The speaker of this poem is a soldier in the war. Line fourteen is the most important line for the speaker from this point on, the image of the “drowning” of a man overwhelms the speaker. Owen uses words that make the poem seem intense and powerful. It was also interesting to see some Latin in his poem. The word choice also helps determine the tone and mood. The word choice also plays a large role in the imagery Owen presents in this poem. You can imagine the soldiers walking through sludge, miserable. You can imagine the intenseness of the soldiers always watching their backs. You can imagine how Owen feels during battle watching all these young men die.
Owen uses a lot of figurative language to express himself in this poem. He begins his poem with a simile saying “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks…” This gives the reader a glimpse of what the rest of the poem might be like. He also used a lot of metaphors. A metaphor that I thought was powerful was, “Drunk with fatigue, deaf even to the hoots”. This shows the reader how the soldiers were feeling.
I also noticed Owen use a lot of hyperboles. For example when he says: “All went lame; all blind”. Obviously not everyone was lame and blind but it helps the reader understand just how miserable the soldiers are.
Owen also used many personifications. One of the lines that stood out to me was: “To children ardent for some desperate glory”. I feel as if this is a warning to the children. He is saying it is not worth the glory to go through everything he did.
The form and meter are very interesting in this poem. Owen begins his poem by using Pentameter. The first stanza uses an eight-line pattern. (ABABCDCD) However, when