Since his death in 1918, at age 25, many have come to believe that Wilfred Owen is the greatest poet of the First World War. Through personal experiences as a soldier and his struggles with battle induced psychological trauma, Owen’s poetry revealed the brutality of World War I. Nature, religion, and the horrors of warfare were key pivotal components in Wilfred Owen’s writing. Owen considered the horrors of warfare as a loss of innocence because men were not prepared to fight and did not understand the insanity of war.
Owen explores the lived experience of the soldiers in his poems by contrasting the events of war itself against a backdrop of the natural world. In his poems, nature often serves as an intensifier to display the atrocity of …show more content…
Owen’s syntax in “Futility” is diverse because of the rhyme scheme. There are slant rhymes throughout the poem, such as …show more content…
Through imagery, personification, and oxymorons, Owen depicts the brutality of war. Owen illustrating the harshness of war suggest, that soldiers experienced a loss of innocence because they did not understand the absurdity of war. The soldiers and Owen grew into men quicker than expected since they had to battle on the warfront. “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is one of Owen’s most famous works and a popular World War I poem. The poem’s meaning is “It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.” The meaning of the poem is contradicts the purpose of the poem since Owen depicts the gruesomeness of the war. In the first stanza, the simile “coughing like hags,” Owen characterises the soldiers as “hags,” old and ugly women since the soldiers lost their masculinity and youth (Simcox 1). “Like old beggars under sacks,” The parallelism of the similes in the poem are images that Owen employs to show how horribly deformed the bodies of the soldiers had became. This poem is a “gas poem” because the soldiers had to withstand the gas attacks. In this poem, Owen writes through his personal experience as a soldier, but generalizes the purpose of war and what the soldiers had to endure. The second stanza focuses on one of the soldiers not being able to get his gas helmet on in time. “Ecstasy of fumbling” is an oxymoronic phrase because “ecstasy” means euphoric but the soldier is overwhelmed with emotion and is trying to put
Owen explores the lived experience of the soldiers in his poems by contrasting the events of war itself against a backdrop of the natural world. In his poems, nature often serves as an intensifier to display the atrocity of …show more content…
Owen’s syntax in “Futility” is diverse because of the rhyme scheme. There are slant rhymes throughout the poem, such as …show more content…
Through imagery, personification, and oxymorons, Owen depicts the brutality of war. Owen illustrating the harshness of war suggest, that soldiers experienced a loss of innocence because they did not understand the absurdity of war. The soldiers and Owen grew into men quicker than expected since they had to battle on the warfront. “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is one of Owen’s most famous works and a popular World War I poem. The poem’s meaning is “It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.” The meaning of the poem is contradicts the purpose of the poem since Owen depicts the gruesomeness of the war. In the first stanza, the simile “coughing like hags,” Owen characterises the soldiers as “hags,” old and ugly women since the soldiers lost their masculinity and youth (Simcox 1). “Like old beggars under sacks,” The parallelism of the similes in the poem are images that Owen employs to show how horribly deformed the bodies of the soldiers had became. This poem is a “gas poem” because the soldiers had to withstand the gas attacks. In this poem, Owen writes through his personal experience as a soldier, but generalizes the purpose of war and what the soldiers had to endure. The second stanza focuses on one of the soldiers not being able to get his gas helmet on in time. “Ecstasy of fumbling” is an oxymoronic phrase because “ecstasy” means euphoric but the soldier is overwhelmed with emotion and is trying to put