Anthem For Doomed Youth Poem Analysis

Wilfred Own presents the horror and pity created by war by the use of visual and auditory techniques. These techniques help to magnify the vicious sense of war and clearly describe how the soldiers coped with the barbarity of war. He himself was in the army so we get an idea of how this influences his views; But also how horrific some of the incidents that happened to the soldiers were, as he witnessed many. When we look at the poem ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ we can already see in the title a sense of meaningfulness. We can see that it is a moving poem. The word ‘Anthem’ is associated with a sense of patriotism which creates an image of how nobel the men who decided to go and fight were. They were doing it for our country therefore when

He uses auditory and visual images to present the horrors of war. The phrase ‘stuttering rifles rapid rattle’ contains alliteration with the repetition of ‘r’, this phrase also contains an onomatopoeia which recreates the sounds of the battlefields, as well as it also generating a sense of horror and the speed at which the men were being shot at. The phrase ‘shrill demented choirs’ is used to describe the noises the men heard on the battlefields in battle. He tries to connect the noises heard to something we can relate to and understand this helps us emphasize with the soldiers. The word ‘shrill’ is an unpleasant and almost painful sound and the word ‘demented’ emphasizes the horror and madness of war. These words help emphasize the juxtaposition of the ‘shrill demented choirs’ which is the complete opposite of what we expect of choirs. Wilfred Owen also personifies objects making them sound as if they are human or can move and think. In the phrase ‘wailing shells’, the personification suggests pain as the shells are ‘wailing’ this is a human characteristic given to the shells to heighten the sense of horror. At the end of the first stanza he targets the poem to the sounds of mourning of the dead. The phrase ‘bugles calling for them from sad shires’ helps describe the pity that is felt for the soldiers and their families. The use of sibilance in the phrase creates a calm and peaceful which contrasts to the pandemonium of the