Wilfred Owen as an Anti war Poet

Twentieth Century English Literature

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born on 18 th March 1893 at Oswestry, Shropshire in

England. He was the eldest son of Thomas and Harriet Susan. Colin, Harold, and Mary Millard

Owen were his siblings. He was educated at the Birkenhead Institute and at Shrewsbury

Technical School. Owen discovered his poetic vocation in about 1904 during a holiday spent in

Cheshire. He was raised as an Anglican of the evangelical type, and in his youth was a devout

believer, in part due to his strong relationship with his mother, which lasted throughout his life.

His early influences included the Bible and the big six of romantic poetry, particularly John

Keats. Owen worked as a lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden near Reading. During this time he

attended classes at University College, Reading in botany and later at the urging of the head of

the English department, took free lessons in Old English. From 1912 he worked as a private tutor

teaching English and French at the Berlitz school of Languages in Bordeaux, France,and later

with a family. From the age of nineteen Owen wanted to be a poet and immersed himself in

poetry, being especially impressed by Keats and Shelley. He wrote almost no poetry of

importance until he saw action in France in 1917. He was deeply attached to his mother to whom

most of his six hundred and sixty four letters are addressed.

War service of Wilfred Owen

He enlisted in the Artists Rifles Officers Training Corps on 21 October 1915. He felt

pressured by the propaganda to become a soldier. For the next seven months, he trained at Hare

Hall camp in Essex. He spent the last day of 1916 in a tent in France joining the second

Manchesters. He was full of boyish high spirits at being a soldier. Within a week he had been

transported to the front line in a cattle wagon and was sleeping seventy or eighty yards from a
heavy gun which fired every minute or so. He was soon wading miles along trenches two feet

deep in water. He experienced the gas attacks and was horrified by the stench of the rotting dead.

He understood the meaning of war throughout his experiences. He escaped bullets until the last

week of the war. It was while Owen was in hospital that he met Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon read

his poetry and encouraged him to continue with it. As a result of his friendship with Sassoon, he

met and communicated with men such as Robert Graves, H.G Wells and Arnold Bennet. On 4 th

November he was shot and killed during the crossing of the Sambreoise Canal, exactly one week

before the signing of the Armistice which ended the war, and was promoted to the rank of

lieutenant the day after his death.

Wilfred Owen as an Anti- War poet

Wilfred Owen became one of the most famous war poets of World War one. Owen

represented the many poets who brought the real war home to their readers through his poetry.

He wrote out of his intense personal experience as a soldier and wrote with unrivalled power of

the physical, moral and psychological trauma of the First World War. All of his great war poems

on which his reputation rests was written in a mere fifteen months. Owens powerful anti war

poem Disabled(1917) was republished in the Guardian newspaper on November 13 2008, as

part of the newspapers seven- day focused on aspects of the First world war. That days topic

was Art and War, and it included discussions of how artists and writers had sought to turn their

experience of the first world war in to art. The poem Disabled was written while its author was

a patient at Craiglokhart War Hospital in Scotland. As an anti war poem, Disabled is moving

and powerful, but when looked at for its portrayal of disability, it is extremely problematic,

invoking as it does familiar disablist tropes of asexuality, helplessness, and hopelessness. The

poem has an omniscient narrator, who tells the story of the central character, an unnamed ex-
soldier, who has returned from the Great War with severe and life changing injuries. Owen was a

highly political poet, who was- or who, at least, became- a passionate critic of the Great War. In

his other poetry- most notably in works like Dulse et Decorum Est- he raged against the lies

that he insisted had induced young men in their millions to join the armed forces, to fight and die

for their country. One of Owens most famous pronouncements were my subject is war, and the

pity of war. The poetry is in the Pity. By this he meant that war was the ultimate evil,

subverting all the values that human beings might hold dear- values such as goodness, justice,

compassion. Owen does not portray anger as the enemy he is angry at the people who are

sending them to war, who are affectively his superior and his rulers of the country, he is angry at

the people who are sending him to war because of the lost of lives. Writing from the first hand

experiences, both in combat and in a hospital recovering from battle fatigue, Owen gave us

image after image of how terrible this war was how the idealized notions of heroism and manly

valor meant next to nothing when one was trying to survive gas attacks and bombs dropped from

planes. Owens poems such as Disabled, Spring Offensive, and Exposure show the direction in

which he narrates the pity of soldiers. It exposes the undignified, horrific death of a soldier in a

gas attack. He presents war as blasphemy, seduction and rape in his poems. He is angry at the

proclamation of religion that is so useless in this situation. He takes references from the Old

Testament to quote the incident of tyrants treading blood. He denounced all notions of the

glorification of warfare. Siegfried Sassoon comments on Owen that he never writes his poems to

create an effect of personal gesture. He pities others, he does not pity himself. He is also

acknowledged as the master of metrical variety and a technically accomplished poet. His poetry

shows beauty. It is coupled with grim realism and a deep sense of compassion. He proclaims that
his aim is to write about a war .True poetry may depict the pity of war effectively. The Next

War is another important war poem by Owen. This poem is full of laughter and optimism that is

used by Owen to make difference.

Through his poetry he wants to make an end to the war. Many of his poems

deal with the issues of war.

Two great British war poets, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, both served

as army officers during World War I, experiencing first-hand the horrors of trench warfare at the

front and, in the case of Owen, gas attacks. Sassoon and Owen met when hospitalized for shell

shock (now called post-traumatic stress disorder) in Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh.

The poems reprinted at the end of this post, Sick Leave by Sassoon and Dulce Et Decorum Est by

Owen, were written at Craiglockhart. Sassoon served as a mentor to the younger Owen,

encouraging him and suggesting revisions to some of his poems.

In 1917, while back in England recovering from a shoulder wound, Sassoon,

already a decorated war hero and published poet, wrote a letter of protest to his commander.

With the support of prominent pacifists, including philosopher Bertrand Russell who would later

go to prison for anti-war activities, Sassoon had the declaration read out in the British House of

Commons and printed in the London Times. The result was a political firestorm. Sassoon was

threatened with court-martial and military execution until his friend, writer-soldier Robert

Graves, successfully argued that Sassoon was mentally unfit due to shell shock, or war

neurosis, and should instead be sent for treatment to Craiglockhart. Sassoons poem, Sick Leave,

conveys the overwhelming pull of bonds of love and guilt formed on the battlefield.

Poets who glorifies War

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

Rupert Brooke is the foremost example of the public poet of the early war period. He is

one of the most visible and well known of the Georgian poets, and to a great extent he was the

most conventional in his war poetry. The Soldier is his best known work and the most famous

single poem of the war. His work reveals the English political propaganda during the pre-war

years, which celebrated the war. Peace is one of Brookes most popular sonnets. Like most of

Brookes poetry Peace reveals Brookes romantic vision of war, a vision without actual war

experience. Brooke provides the reader with a romanticized image of the war in his poetry,

describing death as an honourable act and transforming soldiers in to knights.

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)

Rosenberg is considered to be one of the greatest of all English war poets. His poems

contain elements of mystery and intimacy that suggest a complex of unresolved emotions. His

most important war poem is Dead Mans Dump. In this poem, anger, impotence, sympathy,

regret, and even envy exist in tension with one another. In this poem he combines the emotions

of anger and compassion to achieve a response of helpless anger that he could not save the dying

soldier, an anger which is softened by sympathy. Rosenberg was distinguished from the other

war poets by his Jewish origins and working class background, which influenced his writing.

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

Robert von Rank e Graves was an English poet, novelist, critic and classicist. He produced

more than 140 works. British Robert Graves is best known for writing his first volumes of

poetry, primarily about war, while serving at the Western Front during World War I. His best

known works are The White Claudius the God and Count Belisarius. Graves' own poetry and
prose is the best source for a description of his war experiences. It suffices to say that Graves

never found what he was looking for leaving for war, but rather, terror and madness in the war

Goddess.

War Poems of Owen

The Strange Meeting by Owen

The strange Meeting is an important poem by Wilfred Owen. It is one of his most

famous poems. It was published posthumously in 1919 in Edith Sitwells anthology Wheels: an

Anthology of Verse and a year later in Siegfried Sassoons 1920 collection of Owens poems.

The title strange meeting was inspired by a line from Shelleys The Revolt of Islam. The poem

was actually written in the spring or early summer of 1918. The poem recounts a dramatic

meeting between two dead soldiers who had fought on opposing sides. The poem gives a detailed

description about the pathetic situations after a war. Owen describes the pity of war. The speaker

in this poem is a soldier who dreams that he escaped from the war and now he is in hell. The hell

is covered with corpses of strangers. They seem to be asleep, suddenly one of them jumps up and

staring at the poet. At that time they began to converse like friends and their topic is of course

about the war. They converse about the pity, futility and brutality of war. At the end of the poem

the listener reveals his identity that the speaker killed him in a war, these are the lines,

Iam the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned

yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

The speaker says that the killer and killed have no enmity between themselves;

they dont even know each other. Yet they go on murdering one another in wars.
Dulse et Decorum Est by Owen
Dulse et Decorum Est is a lyric poem expressing the poets reaction to the horror of

war. The scenes described in the poem took place during World War 1(1914- 1918). The allied

powers of Britain, France, United States, Russia and other countries were fighting the central

powers of Germany, Austria, and other countries. Owen wrote the poem in 1917 while

undergoing treatment at a war hospital in Craiglockhart, Scotland. The title is part of the Latin

quotation at the end of the poem: Dulse et decorum est pro patria mori. It means sweet and

fitting it is to die for ones country. The source of quotation is the second ode in Book 3 of

Carmina by the ancient Roman writer Horace. The themes of the poem are very clear.

According to Owen, war is hell on earth, and there is nothing glorious about it. In presenting this

theme, Owen was also presenting a warning, as he makes clear in the preface to his collection of

poems. In this preface he says that his subject is war and pity of war etc. The poem takes place

during a slow trudge to an unknown place, which is interrupted by a gas attack. The soldiers

hurry to put on their masks, only one of their numbers is too slow, and gets consumed by the gas.

The final stanza interlocks a personal address to the war journalist Jessie Pope with horrifying

imagery of what happened to those who ingested an excessive amount of mustard gas.

Arms and the Boy by Owen

Arms and the Boy is a poem by Wilfred Owen. It is one of the most powerful war

poems of Owen. Like Owens other famous poems, it deals with the atrocities of World War 1; in

it, he portrays the loss of innocence of a child in the midst of a war. Thousands like the boy are

drawn in to the battlefield, to the tormenting visitations of war. The title alludes to the opening

words of Virgils Latin epic poem the Aeneid: Arma virumque cano (Of arms and the man I

sing). Owen stresses through this poems that the innocent and pure men who go to war are
contaminated and corrupted after killing and murdering. These men are like young boys in a war.

This poem seems to take the innocence away from the boys. Instead of playing with toys they are

trained to use guns and weapons. The boys do not get to experience their childhood; they are

simply trained to be soldiers from a very young age. The poem generally talks about weapons

and kids and how naturally and morally wrong war is and how the lives of youths how been

snatched away by war.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

This poem was written after Owens first tour of duty on the Somme. The poem has a

clear anti war message. It was written in the fall of 1917 and published posthumously in 1920. It

may be a response to the anonymous preface from Poems of Today (1916), which proclaims that

boys and girls should know about the poetry of their time. The theme of this poem is of course

the horror of war. The poem is written from the perspective of a soldier from a battlefield.

Senseless devastation and loss of identity are the main themes that discussed in this poem. The

speaker of the poem never says the words soldier or war. He never names a country or particular

dispute.

Mental Cases

This poem could be described as a war poem which describes horrific after effects of war.

In this poem of three stanzas, Owen shows how soldiers have become mental cases as a result of

the experience of war. The narrator in this three stanzas, observes men in a mental hospital who

suffer from what at the time was called shell shock and now might be labeled post traumatic

stress disorder.
Futility

Futility was one of just five poems by Owen that were published before his death. Like

all of his best known work its also a war poem, a brief lyric that focuses on a group of soldiers

standing over the dead body of a fallen comrade. Artistic volition is also found in Wilfred

Owens poem Futility. Owen exhibits sun as a central metaphor in this poem to reveal grief for a

fallen soldier, his despair at the pointlessness of war and to demonstrate the real nature of bloody

war. Sun is also taken as annotations of life and warmth. The title Futility indicates the

pointlessness of war, the soldiers death, the rebirth of the soldier, creation and life.

Conclusion

Wilfred Owen is an important figure in anti war poetry. His poems deal with the atrocities

of war. He was influenced by the great romantic poets like, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Coleridge and

Wordsworth. His poem Anthem for Doomed Youth is the most important war poem. He was

considered as the best war poet of his generation. After his death he was awarded the Military

Cross.