Wilfred Owen's Poem Analysis

Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen
Glossary
1 Anthem - perhaps best known in the expression "The National Anthem;" also, an important religious song (often expressing joy); here, perhaps, a solemn song of celebration 2 passing-bells - a bell tolled after someone's death to announce the death to the world 3 patter out - rapidly speak 4 orisons - prayers, here funeral prayers 5 mockeries - ceremonies which are insults. Here Owen seems to be suggesting that the Christian religion, with its loving God, can have nothing to do with the deaths of so many thousands of men 6 demented - raving mad 7 bugles - a bugle is played at military funerals (sounding the last post) 8 shires - English counties and countryside from which so many of the soldiers came 9 candles - church candles, or the candles lit in the room where a body lies in a coffin 10 pallor - paleness 11 dusk has a symbolic significance here 12 drawing-down of blinds - normally a preparation for night, but also, here, the tradition of drawing the blinds in a room where a dead person lies, as a sign to the world and as a mark of respect. The coming of night is like the drawing down of blinds.
About the author
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and stood in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Some of his best-known works — most of which were published posthumously — are "Dulce et Decorum Est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting".
Poem at a glance
Anthem for Doomed Youth" is a well-known popular poem written by Wilfred Owen which incorporates the themes of the horror of war. It employs the traditional form of a petrarchan sonnet, but it uses the rhyme scheme of an English sonnet. Much of the second half of the poem is dedicated to funeral rituals suffered by those families deeply affected by World War I. The poem does this by following the sorrow of common soldiers in one of the bloodiest battles of the 20th century. Written between September and October 1917, when Owen was a patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh recovering from shell shock, the poem is a lament for young soldiers whose lives were unnecessarily lost in the First World War. The poem is also a comment on Owen's rejection of his religion in 1915
This poem shatters the fantasized images of war by juxtaposing the opposite worlds of reality and the romanticized rhetoric that distorts it. He writes about the true experience of military death, and effectively expresses these powerful sentiments in only fourteen lines by use of a somewhat violent imagery that is compounded by the constant comparison of reality to myth. Through irony, imagery, personification, metaphor, and other literary devices, Owen brings the sonnet to life by paralleling the experience of war with a funeral.
Examining the title of this poem is a way to look at the contrasts and themes which this poem explores. An anthem is usually a song of praise, but this poem, which is has the solemn style of an anthem, is about the death of the thousands of doomed youth in war. The use of the word youth in the title adds to the theme of the pity of war. The poem is written in sonnet form. The first 8 lines (the octet) lament the horror of the loss of these young men “who die as cattle”. The simile comparing the soldiers’ deaths to the slaughter of animals is one the audience can relate to. The first section poses the question of how do we most appropriately bury our war dead? The answer is in the sounds of battle. Owen’s use of alliteration and onomatopoeia in this section artfully create the sounds of battle. The sestet (the next 6 lines) moves away from the sounds of war to the stillness of the home front, where the men are being mourned by their loved ones. These men, by the nature of war, have been left to lonely graves away from home and denied a burial service attended by their family and loved ones. This section acknowledges their grief and shows empathy for their loss. The poem has bitterness, as it examines the brutality of war, and poignancy, as it examines the grief of the soldiers’ loved ones.
Writing Approach and Literary Devices
In a sonnet the first 8 lines are called an "octet" and the last 8 lines are called a "sestet".
Owen wrote the poem from the perspective of a soldier on a battlefield. In the first eight lines (octet), the soldier asks and answers a question. Notice that the answer appears in the present tense and focuses almost exclusively on the sounds and frantic pace of war. Phrases with onomatopoeia—stuttering rifles, rapid rattle, patter out, and wailing shells—imitate the sounds on the field.
In the last six lines (sestet), the soldier asks and answers another question. Notice that this time the answer appears in the future tense and focuses entirely on the sights of the mourning period and the agonizing slowness of its pace.
Throughout the poem, Owen uses alliteration to promote rhythm and euphony, as in rifles' rapid rattle and glimmers of good-byes. Note that some alliterations occur subtly, as in the st in hasty that echoes the st in stuttering and in the sh in shrill that alliterates with the sh in shells and the sh in shires.
In the octet, two personifications call attention to the terrifying rage and insanity of war: monstrous anger of the guns (comparison of guns to angry humans) and demented choirs of wailing shells (comparison of the shells to deranged humans).
In the sestet, three metaphors center on the poignant suffering of the mourners at home. One compares the holy glimmers in the eyes of boys to candles, and another compares the pallor of the girls' brows to the pall that covers the casket. In the third, the tenderness of patient minds becomes the flowers that adorn the soldiers' graves.
Questions
1. Discuss the pain and the irony of war as felt by Owen in the poem "Anthem for doomed youth."
2. Wilfred Owen's poem, "Anthem for Doomed Youth" (1917), is a sensitive expression of the sadness and futility which arise as a result of the death of young men. Discuss