Similarities Between Dulce Et Decorum Est And Anthem For Doomed Youth

The poems ‘Anthem for doomed youth’ and ‘Dulce et decorum est’ by Wilfred Owen are both poems that were used to show the horror and mass suffering that world war 1 had on soldiers. Owen effectively used various language features that helped reinforce the idea in the poems of the horrific reality of war. I am going to analyse how these language features had created an effect of the war setting as Owen himself had seen it, through the use of metaphors, similes, alliteration, and various other techniques.

In ‘Anthem for doomed youth’, Owen used alliteration and onomatopoeia in the first stanza to artfully symbolise the sounds of gunfire and battle. The first stanza is about the horror and loss of the ‘doomed youth’ fighting a battle they are destined to lose on the front lines. The line “only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle can patter out their hasty orisons” imitates and creates the sound of gunfire through the use of the repeated ‘r’ sound. Owen has created a harsh feel with his choice of words and by saying that the only thing that could drown out the soldiers quick prayers was the sound of the gunfire that silenced them.

Owen also uses a simile in the first stanza to symbolise the soldiers being herded to their deaths. “What passing bells …show more content…
The soldiers are in a state of struggle as they are not as young or as strong as they used to be. War has caused them to become weak, tired, hunched, slow, and injured. Owen shows this by comparing the soldiers to elderly people through the use of similes. “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks.” “knock-kneed, coughing like hags” They are used to show that the soldiers are crippled physically from the weight and exhaustion of war. Owen used parallel structure in the line "All went lame; all blind;" to emphasize the misery of the soldiers and show that it was a universal condition that no could