Anthem For Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen
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 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.
Background on Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen (18 March 1893 – 4
November 1918) was an English poet and soldier,
one of the leading poets of the First World War. He
has shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of
trenches and gas warfare, which was heavily
influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and stood
in stark contrast to both the public perception of
war at the time. Among his best-known works are
"Dulce et Decorum Est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for
Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting".
What it is about?
• This is about war.
• Much of the second half of the poem is dedicated to
funeral rituals suffered by those families deeply
affected by World War I.
• This is about the devastations of the war, and
especially how it affected the young generation – a
lament for young soldiers whose lives were
unnecessarily lost in the First World War.
• Owen is emphasising how the young youth have been
simply killed without any thought for their or our
future – simply, ‘what a waste’ and a mockery of the
human race/kind.
Structure
• The poem is a sonnet. The traditional/conventional
mood of sonnets are happy and joyful. However, this
structure has added to the irony of the poem – this
poem is about death and how young lives will be and
are being lost, and the structure makes ‘fun’ of this.
• Also, the sonnet structure has restricted the writing.
Therefore, Owen’s ideas, thoughts and motions have
been compacted and compressed, creating an intense
piece of writing.
• It employs the traditional form of a petrarchan sonnet,
but it uses the rhyme scheme of an English sonnet.
Themes
• Devastation
The war severely devastated her
• Loss of Identity
In war, young men with distinct personalities and unique
talents become nameless pawns – only abiding by the
commands of their superiors. When they fall on the
battlefield, no one stops to mourn them or pay them homage.
The bombs keep falling. The guns keep firing. (This specific
concept also ties in with the ideas of the lack of respect and
ceremony for the dead).
• Other ideas include death and the mockeries of human life.
Language Techniques
(Helps with Annotations)
• Title – ‘Anthem’ is a song of praise, not usually
one associated with death.
• Line 1 – “what passing bells…” – simile, indicates
how young lives were lost as easily as cattle
(something which more regularly dies).
• Line 2 and 3 – “only the monstrous anger…only
the stuttering rifles…” – anaphora and
personification, which dramatises the effect/role
of the gun, especially.
Annotations
• Line 3 – alliteration of ‘r’, creates an aural
image in the reader’s mind of the ceaseless
gunfire. The short sharp words “rapid rattle”
indicate danger and almost sounds like a gun
shot.
• Line 6 – personification of “choirs…” make it
human-like – makes it even more distressing
and vivid. The painful sound also indicates the
pain is inflicted on the exposed soldiers.
Annotations
• Line 1 (second stanza) – rhetorical question,
asks us to consider the manner of the soldiers’
death and the farewell they received.
• Line 2 and 3 – answers the previous rhetorical
question, showing that there are no candles
on the battlefield, only the tears in the living
soldiers eyes. The sad irony is that their eyes
are lit by the gunfire that caused their
comrade’s death.
Annotations
• Line 3 – “glimmers of goodbyes” alliteration
and assonance – makes the line more
memorable and makes us sympathise and
think about death and the war.
• Final line – alliteration – reinforces finality of
war. End of poem = end of soldiers life.
Conveys the universality of death.