Wilfred Owen, a conflict poet, runs on the great number of linguistic and structural gadgets throughout his poems in order to express his anger at the war. Through this essay Let me focus on 3 of his works: ‘Anthem for Condemned Youth’, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Mental Cases’ to review and assess the effects and intentions of his writing and the ways in which these exhibit anger.
Wilfred Owen abundantly uses irony to show anger in his poems. This is very prominent when ever Owen address the power of weapons, as he identifies the ‘monstrous anger of guns’ in ‘Anthem pertaining to Doomed Youth’. The representation of the firearms creates a distinctly ironic tone, which is ongoing throughout his other poetry. Such representation also shows the devastating effects of the guns and indeed, Owen’s resistance to this sort of killing capability ” emphasising his anger towards the war by demonstrating its ineffective nature. Inside the same composition, Owen had previously referred to the military as ‘cattle’. This dehumanisation, juxtaposed together with the personification intensifies Owen’s usage of irony and demonstrates his anger on the war simply by revealing the power that weapons held above soldiers, implying that men were poor to material. Owen retains this ironic tone in his poem ‘Mental Cases’ when describing ‘the men in whose minds the Dead include ravished’. Here, much like in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, Owen once again uses personification to express his anger with the war. This individual humanises ‘the Dead’ in order to emphasise how powerless males really were. The irony in this article implies that guys were far better from the grave than they were on the battlefield, again Owen’s intention was to demonstrate the futility of war. Idea, along with the concept that guns acquired more impact than guys, heavily juxtaposes the way in which troops were pictured by recruitment propaganda and thus viewed by general public during WW1. This further demonstrates Owen’s anger when he indirectly communicates the sloppy way in which soldiers were remedied.
Without a doubt, Owen a lot expresses his anger on the war simply by trivialising that, comparing that to a game. In ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ this individual illustrates ‘fitting the clumsy helmets merely in time’, the choice of lexis ‘just in time’ supplying the inference that, to many, the war was just a game. This kind of reflects the view outside the window of many of the generals during wartime, who also made countless decisions although never paid out the price. Right here, Owen’s purpose was to exhibit his anger towards his superiors in the war, by using a metaphor and to display how they carelessly dismissed the lives of so many military. In the same way, Owen continues this harsh assessment in ‘Mental Cases’ by depicting the soldiers ‘pawing us whom dealt them war and madness’, again giving the connotation of a game. Owen expresses anger at the war by suggesting that, during this time period, his managers were happy to gamble with lives in so that it will gain success. Here, Owen’s effective usage of animalistic symbolism with the lexis ‘pawing’, creates an anguished tone and continues Owen’s intention of demonstrating just how soldiers were mistreated, representing that they were regarded with as much admiration as a pure animal and they viewed as disposable and similarly replaceable. Simply by comparing the soldiers to animals, the effective usage of dehumanisation likewise demonstrates how desperate and defenceless the soldiers had been. At this point, Owen intends to get his readers to truly feel sympathy, when he exposes the horror of what this individual and many others experienced during wartime, which effectively expresses his anger with the ‘war and madness’ that he while others were a great involuntarily a part of.
Furthermore, another way in which Owen conveys his anger throughout his poems can be through his use of iambic pentameter. In ‘Dulce ou Decorum Est’, Owen identifies the soldiers as ‘bent double, just like old beggars under sacks’. By using iambic pentameter right from the start of his poem, Owen immediately depicts war like a never ending repetition of battling and communicates his anger at how helpless the troops, including himself, were during wartime: struggling to escape is actually horrors. In this article, Owen’s usage of a metaphor extends idea, strongly displaying the inescapable weaknesses with the soldiers when faced with such an oppressing and destructive environment. Owen’s anger at the warfare is once again made obvious when he uncovers how very little control the soldiers had in that environment. The use of iambic pentameter went on in Owen’s poem ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. However , in the two poems, the meter is occasionally damaged. In ‘Anthem for Condemned Youth’, Owen illustrates ‘only the stuttering rifles quick rattle’, smashing the iambic pentameter. This makes a jarring impact which Owen intended to show that there might be an escape from the war: death. Owen’s anger at the battle is evidently expressed in this article, as he indicates that loss of life was the simply way to find relief throughout the war.
In addition to this, Owen further expresses his anger towards the war and indeed, the death fee that it made. In ‘Anthem for Condemned Youth’ Owen creates a picture of sleeping when he identifies ‘each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds’. This successful use of pathetic fallacy provides an impressive dark and foreboding develop and provides an element of closure. This metaphor could indeed be a euphemism for fatality itself. Owen uses this to express his anger at the war by simply demonstrating that for troops, death was as prevalent an event as the transition coming from day to night, indeed, something that took place daily. In this article, Owen’s use of a metaphor could also be a mirrored image of the views of the community and their frame of mind towards loss of life. The darker imagery diminishes the significance of death by simply comparing that to sleep, disclosing Owen’s anger at the informal attitudes in the public, made by the hostile environment of war that individuals were eager to downplay. Here, Owen’s purpose was to share the true mother nature of death and the hefty strain it held upon soldiers. Likewise, Owen again uses horrible fallacy to convey his anger at warfare in his composition ‘Mental Cases’ when he explains how ‘Dawn breaks wide open like a injury that bleeds afresh’. However , by way of contrast, in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ Owen portrays death at the supreme price, while here this individual reveals that, in death, there may be some comfort. This powerful metaphor implies that, in the opinion of some soldiers, it is better to die and be a rest than to be caught up facing the relentless reality of warfare. Here, Owen’s use of images and a sombre develop effectively uncover the way in which the unbearable mother nature of warfare influenced many men’s worth of lifestyle and indeed conveys Owen’s anger towards conflict for causing this kind of a great effect.
To summarize, Wilfred Owen’s poems ‘Anthem for Condemned Youth’, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Mental Cases’ are all extremely successful, in similar and different ways, for portraying the unimaginably aggressive aspects of rivalry and the silly strain these kinds of put after soldiers, which include Owen him self. It is through his ample use of structural techniques and employment of rhetorical gadgets that Owen effectively conveys his anger at the war.
