Raquel Jordα Bresσ                                                06 – IV – 06

 

THE END

 

01 After the blast of lightning from the east,

     The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot Throne;

     After the drums of time have rolled and ceased,

     And by the bronze west long retreat is blown,

 

 

05 Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth,

     All death will he annul, all tears assuage?

     Or fill these void veins full again with youth,

     And wash, with an immortal water, age?

 

 

     When I do ask white Age, he saith not so:

10 'My head hangs weighed with snow.'

     And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith:

     'My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death.

     Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified,

     Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried.'

 

 

 

Owen, Wilfred.“ The End.” (Sonnet)

 

 

 

 

 

ANALYSIS

 

Title ΰ The End refers to the end of the so called ‘Great War’.

 

The poem deals with the idea of what will happen at the end of the war and what will rest then.

 

Wilfred Owen, in this poem, uses a sonnet structured in two quatrains - the two first stanzas - with a rhyme scheme abab, cdcd - and a sextet - the third stanza - with a rhyme scheme eeffgg.

 

In the first stanza the author describes the scenes that he and all the other soldiers could see - and experience - in the battlefields of all over Europe during the IWW, in which Wilfred Owen took part as a soldier in France, where he was sent to fight against the Germans in 1915 (Answers).  He comments on ‘the blast lightning’ (L1) as an image of the bombs exploiting and coming ‘from the east’ (L1), referring to the part from which the enemies came.

In line 2, the author describes the movement of clouds that are ‘loud’ because they are full of “poison gas” (Norton), and the appearance of ‘the Chariot Throne’ through these clouds, as a symbol of Heaven – or maybe as an example of the hallucinations the poison caused.

‘The drums of time’ (L3) that now do not sound anymore represent life and, because they ‘have rolled and ceased’ (L3) life is now death. And in line 4 the author explains that some powerful force, ‘the bronce west’ defeats the ‘long retreat that is blown’.

But all these features Wilfred Owen describes in the first stanza have already happened because he speaks ‘After’ (L1 and L3) all these events had happened and it is now, in this situation, that he decides to ask what will occur at the end. Thus the second stanza is a sequence of answers.

Wilfred Owen personifies ‘Life’ (L5) with the pronoun ‘he’ (L6) in order to create a human, real conversation and, by asking if ‘he’ would be able to ‘renew these bodies’ (L5) of the dead soldiers, if ‘he’ definitely will ‘annul’ (L6) death, if ‘he’ will ‘assuage’ (L6) all the parent’s tears the author is really making a petition for life to come and ‘fill these void veins’ (L7) of the thousands of young boys in the war and fill them again ‘with youth’ (L7). The author desires ‘life’ to ‘wash with an immortal water’ (L8) the whole ‘Age’ (L8), referring to the new 20th century that had brought nothing but a great, horrible war.

 

Finally, it is in the third stanza where the poet, by using the first person with ‘I’ in lines 9 and 11, makes the questions closers and more personal and constructs a dialogue between him and other two personificated entities: the ‘Age’ (L9) – considered as a male figure in the same line ‘he’ – and ‘the Earth’ (L12) treated as a female figure – see the same line ‘she’.

The ‘white Age’ (L9) tells him that ‘he’ (L9) will not be washed from all the deaths and horrors of his time because his ‘head hangs weighed with snow’ (L10).

Therefore, the poet just listens to ‘the Earth’ (L11) and he hears her ‘heart’ (L12) ‘aching’ (L12). And this pain ‘is death’ (L12). We can entail that the author considers the Earth as the mythological Mother Earth that suffers for her dying sons, the soldiers.

To conclude the poem, Wilfred Owen expresses his own opinion with the double interpretation we can give to the word ‘mine’ in line 13 – the Earth’s but also the author’s one.

Here, the Earth / the poet states that it is not honorable, not to ‘be glorified’ (L13) the ‘ancient scars’ (L13) she / he has, which can be either the physical enjuries the poet suffered during the war or an image of the thousands of soldiers tombs scattered all over Europe; and neither should ‘be dried’ (L14) her / his ‘titanic tears, the seas’ (L14) a symbol of the joyfull tears of recovering a son.

 

PERSONAL OPINION

I found this poem cruel but beautiful because of the frank descriptions the author gives of how the war was like. Through the poem Wilfred Owen makes a critic of “the morbid absurdity of war” (Answers) with such questions that nobody can answer, neither the entities mentioned. Like some other poets that lived during the World War I, with this poem Wilfred Owen “helped call the attention on the rage and bewilderment of the trench soldiers” (Norton) and also on the British society. Something he could not check because he died before many of his poems were published (Answers).

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Owen, Wilfred. “The End.” Sonnet Central. Ed. Eric Blomquist et al. 01 – Apr – 2006

< http://www.sonnets.org/wwi.htm#102 >

Wilfred Owen: Biography and Much More From Answers.com. Who2, LLC. 2006. 01 – Apr – 2006. < http://www.answers.com/topic/wilfred-owen >

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The 20th Century: Introduction. W.W. Norton and Company. 2006. 01 – Apr – 2006. < http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/20century/welcome.htm >

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The 20th Century: Topic 1: Overview. W.W. Norton and Company. 2006. 01 – Apr – 2006. 

< http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/20century/topic_1_05/welcome.htm >

 

 

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