War Poetry : Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen

War Poetry

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

    Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

    Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them, no prayers nor bells;

    Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – 

The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;

    And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

    Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

    The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

By

Wilfred Owen

Brief Biography of Wilfred Owen.

   Wilfred Owen was one of the great or even the best of war poet during World War I. He was born on the 18th of March 1893 in Oswestry, Shropshire, England. He was very religious and against the brutal reality of the war. He was under the influence of Siegfried Sassoon who was his mentor and fellow friend. He was best known through his poem Dulce Et Delcorom Est and Anthem for Doomed Youth. He died on the Forth of November 1918 at the age of 25 and buried in Sambre Oise Canal, France.

The Poem Analysis.

Overview.

   What Wilfred Owen wants to highlight in the poem is that no matter how much we memorialize, tribute, or honor the fallen, we can't ever really know what it was like for them in those horrible moments before death. "Anthem for Doomed Youth" strives to make it impossible for us to ignore those realities, and to realize that in the face of all that horror, our anthems might ring hollow, no matter how much we seek meaning in them.

Theme.

Warfare.

   This poem is all about the universal topic of the terrible cost, realities, and and the inability of our rituals to alleviate the death and suffering it brings about. It is not about some specific battle or individual love lost.

Death.

   Death is a cliche of war. We know the result, but still, we figure it's worth pointing out that even though "Anthem for Doomed Youth" doesn't directly mention death after the first line, it's still completely obsessed with the concept. It is in the manual that death is upon us when we play the guns but human nature still sees it as a way to solve the puzzle.

Symbolism and Imagery

War imagery.

   The poem is about the exploring of how war can twist the way we see the world. Men become cattle, artillery shells become choirs, and tears become candles. Things in a world at war are not as they seem. In our speaker's eyes, the rituals of mourning the fallen become mockeries, because they ring so hollow in the face of war's true horrors.

Mourning Rituals imagery.

   When a Hero of the war died. People go to the funeral with songs and grieving, feeling the loss and sadness but are those people really understand the experience felt by the fallen hero. Probably not. the heat was much higher than just sitting there mourning about someone's death.

Setting.

World War I battlefield.

   The place that the war is presented where bullets and grenades fly unknowing its true target. the place where hero's fall. a place where they realize the truth, reality and brutality of the war.

Graveyard.

   It is the place where the funeral took place. A place where family, relatives, and friend came to grieve. The place where realizing about something has become just only a dream. The place to mourn.

Form and Meter.

   This poem is a Sonnet written in a iambic pentameter. For example "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?" in the first line.

"My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity".

Wilfred Owen.