Anti War Poem By Wilfred Owen example essay topic

Comparing Two Poems "Dulce et Decorum Est" gives the reader the exact feeling the author wanted. The poem is an anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen and makes great use of the devices. This poem is very effective because of its excellent manipulation of the mechanical and emotional parts of poetry. Owen's use of exact diction and vivid figurative language emphasizes his point showing war is terrible and devastating. Furthermore, the utilization of extremely graphic imagery adds even more to his argument.

Through effective use of all three of these tools, this poem conveys a strong meaning and persuasive argument. To have a better understanding of the poem, it is important to understand some of Wilfred Owen's history. Owen enlisted in the Artists' Rifles on October 21st 19915. He was eventually drafted to France in 1917. The birth of Owens imagery style used in his more famous poems during his sty at Craig Lockhart War Hospital, where he met Siegfried Sassoon (another great war poet).

Owen's new style (the one that was used in "Dulce et Decorum Est") embellished many poems between August 4, 1918, Wilfred Owen was killed by enemy machine gun fire as he tried to get his company across the Sombre Canal (Lane 167). The poem tells of a trip that Owen and his platoon of exhausted soldiers had while they were painfully making their way back to base after a harrowing time at the battlefront when a gas shell was fired at them. As a result of this, a soldier in his platoon was fatally gassed. Owen has arranged the poem in three sections, each dealing with different stages of experience. He makes use of a simple, regular rhyme scheme, which makes the poem sound almost like a child's poem or nursery rhyme.

This technique serves to emphasize the solemn and serious content. In stanza one, Owen describes the soldiers as they set off towards the army base from the front line. The simile "Bent double, like old beggars" (1) not only says that they are tired, but that they are so tired they have been brought down to the level of beggars who have not slept in a bed for weeks on end. Also, the simile "coughing like hags" (2) helps to depict the soldiers' poor health and depressed state of mind. Owen makes us picture the soldiers as ill, disturbed and utterly exhausted. He shows that this is not the government-projected stereotype of a soldier, in gleaming boots and crisp new uniform, but is the true illustration of the poor mental and physical state of the soldiers.

By telling us that many of the platoon are barefoot, Owen gives us an idea of how awful the soldiers' journey already is; it then gets even worse. Owen tells us that the soldiers, although they have been trained, still do not notice the deadly mustard gas shells being fired at them from behind; such is the extent of their exhaustion. In the second stanza, the pace of the narrative is increased. Owen describes the flurry of activity that takes place when it dawns in the platoon that they have the hazard of gas to deal with.

He begins by writing "Gas, GAS!" (9), which instantly grabs the attention of the reader, and by writing it first in lower case and then again in capitals, he gives an impression of the rising alarm in the soldiers. Owen uses the expression " an ecstasy of fumbling" (9) to describe the soldiers trying desperately to get out and fit their gas masks, the word "ecstasy" (9) being used to give us the impression of the complete, all consuming panic which the soldiers feel when they notice the gas shells. This is effective because it is a complete contrast to the image of the soldiers before the shell; at first they were trudging on " drunk with fatigue" (7), but are suddenly forced in to an " ecstasy of fumbling" (9) by the falling of the gas shell. The description of the gas masks as " Clumsy helmets" (10) tells us that the equipment given to the soldiers is heavy and substandard.

Owen then describes one member of the platoon who was not quick enough in fitting his mask, and is now yelling out in pain and stumbling around. Owen describes himself as looking at the man " as under a green sea" (14). The dying man is said to be "drowning" (14). By the use of this word, we are reminded that the mustard gas from the shells corrodes the lungs, so not only is he deprived of air; he is drowning in his own bodily fluids. Stanza 3 goes on to describe how the ghastly picture of the poor soldier who is flung into a wagon a trundled back to base haunts him.

Owen and his comrades know that there is no hope for their friend's survival, but despite the fact that they would be fleeing the hazard of the gas, their sense of humanity and mutual concern will not allow them to abandon their comrade. They load his body into a lorry and walk along, unable to stop his suffering, showing us that the individual soldiers are caring, but have been manipulated. The vocabulary and imagery used by Owen in this stanza is deliberately shocking to force his readers to react. For example, the simile "obscene as cancer" (23) is effective, because everybody fears cancer; it is a horrible way to die, much as war is in Owen's opinion. Also, the mentioning "Of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues" (24) not only tells the reader how the troops will never forget the experience, but also how they are frightening tales, one that the troops will never be able to tell without remembering the extremely painful experience. The poem's use of excellent diction helps to more clearly define what the author is saying.

Words like guttering, choking, and drowning not only show how the man is suffering, but that he is in terrible pain that no human being should endure. Other words like writhing and froth-corrupted say precisely for the man is being tormented. More over, the phrase "blood-shod" (6) shows how the troops have been on their feet for days, never resting. Also, the fact that the gassed man was "flung" into the wagon reveals the urgency and occupation with fighting. The only thing they can do is tossing him into a wagon. The fact one word can add to the meaning so much shows how the diction of this poem adds greatly to its effectiveness.

The most important means of developing the effectiveness of the poem is the graphic imagery. They evoke such emotions so as to cause people to become sick. The images can draw such picture that no other poetic means can, such as in line twenty-two: " Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs" (22). This can be disturbing to think about. It shows troops being brutally slaughtered very vividly, evoking images in the reader's mind. In the beginning of the poem, the troops were portrayed as "drunk with fatigue" (7).

With this you can almost imagine large number so people dragging their boots through the mud, tripping over their own shadow. Anyone wanting to fight in a war would become nervous at the image of himself running out into a blood bath. The graphic images displayed here are profoundly affecting and can never be forgotten. The poem ties it all together in the last few lines. In Latin, the phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro part ria mori" means, "It is sweet an becoming to die for one's country". Owen calls this a lie by using good diction, vivid comparisons, and graphic images to have the reader feel disgusted at what war is capable of.

This poem is extremely effective as an anti-war poem, making war seem absolutely horrid and revolting, just as the author wanted it to. Reality "Dulce et Decorum Est", an anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen, conveys a strong meaning and persuasive argument. The anti-war theme and serious tone is extremely effective at portraying was as horrid and devastating, Upon my initial reading of this poem I felt overpowered by blood, guts, and death. The precise dictation, vivid comparisons and graphic imagery are the three major elements that influenced my reaction to this poem. The most effective metaphor is the "vile, incurable sores" that the author compares to the troop's memories. This metaphor illustrates how the troops will never forget this experience.

This pain will forever be with them. The author clears up any misconception that war is noble and convinces me that these beliefs are true. More effectively than metaphors and similes, the graphic imagery that his poem explodes with drastically influenced my reaction to this poem. My emotional and physical reaction reinforces how effective the author's use of imagery is in this poem. The image of the troops "drunk with fatigue" and deaf to the "gas-shells dropping softly behind" is a chilling image. As someone yells "Gas" it is an "ecstasy of fumbling" and one is still "found " ring like a man on fire".

Through the "thick green light, as under a sea" the speaker sees the man drowning and describes the "gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs". Each of these images are disturbing to think about, but exposes the reality of war. These images made me feel disgusted of what war is capable of. The author ties the poem together in the last line.

Even though I recognize deadly gasses are generally not used in war anymore, I will never react the same to the billboards or commercials saying, "Be all you can be in the Army". In Brooks' poem, "A Boy Died in My Alley", a black youth has been murdered in the alley behind the speaker's home. When asked by a policeman if she heard the shot, which killed him, the speaker's first reaction is a feeling of historical inevitability and resignation. When pressed further by the policeman's questions, however, the speaker begins to recognize her own involvement in the youth's death. But the act of realization is also an act of dissociation from the passivity of the tradition. At the poem's climax the speaker perceives the essential bond linking all black people, while maintaining the lyrical blues attitude toward the immediate generative experience.

The final lines quietly endorse the blues' confrontation of the past painful experience, but at the same time hold the promise of the transformation hinted at in the immediately preceding lines. Implicitly they promise that the insight derived from the blues can be transformed into a direct form of resistance: " The red floor of my alley / is a special speech to me". Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Boy Died in My Alley" also explores violence by focusing on the issue of individual transformation. In the poem, the literal cause of the violent death of a black boy whose blood, whose body "ornaments [the poet's] alley", remains unmentioned. Indeed, no possible cause is ever speculated about, encouraging the reader to consider the multiple ways in which young black men in this country mysteriously end up dead: deaths that are alcohol or drug related, products of gang welfare, a robbery gone awry, police violence, suicide-all of these are secondary causes to racism, poverty, powerlessness, and despair. The poet acknowledges a sorrowful and determined responsibility for the death of the boy, and in so doing teaches each of us the tragic consequences of "knowledgeable unknowing", of ever failing to act against oppression and violence: I never saw his face at all.

I never saw his future fall. But I have known this Boy. I have always heard him deal with death. I have always heard the shout, the volley. I have closed my heart-ears late and early. And I have killed him ever.

Brooks insists upon accountability, not self-indulgent guilt; it is that accountability, as well as Brooks' compassion, which transforms the waste of a young man's life into not only the hope for a different world, but a call to action.