Owen’s War Poetry

Theme – Relationships:

1) Cameraderie, brotherhood and companionship

Having experienced the horrors of the First World War at first hand, Owen had come to see
the war as absolutely evil in the agonies and senseless waste it caused. His writing
techniques blend harsh realism and a sensuousness which is unatrophied by the horrors he
witnessed. In his planned introduction he wrote: “My subject is War, and the pity of War”.
This refers to the pity and indignation he expresses in his poetry using passionate words. In
a letter he had written, he describes himself as: “a conscientious objector with a very seared
conscience”. Apart from the horrors of war, Owen expresses comradeship and brotherhood
in some of his poems. They were his driving force to not give up and keep going. Just as he
expressed in the poem ‘Apologia Pro Poemate Meo’ that ‘I have made fellowships’.

‘Apologia Pro Poemate Meo’:

- Owen’s expression of the fellowship among soldiers is one of the most underlying theme of
the poem.
- He describes the mud on his comrades in a loving way which reveal warm laughs and ‘glee’.
- He finds this relationship with the fellow comrades as a way to mitigate the harsh reality of
war where ‘death becomes absurd and life absurder’.
- Owen sees their faces as lifted up with ‘passion of oblation’ and ‘seraphic’. The religious
diction emphasizes the strong and deep bond between the young soldiers who are all going
through the same experience.
- He criticises believers of true love expressed by ‘binding…fair lips’. He sees the inferiority of
romance and sentiment next to the love in the grim and butchery on the battlefield.
- It is not the ‘ribbon’ that holds the medals for bravery but the ‘war’s hard wire’ that ties the
soldier in strong and deep bonds of love.

‘Spring Offensive’:

- In the first stanza, the theme of brotherhood, is clearly evident in the soldiers’ description
before the attack.
 - ‘they fed … were at ease... leaning on the nearest chest or knees’. This shows that they grew
comfortable together and their comradeship is strong enough to give spiritual support to
each other.
- They try to comfort themselves as they know that they ‘had come to the end of the world’.
- Going over the hill together symbolized their companionship. They were ready to die
together despite some of them managed ‘out-fiending all its fiends’.

‘Greater Love’:

- The poem is centred around the notion that the bond of love between people suffering and
fighting together is more heightened than any other form of love. It’s ultimately Christ-like.
- Owen involves the implication that the love for a woman or the love bestowed by a woman
is somehow impure or inflicts suffering.
- The speaker seems to visualise a platonic fulfilment. So much so he insists that love between
a man and a woman ‘seems shame to their pure love’. While the soldiers are forged to build
these spiritual bonds where ‘fierce love they bear’.

‘Exposure’:

- The poem involves a platoon who face rigours of wintery night out in the trenches. It
incorporates their comradeship against nature which has indeed turned against them.
- Waiting ‘wearied’ contemplating their existence, they feel deserted by everyone. Even
nature turned its back on them and God’s love ‘seems dying’.

The Send-Off:

- The poem is a representation of the young men’s enthusiasm when they were on their way
to war. The way ‘they sang their way’ in ‘grimly gay’ faces showed their fellowship. That
they will fight together and die together.
- They are a group and thus are bound to develop a natural bond amongst each other.
- This contrasts with the ‘few’ soldiers who will ‘creep back’ to silence. They are physically and
mentally destructed, forever hanged but the dehumanizing experience they went through.