WILFERD OWEN. The dead-beat
One of the earliest of Owen's "war" poems. It describes one
particular incident in dramatic
form.
A soldier whose mind and spirit have been broken as the result
of war is suspected (and
condemned) of malingering. Although not physically wounded, he
dies the victim of malicious
and sinister forces.
Set in a front-line trench, the action is contained within four
irregularly rhymed stanzas.
Metrically the basic iambic pentameter is broken rhythmically by
the use, first of multi-
syllables, and second the caesura.
".his brave young wife, getting her fun (12). We might think,
for the men who fought were
not the only ones who suffered; wives, girlfriends, mothers in
countless numbers had cause to
weep.
"That scum you sent last night soon died. Hooray! (19) Mind gone
we can understand. But
body too. Without being wounded (16). The poem provides no
certain answer.
"We sent him down.." (15). It is a deliberate sharing of the
guilt. There is no attempt to
dissociate himself from the savage treatment that is being
handed out.
They find it amusing. These are supposedly the life-savers, men
engaged in acts of mercy. The
dreadful irony is that he who is dead beat through no fault of
his own should be in conflict, not
with the enemy he's been sent to fight, but with those who
belong on his own side.
Anthem for Doomed-Youth
The reader sees the horrors of war and how unfortunate it is to
die in war. Discusses death in
war and shows how those who die in war do not receive the normal
ceremonies that are used
to honor the dead. Owen was able to express how he felt about
those who passed away while
fighting in war.
This poem is a variation of the Elizabethan sonnet. Owen
introduces a touch of irony, because
the conventional function of the sonnet is love, and this poem
is sort of anti-love. The first line
of the poem, that shows how awful war is. The sonnet a powerful,
negative connotation from
the very beginning.
in the first octet Owen makes a catalogue of the sound of war,
the weapons of destructions
such as guns (line 2), rifles (line 3) and shells, linked to
religious imagery such as
orisons (line 4), bells (line 5), prayers . In the second stanza
the poem talks about the
other side of war: the families of those who die in the war.
He describes how those who die in war do not receive proper
funerals. Tone shows strong
anger, because he is an anti-war poet and repetition is used in
the poem to make it seem
monotonous.
