The Send Off
Definitions
• Siding-shed: part of a railway system to park off-duty trains
• Wreath: flowers held in a circle, usually to commemorate
death
• Porter: someone paid to move luggage
• Tramp: a vagrant or beggar
• Mock: to scoff at or ridicule
Story
• Form: Poem – eight stanzas, abaab  marching rhythm
• Purpose:
• Tone: impersonal and cold
• Setting:
• Characters:
• Title: Where do you normally see “send-offs”?
Send-offs can either be gay “bon voyages” to those going on
a journey—those heroes leaving for war. At the time,
common themes were excitement and positive thoughts.
How does this poem compare?
Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.
Technique: word choice, wreath
Effect: even at a time of
celebration, the men are
decorated with signed of death.
This imagery is reinforced the
with word ‘dead.’
Technique: grammar, comma
Effect: creates a pause and
thus emphasis on the word
“dead”
Literal translation: sang their
way…
Boys marching to a tune to their
departure on the train.
Technique: Word choice/adverb,
grimly gay
Effect: Is an oxymoron—two terms that
contradict each other. Alerts audience
to the forced happiness of the men.
It’s an ominous sign.
Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Technique: word choice, ‘dull’
Effect: there is no cheering crowd—
just “dull” observers/passers-by.
Reinforces the mournful tone of the
poem.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours.
We never heard to which front these were sent.
Technique: connotation/simile
Effect: suggests that something
wrong will happen—it shouldn’t
be made public.
Personification: lamp
Effect: suggests the lamp
knows something that they do
not—another ominous sign.
Technique: impersonal pronoun, “they”
Effect: Continues the cold tone towards the
soldiers. Owen is illustrating the reality of a
send-off, which is cold and unfeeling. If there
were hearts and emotions involved, they
wouldn’t be leaving.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.
Technique: word choice, creep
Effect:
Technique: imagery, still village
Effect:
Technique: imagery
Effect: like most of
Owen’s poems, he
suggests that the
soldiers are not to
blame, but the people
at home are. The
women who gave
them the flowers that
are meant for
funerals.
Technique: foreshadowing
Effect: the poem guesses or
hints at the soldier’s eventual
deaths
Commentary
• Owen’s response to conscription—boys being forced to go to
the war, since so many soldiers had already died. Between
July and November 1916, the British casualties exceeded
400,000. To avoid public outcry, reinforcements were sent out
quietly in the night.
• “They”—by keeping them without any individual
characteristics, Owen intensifies the idea that they are
faceless and anonymous, numbers only.