WILFRED OWEN

Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)

Anthem for Doomed Youth, 1917

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
- Only the monstruous 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 good-byes.
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.

Source: ://users.fulladsl.be/spb1667/cultural/owen/anthem-for-doomed.html

World War I was at that time known as the Great War. Up to 1914 no other war had been as cruel and deadly as this one. Families were divided up and almost every man went to war to defend their country and women also took part in it by nursing and labour force (Female roles, wikipedia).

Wilfred Owen was a young man who was involved in this war and who wrote about his experiences. He was born in 1983 in Shropshire (England), he studied, and 1915 he enlisted in the Artists’Rifles, went to the trenches, and was killed in action on the 4th November 1918, only one week before the end of the war (users, Owen). Owen’s war poetry is a passionate expression of outrage at the horrors of war and of pity for the young soldiers sacrificed in it.

The poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth” was written by Owen in September 1917. During his short life (25) he witnessed post-combat operations, human suffering, cultural loss and horrible deaths (Silkin, p.199) and therefore his main topics were compassion, horror, death. Even in this poem the role of women can be reflected. This poem was written when he was 24 years old. He was at Craiglockhart War Hospital, which was "used as a military psychiatric hospital for the treatment of shell-shocked officers" (Craiglockhart, wikipedia) where he met Siegfried Sassoon. There were some changes in the poem and Sassoon's influence began in Owen's poetry (warpoetry).

"Anthem for Doomed Youth" shows what was really happening at wartime. As he explains in the poem, people were dying as cattle, which were usually slaughtered without consideration and feelings. The only sound that reigned was the rattle of guns, once again an image of violence. The octet is a description of the feelings soldiers had when they were at the trenches. No matter if they died, the aim was to kill the enemy and to survive the sounds and danger of war: riffles, guns, shells...etc. Religion was not enough to avoid death; the prayers and flowers for the soldiers were mocked; useless offerings to men who were being murdered. Here Owen seems to be suggesting that the Christian religion, with its loving God, can have nothing to do with the deaths of so many thousands of men.

The sestet points out another perspective of war. What about those who outlived the war? The title of the poem reflects what kind of future was expected to be for those who participated in the war at the trenches. Youth was powerful, but also short for the combatants, who died very young and as the title says it was doomed. Owen uses the word boys and not men probably because those who fought at war were young men who died and left behind families and brides-to-be. The girls were the ones who mourned their death. Girls were a symbol for hope, tenderness and patience and we can imagine this as an opposite to the brutality of the boys ‘death who did not even have a funeral or religious ceremony.

This situation led to another important topic in the Great War which was that women moved into the labor force (Female roles). During World War I thousands of women worked in munitions factories in order to supply the soldiers. Nursing became the only female contribution at the front. Helping crippled men gave them a vivid experience of the horror of war. (Nursing, wikipedia).

This poem belongs to the experienced Owen, who was fed up of living that situation so we can almost assure that it was true. That terrible war was a great source for writing poems and other literary works. Writers did not only give a picture of that period but also used literature to criticise or to show their political protests. World war poetry was a fair observer and account of that abominable reality (Penguin, intro). It seems almost prophetic that Wilfred Owen was one of the doomed youth he speaks of in this poem.

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