Wilfred Owen: Anthem for Doomed Youth, 1917

Résumé du document

The text to be commented upon is a poem written by Wilfred Owen in 1917 entitled Anthem for doomed youth. It is a petrarchan sonnet, a sort of diptych with two different parts which hinges upon lines 9 and 10. The title is a key for the interpretation of the sonnet which is an ideological poem, a denunciation which echoes as an anthem. It connotes a sort of solemnity, a sort of duty to be returned to the youth. In fact, the title contains the reading protocol. The first part of this poem is composed of two quatrains which deal with the violence and the realms of war. We can note that Owen uses a sonnet which is the lyrical form par excellence to evoke a violent reality, an event which is opposed to the feeling of love.

Extraits

[...] The end of the line works with a comparison between the soldiers who are the and the cattle which is the “vehicle” of the metaphor. This metaphor conveys the impression of the absurdity of war: the soldiers are bred to death, they are lambs to slaughter. There is the idea of a sacrificial act, a religious sacrifice in fact. The monstrosity of war is reinforced by the time of the verbs, the present which anchors the depiction in reality (Owen wrote this poem in the middle of the World War One). The two following lines begin with since there is an anaphoric device. [...]

[...] The images are demented and disturbing but moreover we understand that the soldiers are sacrificed in vain and that the absence of funerals is the absence of peace, the presence of an eternal hell shires” and “doomed youth”. The young soldiers will not find salvation. The second part of the poem presents a parallelism in the construction since it begins with the same kind of question: “What passing-bells . What candles We can also note that the words refer to religious symbols: the candles as funeral objects. The soldiers are referred to by the means of which is striking. [...]

[...] At line twelve, we can quote the paronomasia between at the beginning of the line and at the end of the same line: the pallor which evokes purity becomes a religious symbol through the The words finds an echo at line ten since, in the middle of the line, we can note the word The two last lines of the tercet elide the verbal locution “shall which establishes an implicit comparison between the “flowers” and tenderness and between the “slow dusks” and a “drawing-down This opening on “tenderness” reinforces the monstrosity of the evocation of war in the first stanza. But we must say that this of the sestet also creates a discrepancy between the reality of war and what their lives should be. That is why the pattern of war can be considered as a disruption from the normal pattern of life. The two last lines explicitly evoke death and funeral symbols such as the “flowers” on their grave. [...]

[...] The end of the sentence on line four shows that the only issue for the soldiers is death and that their funeral bells are the sounds of the weapon. The structure of the sentence Only, can reinforces this impression of a lack of hope even if the sentence ends with the word “orisons” which is almost an oxymoron in the context. The second quatrain of this first part of the poem uses religious symbols which are opposed to the reality of war. [...]

[...] The symbols of funerals are more important than real funerals but the soldiers are even deprived of these symbols. What is also obvious is that Owen uses the word referring to young soldiers who are still children in fact. At line eleven, we can note the alliterations in with “shall shine” and in with “glimmers of good-byes”, which stresses the word in the middle of the line since it stays alone: These alliterations also give the impression of a mystical vision of death. [...]