To What Extent Is Anthem For Doomed Youth The Most Important Poem In The Anthology

To What Extent is Anthem for Doomed Youth the Most Important Poem in The Anthology
Through ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ a well-known Petrarchan sonnet written by Wilfred Owen, the reader sees the horrors of war and how unfortunate it is to die in war. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ solemnly discusses death in war and shows how those who do die in war do not receive the normal ceremonies that are used to honour the dead. Owen was able to express how felt about those who passed away while fighting in war, and he successfully communicates a moving message to his readers. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is an elegy, a lament for the dead, a judgement on Owen’s experience of war rather than an account of the experience itself. Another important poem composed by Owen is ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ which he originally wrote in 1917 in a letter for his mother. The title is ironic as its intention was not so much to induce pity as to shock, especially civilians at home who believed war was noble and glorious. It comprises four unequal stanzas, the first two in sonnet form, the last two looser in a structure.
Stanza 1 of ‘Dulce…’ sees soldiers limping back from the Front Line, an appalling picture expressed through simile and metaphor. Such is the men's wretched condition that they can be compared to old beggars, hags and yet they were young. Barely awake from lack of sleep, their once smart uniforms resembling sacks, they cannot walk straight as their blood-caked feet try to negotiate the mud. "Blood-shod" seems a dehumanising image- we think of horses shod not men. Physically and mentally they are crushed. Owen uses words that set up ripples of meaning beyond the literal and exploit ambiguity. "Coughing" finds an echo later in the poem, while gas shells dropping softly suggest a menace stealthy and devilish.
In Stanza 2, the action focuses on one man who couldn't get his gas helmet on in time. Following the officer's command in line 9, "ecstasy" (of fumbling) seems a strange word until we realise that medically it means a morbid state of nerves in which the mind is occupied solely with one idea. Lines 12-14 consist of a powerful underwater metaphor, with succumbing to poison gas being compared to drowning. "Floundering" is what they're already doing (in the mud) but here it takes on more gruesome implications as Owen introduces himself into the action through witnessing his comrade dying in agony.
The "you" whom he addresses in line 17 can imply people in general but also perhaps, one person in particular, the "my friend" identified as Jessie Pope, children's fiction writer and versifier whose patriotic poems epitomised the glorification of war that Owen so despised. Imagine, he says, the urgency, the panic that causes a dying man to be "flung" into a wagon, the "writhing" that denotes an especially virulent kind of pain. Hell seems close at hand with the curious simile "like a devil's sick of sin". No gentle stretcher-bearing here but agony intensified. Owen's imagery is enough to sear the heart and mind.
There are echoes everywhere in Owen and with "bitter as the cud", we are back with "those who die as cattle", seen in ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’. "Innocent" tongues? Indeed, though some tongues were anything but innocent in Owen's opinion. Jessie Pope for one perhaps, his appeal to whom as "my friend" is doubtlessly ironic, and whose adopted creed, the sweetness of dying for one's country he denounces as a lie which children should never be exposed to.
By using a sonnet for the structure of this poem in ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’, Owen introduces a touch of irony, because the function of a sonnet is love, and this poem is almost a protest for the young soldiers having to spend their time in the trenches. Their lives are wasted and the lives of their loved ones at home are also ruined. Related to the structure of this poem, one may see it as a variation of the Elizabethan sonnet. Owen has divided the fourteen lines into two stanzas, the brake coming at the end of line 8.
First, Owen relates to his audience how horrible going to war is. The tittle of Owen’s poem conveys a strong, gloomy feeling; usually an anthem is a joyous song of celebration but coupled with ‘Doomed Youth’, anthem takes on a whole new meaning that implies much sorrow. Also, ‘Doomed Youth’ provides a woeful impression because it foretells of young people having no hope.
The first line of the poems describes the ‘Doomed Youth’ dying as ‘cattle.’ This depicts how awful war is as the description jolts us with its image of the slaughterhouse and the idea of men being treated as less than human. The simile shows how the soldiers are no more important than cattle which are lead to the slaughter without feeling. Owen gives the sonnet a powerful, negative connotation from the very beginning. The juxtaposition of ‘choirs’ and ‘wailing shells’ is a startling metaphor, God’s world and the Devil’s both as one; after which line 8 leads into the sestet with the contrasted, muted sound of the Last Post.
Owen compares the events of war to traditional burial rituals and describes how those who die in war do not receive proper funerals. In the first stanza, Owen references the ‘monstrous anger of guns’ to ‘passing bells’ and ‘rifles’ rapid rattle’ to hasty orisons. Usually at funerals bell are rung and prayers are said, but Owen shows that in war there are only the sounds of guns. In war, instead of honouring those who have fallen, more are being killed.
Lines 1-8 (the octet) contain a catalogue of the sounds of war, the weapons of destruction -shells - linked, ironically, to religious imagery, until in line 8 we switch from the fighting front to Britain’s "sad shires" where loved ones mourn. The tone now drops from bitter passion to rueful contemplation, the mood sombre, the pace slower, until by line 14 the poem quietly closes with "the drawing down of blinds".
In this octet the devilish clamour of trench warfare is carefully set against the subdued atmosphere of church. These religious images: passing bells, orisons, voice of mourning, choirs, candles, holy glimmers, symbolise the sanctity of life - and death - while suggesting also the inadequacy, the futility, even meaninglessness, of organised religion measured against such a cataclysm as war. To "patter out" is to intone mindlessly, an irrelevance. "Hasty" orisons are an irreverence. Prayers, bells, mockeries only. Despite Owen’s orthodox Christian upbringing, how his faith actually developed during the last years is far from clear, and it is hard not to think that he was not remembering in this poem those members of the clergy, and they were many, who were preaching not the gospel of peace but of war.
In the last stanza Owen says, ‘but in their eyes shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall.’ Here Owen illustrates the families’ reactions to finding that their loves ones have died. The dead soldiers do not get honoured by their family and friends, but all the family can do is grieve at the sorrowful news. Owen communicates how depressing was by making an effective comparison that the readers can relate to. The poet depicts tone that shows strong anger at the futility of war. Wilfred Owen uses various literary devices through this poem. Firstly, repetition is used in the poem to make it seem monotonous and by using personification, Owen makes the enemies; guns seem evil and monstrous. In line 12, ‘pal’ is almost an example of Owen’s use of pararhymes, a poetic device which may give a downbeat, lowering effect or creates an impression of solemnity. "Flowers" (line 13) suggest beauty but also sadness, again a word that runs counter to the pandemonium of the first eight lines.
Aptly, dusk is falling in the last line and speaks of finality. The dusk is slow, for that is how time passes for those who mourn, and with the drawing down of blinds and the attendant sadness we may think of a house in Shrewsbury’s Monkmoor Road where at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month a telegram was delivered that informed Wilfred Owen’s parents of his death just a week earlier.
‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ was written at white heat. Harsh, effective in the extreme, yet too negative to rank among Owen's finest achievements: those poems in which he transcends the scorn and the protest and finds the pity.
After reading ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ the reader’s entire perspective on war can be changed. Owen paints the horror of war in sensational manner that delivers his message with intense clarity. Through his poem, Owen stirs up the heart and greatly influences the reader’s thoughts on war and those who fight in it.