Wilfred Owen Paper

Tamara Karapandzic
Faculty of Foreign Languages
Alfa University
Belgrade

THE IMPORTANCE OF STYLISTIC ELEMENTS IN THE PORTRAYAL OF THE REALITY OF THE GREAT WAR IN WILFRED OWEN 'S WAR POETRY

Abstract: This paper will deal with some of Wilfred Owen’s poems by analyzing them from the stylistic aspect and showing the importance of stylistic elements for Owen’s overall thematic focus on the experience of World War One. The greatest of war poets, Owen was famous for his work which was characterized by his portrayal of the terrifying images of war; the loss, sacrifice, pity and hopelessness, everything that he ended up facing the moment he enlisted in the Great War. His intense personal experience as a soldier influenced his writing greatly, particularly the recovery from the shell shock. Through his dramatic, horrific and memorable poems he attempted to hurl the pain of war in the faces of readers to illustrate how vile, distorted and inhumane war really was, uncovering the brutal truth.
The poems chosen to illustrate the use and effect of stylistic tools such as alliteration and pararhyme are "Exposure" and "Strange Meeting". Owen predominantly used alliteration throughout his poem "Exposure", while in the poem "Strange Meeting" pararhymes prevail. Alliteration is defined as the repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, while pararhyme is defined by Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman as the subtle and effective mixture of vowel dissonance and consonant assonance, most often effectively employed at the end of a line.
Bearing these definitions in mind, this paper will analyze the manner in which alliteration and pararhyme are used in the two mentioned poems, and also try to provide reasons which will explain their use in the broader context of Owen’s poetics and, more specifically, his preoccupations with the war. As in the following lines:"Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence" from "Exposure", alliteration is abundantly used in that poem to convey, replicate or mimic the sounds heard by the soldiers at the front lines. This contributes to a great extent to the dramatic effect of the poem. On the other hand, lines such as "And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall; by his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell" from "Strange Meeting" represent famous examples of pararhyme, which Owen was among the first English poets to use in order to express the fragmented and incomplete experience of humanity faced with a brutal war.
The analysis of the chosen poems should prove that alliteration in Owen 's poems is used to produce a dramatic effect, painting the picture of the war not merely on the thematic level, but stylistic as well, while pararhyme is used to give an overall distorted feeling of one’s helplessness in a world where nothing lasts forever or stays the same and everything is undergoing a continued stress of peace and destruction. Owen used these stylistic devices in an attempt to transfer the chaos of the war more effectively into his art and to his reader.

Key words: Wilfred Owen, war poetry, alliteration, pararhyme.

Introduction

The curtains drew and the Great War began, letters spilled from the pen forming poetry which highly praised the virtue of sacrifice and ignited the thought that fighting and dying for one’s country served a righteous purpose. As the horror started to unravel with battles of trench warfare, the soldiers’ attitudes toward war began to change. There was no purposeful activity with a clear goal anymore, just confusion and chaos, and taking cover in the muddy trenches trying to avoid the unpleasant death lurking around the battlefield. This grim reality of war was to be portrayed in the poetry of the leading English poet of the Great War, Wilfred Owen. As the soldiers ' realization of useless bloodshed became a turning point, in that vary same way the stay at Craiglockhart hospital presented a turning point for Owen’s poetry. It was at this hospital where he was sent to recover from shell shock, that he met Siegfried Sassoon. This encounter would be of vital importance to the transition of Owen 's poetry. The nightmares and horrific flashbacks of the battlefield that Owen dealt with were, under the guidance of Sassoon used as motivation and inspiration for many of his later poems. Sassoon 's great influence transformed Owen 's poetry. Owen, who used to imitate Keats and Shelley in his earlier romantic poems was now writing poetry that vividly painted with words the violence, despair, and terror that loomed over the battlefield. Working with Sassoon helped improve the strength and power of his poems as well as revolutionize his style and his conception of poetry, allowing us to understand that war was far from the glorification that it received in society and to enable us to understand the human experience of war, in other words, the pity of war. Sassoon became the spark that kindled Owen 's great poetic fire and with that in mind his talent matured with extraordinary speed. Other elements that had greatly influenced his poetry were his experience at the front line, his mental condition, the confrontation with the shell shocked soldiers and the process of his own recovery.
The soldier poets came to realize that the war was ' 'deliberately prolonged ' ' and for that reason needed to ' 'adapt their basically conventional verse forms to sustain a weight of new experience ' ' [Bergonzi, 1980:110]. The traditional poetic language and rhyme schemes needed reshaping and adjustment. The inner yearning to write of such experiences at the front line proved to be challenging, realizing the complexity of the relationship between the desire to communicate and an inability to do so. The war soldiers were convinced that it was impossible to describe the true horror of the war in a way for those who did not take part, to grasp it. The war soldiers believed this simply because all everyone received at home was a lie and the horror itself could not be described. ' 'The awareness of lies to answer, misunderstandings to correct, ignorance to supply with knowledge, gave fuel to Owen 's creative energies ' ' [Graham, 1984:33]. It was his unusual and experimental technical style, his use of such stylistic devices as pararhyme and alliteration that helped him achieve what was considered to be impossible. Alliteration used to evoke the sounds of battle and pararhyme to give an overall feeling of dislocation and disharmony, both consistent with his brutal presentation of war. His poetry emotionally involved his readers and drew them into the unknown, unfolding the full extent of the horror of trench warfare in front of their very eyes.

Method and Definition

Owen played with words and letters, attracted by all the possibilities and in doing so he formed poems that depicted the untold truth of war. He used stylistic devices to achieve this, but his use of pararhyme and alliteration prevailed in rendering the chaos and devastation into poetry.
This play with language also led him to an experiment with rhyme which was to become the hallmark of his poetry, what he would later be best known for. This distinctive technique, best known as pararhyme but also as double consonance, was first used systematically by Owen but the term itself was coined by Edmund Blunden. Pararhyme is where words, found at the end of successive lines, are drawn together by the consonants that framed them. The vowel sounds vary while the initial and terminal consonants remain the same. In the poem "Strange Meeting" we can find examples of the use of pararhyme, lines ending with words such as 'groaned ' and 'groined ' and 'hall ' and 'Hell '. The underlying effect of the technique is to always give a sense of incompletion, and in doing so creating an overall distorted feeling along with the psychological displacement of warfare. Even Blunden describes the effects: “again and again by means of it he creates remoteness, darkness, emptiness, shock, echo, the last word” [Blunden, 1946:29]. Welland mentions that earlier poets such as Henry Vaughsn, G.M. Hopkins, and Emily Dickinson used pararhyme. But Welland believed that the work of the French poet and novelist Jules Romains was the probable source for Owen’s use of pararhyme. He was introduced to Romains ' work during his two year stay in France. However, Welland states that the source from which Owen derived his technique cannot be traced.
Alliteration is the other literary device that contributed to his realistic portrayal of war. By definition it is the repetition of the same consonant sound, most often used as the initial consonant. Alliteration can have a pleasant, disturbing, melancholy effect due to the pattern of sounds but nevertheless it is memorable because repeated sounds simply impress themselves upon the mind. Whether or not the alliteration is regularly spaced, it is always able to contribute to the overall distinctive tone of the poem. This is demonstrated in Owen 's poem "Exposure", where the alliteration of the 'f ' sound is regular in the following line ' 'With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew ' ' - and irregular in the next - ' 'Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces ' ' - yet both create a furtive tone. The alliteration of the 'f ' sound here helps convey the picture of how something that seems so delicate could in fact portray their sinister side in the way they bring a deathly cold to the exposed soldiers. According to I.M.Parsons Owen’s alliterative method is new – or at least significantly different – in the way that it becomes an “integral part of the emotional content” [The Poems of Wilfred Owen, 1931:663] of the poems.

Analysis

The best of his poems were written within a brief period of approximately two years, but the poems "Strange Meeting" and "Exposure" best showcase the use of his pararhyme and alliteration.
During his stay at Craiglockhart hospital as a side effect to the shell shock he experienced terrible dreams one of them being an image of an idea that war was a sort of 'mouth of hell '. It was this very image that inspired Owen 's poem "Strange Meeting". This haunting poem depicts a senario where two soldiers, from opposite sides of the war, meet in hell. One newly dead and the other his killer, where the one dead affirms Owen 's belief that the duty of the poet is to tell the truth about war. It is in his poem "Strange Meeting" that pararhymes, his most noted innovation in poetic technique, prevail.
Even though pararhymes dominate the poem, alliterations can be found adding dramatic emphasis. This can be seen in the following line where the 'b ' sound provides a plosive effect, emphasizing the emotion of anger.

' 'Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled. ' ' (27)

In the next line the alliteration of the 'm ' sound helps to emphasize what the others have lost by the death of the dead man.

' 'For by my glee might many men have laughed ' ' (22)

C. Day Lewis (1963) observes that "Owen was not a technical innovator except in one respect – his consistent use of pararhymes"[Cash, 2010:15]. Michael Roberts remarks that Owen’s unique progression from a vowel of high to one of low pitch transfers a feeling of frustration, weariness and hopelessness. His pararhymes bend the poetic tradition of full rhymes presenting a sense of sameness and uniformity, by recreating disharmony of war, where things are falling apart rather than coming together.

“And by his smile I knew that sullen hall,
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.” (9,10)
The lack of rhyming sounds in Owen 's most notorious pararhyme and the very failure of two similar words to rhyme introduce a note of discord and a sense of incongruity. It is this jarring note that matches perfectly with the disturbing mood and eerie atmosphere of the poem, as well as compose an accompaniment to the tour of Owen’s own hell, his haunted conscience.

"With a thousand fears that vision 's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours" (11-16)
Observing the pararhyme at the end of each line we recognize that, in Jon Stallworthy 's words, “the second rhyme is usually lower in pitch (has a deeper vowel sound) than the first, producing effects of dissonance, failure, and unfulfilment that subtly reinforce Owen’s theme” [Maeder, 2005:200]. These pararhymes act as further emphasis of the harshness and pain suffered by these soldiers.

Other examples of pararhyme include: "heir"/"hour" [II.19-20], "world"/"walled" [II.32-33], and especially "killed"/"cold" [II.41-43]. J. Middleton Murry describes “Strange Meeting” as the “most magnificent expression of the emotional significance of the war that has yet been achieved by English poetry”. Strange Meeting reinforces Owen’s claim from his Preface that ‘All a poet can do today is warn’. His poem strives to ‘warn’ us that, if man continues to fight wars, then his conscience will continue to be haunted. Owen set out to present the whole reality of war which included the excruciating scenes of grief and suffering, the boredom, the hopelessness, the uselessness but , above all, the pity of it. It is for this reason that Strange Meeting still stands in the forefront of Owen’s achievements, where the pity of war has never been shown as powerfully or felt as deeply as it has here.

"Exposure" is a poem whose resounding message merely lies within the title of the poem. Owen reveals that the soldiers who were fighting a war, were challenged by greater enemies than the war that was disguised in the forms of harsh elements of nature, along with the boredom that wore them out and ultimately led to their death. Owen successfully conveyed this image to the readers through the use of stylistic devices but most predominantly, alliteration. One of the more famous uses of alliteration in this poem can be seen in the following line:

“sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence” (I.16).

The repetition of the ‘s’ sound, better known as sibilance, imitates the noise, or echoes the sound of bullets penetrating the air surrounding the battlefield. This sound created by this sibilance transports the reader into the unfamiliar world of war comprising of the dull, silence of the winter trenches, instantly torn apart by bullets and shells flying past.

Another example is:

“Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces” (I.21)

where the repetition of the ‘f’ sound creates a sinister effect, imitating the soft sound of the snowflakes. In the next line:

“Sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, renew ” (I.18)

the alliteration of the 'fl ' sound creates the repetition of the snowflakes which ‘pause’ and ‘renew’, this highlights how the weather appears against the men and seems relentless despite their suffering. Also the steady repetition may suggest the repetition of the soldiers suffering, each day is repeated where men ‘creep in holes back on forgotten dreams’. The alliteration of the 'w ' in the following line:

" Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent" (I.2)

emphasizes the desperation to stay awake despite the tedium. Again we have sibilance in the following example:

‘Worried by the silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous’ (I.4)

where in this case it creates the effect of whispering, an attempt to not draw attention of the enemy, who are unsuccessfully using flares to see what is going on.

"Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us" (I.1)

Here we come across the use of sibilance where the 's ' sound emphasizes the coldness and oppressiveness, chilling the reader to their very bones allowing them to empathize with what the soldiers were feeling at the time. The 's ' sound also helps to carry out the knifing movements of those ‘east winds’.

"We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed" (I.22,I.23)
The alliteration of the 'd ' sound strengthens the sense of despair.
Pararhymes are also used to effectively convey the eerie atmosphere of the poem. Like in the following lines where the choice of contrasting words; rumbles conveying the heavy, sinister sound of war while brambles conveys a natural, rural image. This gives the effect of the displacement of soldiers in the violent environment.

"Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles" (I.7,I.8)

The next set of pararhymes with their long vowel sounds framed by the same consonants, slow down the pace of those lines of the poem and associating this effect of slowing down with the process of falling asleep.

"We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed" (II.22,II.23)
This creates a rhythm and regularity to the sound of the poem. It also has the effect of contrasting words, e.g. “rumbles” (the heavy, ominous sound of war) is paired with “brambles” (a natural, rural image), suggesting that the soldiers themselves are displaced in this violent environment.

Owen used alliteration to mimic the sounds of the battlefield. It was through the repetition of letters that Owen imitated the sound of rifles, the wind along with other elements one had to deal with on the front lines, that he was able to throw the reader into that world of sheer terror. In this poem alliteration helps the reader hear the sound of winter experienced by the soldiers and in doing so it helps to emphasize the poem 's main focus which is that nature represents a bigger threat than the battlefield and war itself.

Conclusion

Wilfred Owen was killed, like so many others, by gun fire while leading his men across the Sambre Canal a week before the Armistice was signed. Even though he was killed in the war his poetry remains an everlasting legacy of his thoughts and emotions about the war. Seeing as he died so young, it is clear that Wilfred Owen was not responsible for the development of his own reputation where only five of his poems had been published while he was still alive. After his death is was Siegfried Sassoon, who arranged for the publication of his Collected Poems (1920), including 23 poems and one more that was added the next year, not letting Owen 's poetry to be forgotten on the bloody battlefield. This volume established his extensive reputation, and he was perceived to be as influential as Eliot and Yeats.
Jon Stallworthy has argued: "Dying at twenty-five, he came to represent a generation of innocent young men sacrificed - as it seemed to a generation in unprecedented rebellion against its fathers - by guilty old men: generals, politicians, war profiteers. Owen has now taken his place in literary history as perhaps the first, certainly the quintessential, war poet."
Wilfred Owen is undoubtedly the greatest poet of the First World War having written outstanding poems filled with imagery of horrendous violence, waste of human life and carnage along with the representation of anguish and anger at the suffering experienced by the soldiers. This was the brutal untold truth of war that those away from the front were completely deluded about. Owen certainly reached his goal, he had bridged the gap between the home front and the real front, he had touched his readers emotionally and he had opened their eyes to the lies. His poetry had shed the light on the gruesome and grotesque reality of being a soldier. Owen’s poetry is remarkable for its innovation within the borders of earlier poetic forms, where his poetry underwent stylistic changes in order to put the war itself into verse. His desire to make his warnings about war accessible to his readers in poetry, reveals Owen as one of the most mature, individual voices of his generation. With regard to Owen’s influence on the technique of later poets, Blunden states that “imitators have been few” [Blunden, 1928:29]. He explains the reason for this: “Only an innate, unconventional command over language, and a rich and loving vocabulary – in short, only a genius for poetry could for long work in that uncommon medium” [Blunden, 1928:29]. It was through his use of stylistic elements, predominantly alliteration in "Exposure" and pararhyme in "Strange Meeting", that he accomplished to insert The Great War into his poetry and then into the minds of the readers. His distinctive techniqual style and conspicuous note of protest, against the earlier glorification of war, in his poems had quite the influence on poets of the 1920s and 1930s, most notably W.H. Auden, C. Day Lewis and Stephen Spender. Dylan Thomas writes : “we can see, rereading Owen, that he is a poet of all times, all places, and all wars” [Thomas, 1954:118-119]. Owen will be remembered not merely as the author of some of the most astonishing poetry of the 20th century and the voice of a generation, but also as the mastermind who accomplished to do the impossible. Pararhyme and alliteration serving as vital puzzle parts to the formation of the realistic war image inside the readers head. Realistic to the extent where Owen 's poetry activates all the reader 's senses creating a 3D image so real that the reader, who may never have had any contact with war, experiences it as if only reliving a memory of his/her past.

Bibliography

Cash, Peter. (2010). Wilfred Owen. Leicester: English Association Bookmarks.

Costenoble, Flore. (2013). The language of Sassoon, Owen & Rosenberg, The Great War Poets Entrenched. (pp. 39-48). Gent.

Roberts, David.,Wilfred Owen. The War Poetry Website. Retrieved on 03/04/2014 from http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/index.html

Owen, Peter., Owen the Poet. The Wilfred Owen Association. Retrieved on 3/04/2014 from http://www.wilfredowen.org.uk/owen-the-poet

Trueman, Chris.,Wilfred Owen. History Learning Site. Retrieved on 10/04/2014 from http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/wlfred_owen.htm

Cuthbertson, Guy., Wilfred Owen: The Peter Pan of the trenches. NewStatesman. Retrieved on 10/04/2014 from http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/02/wilfred-owen-peter-pan-trenches

Bibliography: Cash, Peter. (2010). Wilfred Owen. Leicester: English Association Bookmarks. Costenoble, Flore. (2013). The language of Sassoon, Owen & Rosenberg, The Great War Poets Entrenched. (pp. 39-48). Gent. Roberts, David.,Wilfred Owen. The War Poetry Website. Retrieved on 03/04/2014 from http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/index.html Owen, Peter., Owen the Poet. The Wilfred Owen Association. Retrieved on 3/04/2014 from http://www.wilfredowen.org.uk/owen-the-poet Trueman, Chris.,Wilfred Owen. History Learning Site. Retrieved on 10/04/2014 from http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/wlfred_owen.htm Cuthbertson, Guy., Wilfred Owen: The Peter Pan of the trenches. NewStatesman. Retrieved on 10/04/2014 from http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/02/wilfred-owen-peter-pan-trenches