War Battles- Wilfred Owen

486 Words2 Pages
Through the development of ideas, Wilfred Owen expresses his attitude, feelings and emotions towards the subject of war. Owen uses his past experiences to show the pain and trouble the soldiers had to go through while fighting during World War One and what the result of this was on them as well as how they could overcome these problems. Owen is displayed to be very emotional towards the mistreatment of the soldiers as he shows it is shown in two of his poems, them being “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Mental Cases”. Owen uses many techniques in his poems to show what the soldiers had to go through while fighting for their country and what it was like for them to experience the realities of war. The soldiers that were fighting at war were dehumanised in many ways. Owen portrays this in his poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. During the war, soldiers were forced to go and fight for their country inorder to be labelled as ‘real men’. Due to the mistreatment, other teenage boys were suffering as they knew their time would eventually come to face their doom. “what passing-bells… for these who witnessed it”. Through the use of alliteration, soldiers were dehumanised and their parents had no loved ones to comfort them and mourn for them. Moreover, due to the enormous amount of soldiers dying they “didn’t have enough bells” to mourn all their children which depicts such a tragic loss on a huge scale. Owen puts forward the things the soldiers had to go through and how that resulted in their death or illnesses after being dehumanised and if they survived, when they returned home from the war. The feeling of paranoia and depression has caused the decrease of the soldiers’ emotional wellbeing. In the opening stanza of “Mental Cases” the use of several techniques has been used in order to identify the state that the soldiers are in and their struggles. “stroke on stroke of pain,--
Open Document