Linguistic Devices In Wilfred Owen Poetry

“Few would dispute the claim that Wilfred Owen is the greatest author of war poetry in the English language”. Wilfred Owen was a wartime poet and patriot soldier in World War One. He was acquitted on March 18th, 1893; and was reckoned by many as the leading poet of the First World War. Siegfried Sassoon, who met Owen at Craig Lockhart Hospital, inspired him to convey his emotions close to war in his poetry, which since then he has begun to act. Within this essay, I will be discussing how Owen uses, ‘Futility’, ‘Dulce Et Decorum EST’ (DEDE), and ‘Mental Cases’ (MC) to express his anger at war, and consider all the points he uses in all of these three separate poems that exhibit this.
Owen uses strong references to manipulate us into thinking …show more content…
‘To break earth’s sleep at all?’ highlights one of many reasons why the war began. ‘To break earth’s sleep’ might show that at one time the earth was resting, but instantly because of the ‘shells’, ‘haunting flares’ and ‘GAS’ the earth has been agitated and it looks as if it has flared up from once a sleeping land. As well as rhetorical question being used in ‘Futility’, it is also throughout the first stanza in Owen’s other famous poems; this poem is called ‘Mental Cases’. ‘Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?’ originally these rhetorical questions are along the first line of the poem, this symbolizes that the poem as confusing. The word ‘who’ then suggests that there is many. The word ‘These’ then symbolizes Owens respect to the ‘objects’ he is referring to. The second rhetorical question then exposes the word ‘twilight’, which is when the sun is below the horizon, this could then suggest metaphorically that there is no hope or light for them, which for Owen was disheartening and increased his anger. ‘Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked?’ displays the animalistic shock and repulse that this is being referred to; this can also be known as zoomorphism. The last line of the first stanza as well as a rhetorical question, also includes religious symbolism, ‘Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish’ this paints an image of death and also refers back to religion because of the words ‘hell’ and ‘hellish’. This whole stanza therefore as I said before demands answers, but also exemplifies narrators shock. The second stanza then answers all of these rhetorical questions so Owen then admits, ‘These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished’ to the readers to show how frustrated he felt about the war. ‘Memory fingers in their hair of murders, multitudinous murders they once witnessed’