Church’s role in society. Owen has a much clever way with his word choice. Sassoon on the other hand writes his
... The history of the old lie is that it means that it is sweet and