A sensitive and influential poem, "Anthem For Doomed Youth" captures the underlying true aspects of war. The first hand account written by Wilfred Owen is a powerful indictment of war, in which Owen uses codes and conventions to construct meaning. The poem is written in a form of a sonnet. The octave deals mainly with sound images and good depiction of atmosphere, whereas the sestet is more heart-felt, with visual images to convey the sorrow of death. The title intoduces Owen's personal views about war.He establishes the seriousness and solemnity of his purpose by using the word "Anthem" which is an important sacred song.
However, it has a touch of irony in it, as the word a"Anthem brings to mind a country's national anthem, which gives thoughts of hope and glory. There is no hope or glory in this poem. With the phrase "Doomed Youth" he believes the soldiers have no hope of survival, a whole generation are destined to die right from the outset. Owen explores the monstrosity of war in various examples of comparison, the first in the opening line.He questions of the reader, in order to make them think more about the poem, but, the questions are deliberately easy to answer, and perhaps rhetorical, as Owen goes on to answer them in graphic detail, just to drive home how obviously stupid the war actually was.
This more subtly used technique does exactly the same job, offering the reader to step into his, or any other soldier's shoes, just for a moment, in order to encounter the tragedy that he encountered. The boys "die as cattle", they have been slaughtered mercilessly.The similie refers to the mass amount of deaths there was, and just like "cattle" it was a constant occurence. Notably, the way in which Owen compares the soldiers to animals is very effective making the reader believe was able to grieve properly over the innocent men.
Line 2 consists of good personification used by Owen. "Monstrous anger of the guns" creates the image of the guns being completely out of control and having a life of their own. The guns are responsible for taking so much human life, they are percieved as being evil and could not be stopped.The effective use of alliteration in "stuttering rifle's rapid rattle" (lines 3-4), has "r" and "t" letters to create in the reader's mind sound images of the noise and the quick paced fire which contributes to the fast action of the octave. What real funeral will these boys have? No mourning - except for "choirs of wailing shells and bugles calling.
" This is not good enough in Owen's eyes. He himself was fighting in the war and this is why it this subjects means a lot to him.Line 7, "The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells", uses the words shrill and demented specifically to make the guns insane. The last line in the first stanza, "And bugles calling them from sad shires" is particularly emotive because it is saying that the only loss felt for the dead is that they cannot fight any more.
"Wailing shells" is another form of personification. It seems that Owen is really trying to put the emphasis on the weapons which are taking the lives of these young warriors by using personification when he describes them.Personally by doing so, he makes me feel disgust towards war. The rest of stanza one contines to be angry and bitter, refering to the the weapons of destruction, until line 8 where it leads to a change in the sestet. Whilst the first stanza concentrates on sound, since the deep, dark trenches would not have many sights, stanza two goes into more detail about the expected, normal reactions to the frequent deaths and focuses on people's reactions at home rather than death in the trenches.
Religious images dominate the more sad, sympathetic lines 9-14. holy glimmers"," candles" etc. symbolise the sanctity of life. In lines 9-11 the poet relates all things back to a conventional funeral where candles are lit to send up prayers to God when people die.
The soldiers don't have candles, they have nothing. The only light is shown in their comrades eyes - their sadness. This idea continues in the concluding lines. "Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes" is particularly emotive because it is saying that one only needs to look in their eyes to see the horrors they have witnessed.The soldiers won't be getting a proper funeral.
Their loved one's sad faces will be a subsitute for a pall. They won't get flowers (suggesting beauty but also sadness) either, "silent minds" is the only thoughts they will get. Rightly, dusk is falling in the last line and speaks of finality. "a drawing-down of blind" could be seen in two different ways.
One being the traditional mark of respect when people lower their blinds when people die, or, it could be the people back home in Britain shutting out the rest of the world because they are fine.
