English Seminar
Intro (Interviewer): Hello and welcome. Tonight we have a very special guest with us, he is the writer of the world renowned poem, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, and that is none other than Wilfred Owen. (Pause). Tonight, Wilfred will be answering questions asked by you through our twitter feed. (Pause).
Interviewer: Wilfred… welcome! (Welcoming)
Reply (Wilfred): Thank you.
Intro 2 (Interviewer): Well Wilfred, to start things off, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself as a child growing up. (Casual)
Reply 2 (Wilfred): Well. (Pause) As a child, I didn’t have the most privileged life. My family and I had many ups and downs both financially and emotionally like selling our house and lodging in the back streets of Birkenhead. My dad was a temporary worker for some railway company in town so his income was not the best. When I was fourteen, I attended the Birkenhead institute and Shrewsbury Technical School. That was the first time where I found my occupation for poetry. That was the first time were I found my love of reading the Bible and many romantic poems. In 1915, I moved to France to teach English and French at the Berlitz School of Languages in Bordeaux, in France.
Interviewer: Wow. (Pause) So not the easiest life growing up? (Indirect)
Reply (Wilfred): No, not at all.
Question 1 (Interviewer): What have been your major influences and inspirations in the lead up to writing the poem?
Answer 1 (Wilfred): Well… There have been many factors influencing my poetry such as the Bible. I used to spend a lot of time at church as a young teenager. I found myself intrigued by the Bible, the way the Bible conveyed messages. However, one of the biggest influences growing up was a great friend and mentor by the nam...
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... also used by poets to highlight certain areas of a poem if a poet is trying to show a particular message.
Question 4 (Interviewer): What poetic devices are significant?
Answer 5 (Wilfred): The use of assonance in the poem is quite significant as it creates rhythm. ‘Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes’. The use of assonance with the two words shall and shine slows the rhythm with the longer, drawn out sounds.
Question 5 (Interviewer): How do you feel about the poem?
Answer 5 (Wilfred): In a way, I feel angry about the issue, about WW1. In the poem, it starts of calmly and slow but it gradually builds up into anger, talking about the monstrous anger of guns and the gruelling times in trench warfare and it is clearly shown in the poem.
Conclusion (Interviewer): That is all we have time for today, see you next time.
There are many things in this world that are impossible to understand without first hand experience.This can be especially irritating for people who have the knowledge, but see everyone else with the wrong idea. Philip Larkin and Wilfred Owen show this in their poems about the common misconception of war glorification. Through imagery and the use of similes, they explain what it's really like for a person to go into battle. To outsiders, fighting in war is a noble cause worthy of envy and praise, but from the inside perspective the only thing war does is take away the innocence of
In this poem written by Owen, the events of a typical day in the war is detailed and described to show that war is not as glorious and honorable as those back home picture it. The title, meaning 'how sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country', is actually very sarcastic and depicts the feelings of many of those that were fighting. The first stanza sets the scene and show what the soldiers would be feeling at the time. The men's condition at the time was so wretched th...
Good poetry provides meaningful commentary. One indication of a poem’s success in this is the depth of thought the reader has as a result of the poem. The poems I anthologized may take different
The first device that stands out about this poem is the point of view. It would be easy for Owen to write this in second person where the reader would feel more drawn into the story and see the horrors of war first hand. However, Owen used third person and slightly detached the reader from the story. The reasons for t...
How Wilfred Owen Uses Language and Imagery in His Poetry to Communicate his Attitudes of War
The poem has been written as four uneven stanzas this has been done purposefully to express how unpredictable war is. With the varying lengths of stanzas the breaks become unexpected in the poem; the reader is given the impression of how erratic war is, only given short moments of respite, with no predictability throughout the years on the frontline. Owen begins his work with a strong use of imagery to portray the conditions and the state of the soldiers. By using similes such as “like old beggars under sacks” and “coughing like hags” the reader is able to clearly visualize the state of the soldiers. This is also how Owen describes the state of the condition in which they were fighting in “we cursed through sludge”. These lines provide the reader with a very distinct vision of what was occurring. After this the poem describes a gas attack and the fear that the men felt. “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumb...
Comparing two war poems written by Wilfred Owen: Dulce et decorum Est. and Anthem for Doomed Youth. In this essay I will be comparing two war poems written by Wilfred Owen: ‘Dulce et decorum Est’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. By Comparing the two I will be able to distinguish the fact that Wilfred Owen is very anti-propaganda and that's why he feels so strongly about this. The two poems have many similarities but also a fair amount of differences, which I will be discussing in this essay.
Compare and contrast the poems Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen and The Soldier by Rupert Brooke. What are the poets' attitudes towards war and how do they convey these attitudes? Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" express opposing views towards war and matters related to it.
Unlike writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Longfellow’s poems were “overly optimistic and sentimental” (Kinsella 256). He stood out amongst any other writer of his time. While most authors wrote dark, gothic works and stories, Longfellow’s were happy, positive and encouraging due to his wonderful childhood. He was inspired by his hometown, Portland, the sea, poets like Sir Walter Scott and Samuel Rogers, literature and music were all inspirations to him (Arvin 8/9). These parts of his childhood along with the new, exciting ideas of Romanticism are what shaped Longfellow’s style of writing. This is what drew in his audience because his poems were relatable and were written from the heart. Even though Longfellow went through some hard times with the loss of two wives and suffering from vertigo and peritonitis, he never allowed these complications affect his writing or his calmness (Kunitz 5). His control over his mind and body helped create some of the most beloved p...
Owen, Wilfred, Lewis C. Day, and Edmund Blunden. The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen. New York: New Directions Pub., 1965. Print.
‘Poetry can challenge the reader to think about the world in new ways.’ It provokes the readers to consider events, issues and people with revised understanding and perspectives. The poems Dulce Et Decorum Est (Wilfred Owen, 1917) and Suicide in the Trenches (Siegfried Sassoon, 1917), were composed during World War One and represented the poets’ point of views in regards to the glorification of war and encouraged readers to challenge their perspectives and reflect upon the real consequences behind the fabrications of the glory and pride of fighting for one’s nation.
To draw into the poet’s world, the poet must draw relations between them, including the reader, making them feel what the poet feels, thinking what the poet thinks. Wilfred Owen does this very creatively and very effectively, in both of his poems, Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori and Anthem of Doomed Youth, who is seen as an idol to many people today, as a great war poet, who expresses his ideas that makes the reader feel involved in the moment, feeling everything that he does. His poems describe the horror of war, and the consequences of it, which is not beneficial for either side. He feels sorrow and anger towards the war and its victims, making the reader also feel the same.
5. What work of literature or poetry has had the greatest impact on your life? Write a report (250-500 words) describing what makes this story, book, or poem so meaningful to you. What techniques did the author use to communicate so deeply with you?
Wilfred Owen joined the war at the age of twenty-two. During the war, he saw the worst of the battlefield and often wrote poetry to document his perspective on the war. In 1917, he was affected by an explosion and after he healed, he returned to service and died in battle in 1918. His biographical context is important to understand Owen’s point of view for this poem.
Both Wilfred Owen and W.H Auden effectively express their opinions on the sensitive topic of war, having experienced the direct impact of it first hand which is indisputably evident in their poems ‘Disabled’ and ‘Refugee Blues’ respectively. Both the poems focus on the intense depiction of the unglamorous consequences tied with war. ‘Disabled’ as per the title is about a young soldier disabled both physically and emotionally during combat. The poem is written in close focus third person and zooms in on the soldier’s unwillingness to continue with his life as he falls into slow depression which is illustrated by the close focus pathos (pity) where at the end of the poem is spoken in the voice of the soldier as he questions himself ‘why don’t they come?’ in hopes of getting no reply. Here ‘they’ refers to death itself and the use of repetition reinforces on his misery and endless suffering. Similarly, ‘Refugee Blues’ describes the life of Jews who were forced to flee Europe when the Holocaust started in the voice of an old man speaking to what seems to be his wife by the use of phrase “my dear’. The calm attitude of the speaker throughout the poem may suggest that he has made peace with the fact that he can’t do anything and can only reassure his wife that everything will be alright“But we are still alive, my dear , but we are still alive’. Alternatively it may suggest his depression and lost hope of any future.