Willred Owen’s Poetry Is Not a Protest Against War as Such, but a Protest Against the Political Errors and Insincerities for Which Fighting Men Were Sacrificed in War. How Does Owen Represent the Experiences of Those

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Through his poems, Owen highlights the unjust experiences of soldiers to create a protest against the bureaucracy because of how they justified the harming and killing of many for their own political gain. He does this by highlighting the actions and inactions of the bureaucracy that contribute to benefit of the administration. This can be explored in his poems ‘Parable of the Old Man and the Young’ (Parable) and the epic war poem ‘Disabled’. These two poems employ Owens message of anti-war sentiment to establish a connection with the audience through his manipulation of poetic techniques. Owen highlights such unjust experiences of the soldiers to augment his argument against the bureaucracy. Parable of the old man and the young is a didactic poem which alludes to a story in Genesis 22:5 and is about Abrams sacrifice to a higher power. In WW1, many soldiers were being sent to fight in an unnecessary war, killing thousands upon thousands of men, for the aid of foreign power. This notion of injustice can be seen in ‘Parable’ where an ‘angel’ tries to ‘offer the Ram of pride instead of him’ to Abram. The biblical allusion of the term ‘angel’ symbolises a moral conscience, in the hope of changing Abrams mind, as well as on a didactic level, symbolising the mothers and loved ones of the soldiers. This signifies the hope of reconciliation of the people who care about the soldiers, highlighting the horrific situation in which the soldiers reside and the governments deliberate inaction to do anything. Owen uses the bureaucracy’s pride and personifies it as a ‘Ram’ because it can be seen to the audience as arrogant and steadfast. This emphasizes the bureaucracy’s resolute notion on the use of conscription and the taking of many young men by force. By identifying the unjust experiences felt by the soldiers, Owen shed light upon the action of which the bureaucracy intends to

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