Just some
– Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen, born march 18th 1893 was 21 years old when World War One broke out. Ironically he was author of this morbid poem. He died; 4th of November 1918, seven days before the end of the war which he wrote so much about. This fact gives a sense of dramatic irony to all of his works. He was stationed as a soldier on the front line in northern France, this gave him the horrifying experience of seeing large amounts suffering of world war one everyday; in which he describes in his poetry.
Wilfred wrote his poems in sonnets; a type of writing style that requires the poet to write in 10 syllable lines over 14 lines. His poem An Anthem for Doomed Youth follows this policy. Similarly to the writings of Shakespeare (iambic pentameter), the reason that poets like Wilfred Owen use these type of structures was to induce an atmosphere of importance upon the reader or audience. This works by making rhythm and rhyme strictly defined giving a concentration onto one theme or emotion. For instance the main emotion that the poem An Anthem for Doomed youth induces is despair.
The title bluntly triggers this emotion as the word doom is one that is a complete embodiment of the emotion, this mainly due to the “oo” sound that it is composed of.
Besides this the poem does hold certain features that give the emotion such as “No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires.” Again the “oo” sound is apparent, this assonance is reiterated throughout the poem producing the effect of despair. Along with the other repeated feature of repetition; in this case the words no and nor, the poem spews out the emotion of despair. These words repeated, build upon each other, amplifying the effect and causing a much greater stir in the audiences emotions.
For the case of the essay, I would have already explained the iambic pentameter and further explored the similarities between assonance in both pieces of literature, along with repetition.
React!