Wilfred Owen Powerful Emotions Need Powerful Language Essay Example For Students

Wilfred Owen: Powerful Emotions Need Powerful Language Essay In this essay I will explore how Wilfred Owen expresses powerful emotions through powerful language in his war poetry. I will focus on the three poems Dulce et Decorum est, Anthem for Doomed Youth and Parable of the Old Man and the Young. Wilfred Owen grew up in England and moved to France as a young adult where he taught English. The First World War broke out when he was still in France and, along with thousands of other young men, he joined the army with a feeling of duty towards his country. It was not long before he found out the terrible realities of war, which inspired him to write his anti war poetry, to communicate his feelings to the governments and stay at home war enthusiasts, and to warn children ardent for some desperate glory what it is really like to go to war. After suffering shell shock, Owen was sent to Craiglockhheart hospital for treatment. This is where he wrote Dulce et Decorum est. Dulce et Decorum est describes a gas attack on a group of tired and wounded soldiers that are making their way back to their post after an exhausting day in the trenches. One man fails to fit his gas mask in time and dies, drowning on his own internal fluids. It is an attack on the suggestion that it is sweet and honourable to die for your country, directly aimed at Jessie Pope, who wrote war propaganda. She is addressed sarcastically in the last stanza as My friend. The message of this poem is clear; if the people back home saw in some smothering dream this scene, they would not think it sweet and honourable to die for your country. Owens point is put across strongly in this poem by the sheer horror of the soldiers death, which is described in gory detail. The descriptions are generally brought to life with the texture of words and grizzly sensual imagery such as cursed through sludge, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs and floundering like a man in fire or lime. The first line uses a simile, comparing the men with old beggars under sacks, and continues in the second line, coughing like hags. Along with the sensual imagery, Bent double, knock-kneed and we cursed through sludge, a feeling of the mens fragile agony is conjured. In line three the flares are personified as haunting. This gives the reader an insight of the dim, ever present fear at the back of the mens hearts. They now begin to trudge towards their distant rest, words which fill the reader with the despair felt in the face of the painfully slow journey to base. The second half of the first stanza further impacts the suffering of the men, blood shod drink with fatigue deaf even to the hoots of comrades that dropped behind. The word comrade is replaced in the poem with Five-Nines, showing how people are de-humanised in war. It feels like it couldnt get worse, but the grim, sombre atmosphere of the first stanza is dramatically changed in the second to an ecstasy of panic; Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! The phrase clumsy helmets shows Owens anger at the quality of life-saving equipment in the First World War. Owen compares the mist of being in the gas as under a green sea. The man who is yelling out and stumbling is drowning as though the green sea were real. Owens choice to write in the first person is bought into full power in the short third stanza, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. Instead of this being in the battlefield it is In all my dreams, showing how the memory is ever haunting. This also explains why Owen had begun to create a dreamy atmosphere in the previous lines: Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light. Poetry Argumentative EssayAnthem for Doomed Youth gives its powerful message to stay at home war enthusiasts by the sheer bitter irony and pathos of the comparisons. In The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, Owen uses another technique to convey his message with power. Abraham has prepared to kill his son as a sacrifice for God, yet at the last second an angel appears from heaven and says that he can kill the ram of pride instead. Abraham favours the ram of pride and kills his son Isaac and half the seed of Europe instead. This is a blatant take on the story from the bible of Abraham; the difference being that in Owens version Abraham kills Isaac. Owen makes reference to the sonnet tradition in this poem, but this time the twist is in the form itself. It is a sixteen line poem and the only gap is between the fourteenth and fifteenth line, clearly defining the correct sonnet form the two extra erroneous lines. Abraham slew his son in the last two lines, which symbolises how the story is fundamentally flawed. The language is biblical, which gives the poem an authority because the church is a powerful organisation. Using and a lot as well as words like clave, spake, slew and phrasing like and as they sojourned both of them together, and lo and the old man would not so emphasises the comparison with the biblical version. The parable is metaphoric, and each component in the poem represents something. Abraham symbolises the authorities and those with power over the majority. Isaac represents the young people of Europe, the future hope, the seed. The knife is symbolic of the power to destroy whether it is pride or a generation of young. The angel represents the ability of man to choose, his faculty of reason or his conscience. The ram of pride of course symbolises the pride and arrogance of the authorities and nations. Instead of building an altar Abraham builded parapet and trenches there. The fundamental flaw of Abraham in The Parable (symbolised in the structure) is symbolic of the breaking and ignoring of ancient wisdom. When Abraham is proved to be faithful and the angel announces lay not thy hand upon the lad, we are filled with hope, giving the last two lines a bitter bathos. The message of this poem is that our society has not learned from past mistakes and ignores ancient teachings of wisdom. The power of this message lies in tragic metaphors. It is clear from his poetry that Owen feels disgusted by humanitys atrocities, and by those who create and promote them. He also feels great pity and compassion for the suffering that is caused by war. In these three poems structure plays and important role. In Dulce the confused and broken up stanzas obliterate conventional forms and are symbolic of the contorted, deranged scene of human cruelty they describe and the poems revolutionary anti-establishment message. Anthem fills the conventional sonnet form with unexpected comparisons that create a tone of bitter irony and resentment towards the authorities as well as bitter sadness. The Parable splits from the sonnet form in the last two lines, showing the arrogance of the establishment and their deliberate ignorance of ancient wisdom. Wilfred Owen skilfully crafts language, form and symbolism in these three poems. His emotions about war are powerfully expressed in his work and communicate a message that demands the readers empathy. Nothing (apart form circumstances) has changed since Owens day and his message is still fully valid as an urgent wake-up call for humanity.