A Main Theme to Owen's Poetry Is Passive Suffering. Do What Extent Do You Agree?

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To what extent do you agree that “Passive Suffering” is the main theme to Owen’s poetry? Wilfred Owen’s poetry contains many war related themes. “Passive suffering” arguably being one of them. However the idea that it is a “main theme” to his poetry is certainly arguable due to the fact that there are so many other themes that run through all his poems, and that there is such variation in both setting and meaning with every poem that he has written. “The Show”, for example, dehumanises soldiers within the battlefield and arguably has no sense of “passive suffering” whatsoever. Whereas the likes of poems such as “Exposure” and “Spring offensive” show many examples of what could be interpreted as feelings of acquiescence towards the pain that the soldiers he is writing about are going through. In “Exposure” there seems to be large sense of complacency not only in terms of suffering but with the war as a whole. “We only know the war lasts” indicates this idea of submissiveness as it shows this idea of the soldiers understanding the fact that the war is happening and the harm that it brings but also that they themselves can do nothing about this. The subsequent line “But nothing happens” shows the theme of “passive suffering” through the idea that the word “nothing” brings a sense of the soldiers suffering for almost no cause whatsoever, the fact that it is again, repeated in almost every stanza after puts emphasis on this idea. The repetition of this line also could be interpreted by readers as a means for Owen to get across this theme and put it into the readers minds. So rather than showing a sense of complacency and lack of will, the line “But nothing happens” coupled with the vast repetition could also be seen as an active attempt from Owen to let readers know of the suffering that soldiers are going through through a more subtle and psychologically
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