Essay Comparing The Parable Of The Old Man And The Boy

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In “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young” and “Arms and the Boy” Wilfred Owen composes two very different stories that serve to show the vicious reality of the World War One Era. Where in “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young” Owen provides us with a Parable written in the Bible (Genesis 22:1-19) that’s laced with a major twist, “Arms and the Boy” tells the tale of a young boy tempted by the evils of violence. However, the literary techniques utilized by the author in the poem evokes two very contrasting experiences. Whereas “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young” uses a non traditional rhyme scheme, subtle symbolic diction, and the overall biblical allusion in order to stimulate a less violent, but cruel perspective towards a …show more content…

The author surely intends for the poem to be a Parable and gives an experience for the reader as if they’re present in a sermon. This experience is important due to the fact it’s more comforting and educating rather than the violence displayed in the paired poem. The symbolic diction in the poem also helps evoke the cruel perspective in which the author portrays towards dominate powers in World War One. For example when Owen writes, “bound the youth with belt and straps” (line 7) though in the original story, Abram was said to just bound his son, Owen changed the story and wrote that Isaac was bound with straps and belts. This could connotatively relate to young boys being prepared and manipulated into the deadly battlefields of war by the powers of dominate countries; Owen sees these powers as manipulative and evil through the deviation from the original parable in Genesis, to his version of the parable. When Abram “builded parapets and trenches” (line 8) we see the change from the original parable where there was no trenches/parapets, in order to grasp Owens true meaning behind the text he twists the story into his own words; World War One was notorious for its parapets and trenches, it was overall classified as the trench warfare and because the dominating powers sent these young men, in the stories case Isaac, into these trenches …show more content…

The author uses this tactic to exhibit the unnaturalness of weapons and how evil weapons are. The weapons personification, generally symbolize the influence in which weapons have on innocent boys; while representing the influencing on the innocent, it also evokes that violent experience for the reader. The boys themselves aren't evil and will never be evil, but the war and weapon is what influences them into unholy habits; Owen supports that as well through the illustrative diction. The author states, “for his teeth seen for laughing round an apple./ there lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;/ and God will grow no talons at his heels./ nor antlers through the thickness of his

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