ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH. Wilfred Owen 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 Thank you