Wilfred Owen Believed He Had a Duty to Tell the Truth. How Does He Tell the Truth About War in the Poem ‘the Sentry’

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Wilfred Owen believed he had a duty to tell the truth. How does he tell the truth about war in the poem ‘The Sentry’ Wilfred Owen served in World War One as a second lieutenant, giving him a true taste of war and the horrors it brought along with it. Unlike other war poets, such as Rupert Brooke author of ‘The Soldier’, Owen used his experiences of war and put them into words, rather than idealising war. He never wanted to glorify war or make it out to be something other than the truth. He said his main concern was ‘war and the pity of war’ He felt it was his responsibility as a poet to tell the truth and bring to light to atrocities of modern warfare, in a way others could or would not. Once he had properly experienced war his poetry became a form of education, he wanted to expose the belief war was good and noble and prove wrong the propaganda that bombarded Britain. No knowledge, imagination or military training could properly prepare Owen for the reality of war and the suffering of front line experience it brought along with it. Within twelve days of arriving in France the ‘easy-going’ chatter of his letters turned to a ‘cry of anguish’. ‘The Sentry’ was written by Owen when he was receiving treatment at Craiglockhart in Edinburgh in 1917, finished in September later that year whilst in France. The poem detailed an isolated incident within the trenches in which a sentry under Owens’s command was injured by a ‘whizz-bang’, a slang term for enemy artillery. The graphic nature and detailed imagery helped to cement the pictures Owen created in the mind of the reader. The original title for the poem was ‘The Blind’, however since this title was open to interpretation it could possibly refer to anyone, or the blind as a collective. However when Owen sent a draft to Siegfried Sassoon, a friend and fellow poet who also spoke out against war, he changed the title

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