ANTHEM FOR
DOOMED
YOUTH.
Wilfred
Owen
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Summary
What sound is there
to mark these
deaths?
Bell rung when someone dies, pray for
them to pass to heaven; religious imagery
Simile: slaughtered like animals, represents inhumanity of war
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only loud guns firing mark their deaths
Personification
These, not those, word
choice expresses closeness
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Anaphora: repetition builds momentum and pacing
Mimics sound of repeated
rifle fire
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Personification, bridges gap between people back home and war
Can patter out their hasty orisons. Prayers
Soldiers become like
animals and guns
become like people
Quick and thoughtless, senseless death
Refers to prayers and bells, they glorify death, pretend fighting is
purposeful and noble, really it is like slaughtering cattle.
No mockeries now for them, no prayers nor bells;
All the holy and patriotic civilians are absent at the
front. No one mourns the soldiers on the battlefield.
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
Personification/Metaphor: Wailing of shells is compared to the singing of a choir
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;
Ugly truth, as opposed to beautiful image they present back home
Town/county
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
Half (or more) of their
young men are dead
Instrument used in military funerals
Can be seen as a metaphor for the services we hold to remember the fallen.
Do these truly bring justice to the loss, sacrifice and wastefulness of their deaths?
Ritualistic, candles lit at a funeral, seen as artificial (fake)
Help them pass on to the spiritual world
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Refers to candles in hands of alter boys
All = emphasises that there are
many fallen soldiers
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
More sincere, tears in the eyes of sons who lost
father and tin the eyes of the soldiers themselves
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
Imagery connects with the candles but refers here
Grief is emotional, a public vigil is
to tears, tears are taking the place of candles
nowhere near as poignant as
actual tears.
Note that these lines employ words that we associate
with holy things, rather than human things.
For example, instead of tears we have "holy glimmers,"
and instead of deaths we have "goodbyes."
Women left behind by war
Pale drained faces of girls stand in for the pall (cloth) that covers a
coffin, metaphor
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Metaphor: Instead of flowers, the soldiers only have the kind thoughts of their waiting
loved ones
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
Represents the slowing down of the poem, this line is the slowest.
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Note that this sentence is
passive, no one takes
responsibility.
Represents death, life coming to an end.
Also a symbol = shutting out the truth/world
Could also depict the sincere, ritual-less
private grief that the mourners experience
when away from the outside world
Structure
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Thank you