Bushra Othman Sidiq

A Chapter Review of Dissertation “The Sublimity of Wilfred Owen’s Nihilism”

PhD literature program

Modern English Poetry

Prof. Nabeel M. Ali PhD

21 September 2023

A Chapter Review of Dissertation “The Sublimity of Wilfred Owen’s Nihilism”

By Patrick Earl Jackson

Patrick Earl Jackson discusses the topic of the meaninglessness of modern life and how it is
reflected in contemporary poetry in his doctoral dissertation in philosophy. The research also
examines how contemporary poets convey the concept of meaninglessness in their poems. In
chapter two, the writer examines the idea of nihilism in war and how that idea affected almost all
his war poems. There are several chapters in the work: With five chapters and a conclusion, this
review will focus on chapter two and include a chapter description, a search for the major thesis,
and supporting data for the author's assertions. Finally, his writing style will be criticized. The
dissertation also mentions other poets like Robert Penn Warren, Philip Larkin, and Sylvia Plath.

The chapter starts with a very nihilistic yet true description of World War I and its setting;
“There is nothing in all this inferno but mud and thunder.” the writer brings examples from
survivors of the war. Gladden, a survivor of the war, described it as “eternally present misery.”
Nihilism often involves a sense of skepticism or negation towards traditional beliefs, systems of
thought, and established institutions. It questions the validity and authority of religious, moral,
and societal norms.

Owen shows meaninglessness in his poetry, whether experienced in the war or the aftermath.
Typically, when a person is hopeless, they can't produce anything, yet Own could write "elegies"
about his fellow soldiers. This act encouraged W.B. Yeats to exclude Owen from his Oxford
Book of Modern Verse because "Passive suffering is not for poetry." Even modern critics such as
Malcolm Pittock believed that Owen's poetry was more like reportage with no pity than actual
poetry on the basis that poetry should have a way to transition to people or at least a way to act
against what the writer dislikes. However, some other critics, such as Dominic Hibberd,
suggested that Owen’s pity is shown more in a Shelleyan way, as Owen has always been affected
by the Romantic poets. In his Defense of Poetry, the Romantics, specifically Shelly, incite that
imagination, which makes the reader sympathize with others. That’s why Owen’s poems were
not made to make British society back home feel comfortable; rather, they were meant to make
them feel the horror of the war and sympathize with the soldiers on the battlefield and in the
trenches.

Pity for Owen in one way or another is different from Shelly’s pity, for Owen, it functions as
a response to meaninglessness, specifically the meaninglessness felt on battlefield. According to
Owen, meaninglessness is sublime in that it lies beyond the capacity of human comprehension.
The chapter also compares between Classical poetry and Romantic one in their description to
meaninglessness, classicalists possess their feelings while Romantics long for it, classicalists are
defined with their feelings whereas Romantics try to evoke the readers’ feelings. The chapter
also explains how Owen became more affected by Siegfried and his satirical tone after Owen
was admitted to hospital, this made a change in Owen’s style of writing, he was not anymore like
the Romantics, he started to feel the sublimity of Nihilism.

Furthermore, the writer in the chapter explains how Owen deals with meaninglessness
figuratively and formally; figuratively, Owen’s poetry depicts what is going on as an
overpowering force that can overturn our systems of order. Our ability to comprehend For
example, in one of his poems, “Inspection,” he refers to the “wastage” of the infantry when the
dirt and flesh all mixed together. Another good example is in “The Last Laugh,” when a soldier
is killed and cries out, “Jesus Christ,” leaving us to wonder whether he cursed or prayed. On top
of that, the meaninglessness in Owen’s poetry is shown formally; rhymes and alliteration often
suggest opposite meanings in his poems (“sense,” madness,” hilarious,” hideous”).

Above that, Owen’s poems often employ techniques that “spill out” of the formal
conventions of verse. The most important example of this is those poems that suddenly change
the fourteenth line of the pentameter, changing the Romantic form of sonnet (a favorite of Owen
himself) into a more modern one “overburdened” form. What’s more on this, the writer of the
dissertation gives one more mode of Owen’s key modes of writing about meaninglessness, which
is conflating dissimilar or opposite things, in the final stanza of his poem, “ The Last Laugh,”
when the soldier’s devotion for his women back hoe turns into betrayal as he dies as “ his whole
face kissed the mud”. The kissing part here creates the conflation, on must say. Another poem
that reflects the same idea is “The sentry”, is a collection of powerful images that depict the
horrors of war and the suffering endured by the soldiers. Given that Owen was a British soldier
who participated in World War 1, many critics believe he wrote this poem to reflect his
experiences. The poem is full of rhetorical questions and discomforting answers, like, "What are
we doing here?" and "Is it that we are dying?" and answers, "We turn back to our dying," and
"For the love of God seems dying." All these are unremitting dissolutions and meaninglessness.

Meaninglessness and its sublime are also made a thing in the “Exposure”. It conveys that the
soldiers' main enemies are the frigid and chilly weather. In addition, it gives us a vivid account of
the bitter cold and miserable circumstances that prevailed during one of the harshest winters of
the First World War. It demonstrates that most of the soldiers were shot by opponents rather than
exposed. The poem presents all the contrary evidence to persuade young men not to enlist in
combat because it lacks any heroic elements. Owen creates a sad and detailed tone while using
all of his senses to depict the icy environment. Because it is written in the first person plural, we
can identify with the soldiers and see ourselves in their shoes. Which again, goes back to Owen’s
use of pity? "Our brains ache in the merciless iced east winds that knife us," begins the poem.
The phrases "brains," "merciless," "iced," "winds," and "knife" all have an assonantal "i" sound,
which recalls the hushing sound of the chilly wind blowing through the trenches. Additionally,
these sounds are extremely harsh and knifing, and they may be related to the fact that the weather
is more violent and abrasive than the troops' weaponry.

The chapter also details another great poem, "Dulce Et Decorum Est," divided into two
parts, an octave and a sestet; the octave stands for the sheer exhaustion of war, and the sestet
sheds light on how the war impossibly forces soldiers beyond this war. "Bent double like beggars
under sacks; Knocks-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge." The soldiers are
tired and debilitated, pressed to the brink of breakdown. In the sestet, the poem takes a dramatic
shift: “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” Here, the soldiers must put on their masks; the dissertation writer
asserts that at such a moment, the poetry represents the meaninglessness of war as both
inundation and exhaustion; this is contradictory as inundation connotes great energy, while
exhaustion connotes having no energy. Through parody, Owen stays in a state of continuous
meaninglessness. The poem is not an ordinary sonnet, as it is followed by another fourteen lie,
some critics calls is two sonnets in one poem.

Moreover, Jackson recalls Owen’s poetry as less about the violent images of war and more
about the nihilistic effect of war on the soldiers. He wants us to know what those atrocities are
doing to the men fighting in the war, particularly the survivors. In this aspect, he is linked to the
Romantics; he doesn't seek to understand the world objectively or realistically; he seeks to
understand his realistic response to what is happening. Owen also explains mentally affected
soldiers; in "The Five Chances," he talks about a soldier named Jim, a new soldier on the
battlefield. He talks about five chances for every soldier in a war: they are either killed, badly
wounded, slightly wounded, taken prisoners, or they survive but only physically, not mentally.
The speaker at the end of the battle tells him you are mad and “poor od him”. As he tells him, in
a war, you will be all five, “reckoned he’d five chances, and he had;\ He’s wounded, killed and
prisoner, all the lot,\ The flaming’ all rolled in one. Jim is mad”.

The writer of the chapter presents another important point which is, the sublime object is
always presented in a “ secure” place, where the perceiver can feel as Kant sys, its “
unattainability” without being under any physical threat. War can’t be sublime to its immediate
participants; Owen could only do that when he was admitted to the hospital in 1917.

The writer also explains the concept of Sublimity in Romanticism and how they think of it
as a transcended concept. They see it as a mode moving beyond the limited senses and the realm
of morality. The writer also explains Weiskel’s concept of the sublime in his book, the Romantic
Sublime, Weiskel demonstrates the sublime within three phases: the normal, a state between the
individual ’s mind and the object it perceives , second, the breakdown between the object and the
mind, third, the moment of resolution when the mind readjusts with the phenomena. Though,
Owen doesn’t believe in such transcendent order be it religious or idealistic. “ The Show” is a
great example of Weiskel’s three phases of sublime, where the speaker of the poem eventually
surrender himself to the object . For Owen, to be sublime, one has experience a “terror” beyond
the limited scope of an individual, an “unattainability” which Owen, like his Romantic models,
used to create “fresh relationship” between mind and object.
 The chapter also discusses the differences between figuring out the sublime from a Romantic
perspective and Owen's. The Romantics see it as a bird that ascends from lower levels to higher
ones; on the other hand, Owen sees it descending from higher to lower ones. The writer further
presents the "Insensible" as he frames them. The insensible to Owen are those back home, the
relatives, and the British citizens unaware of what is happening on the battlefield. The father of
the speaker in “ S.W.I.” who would soon realize his son’s death, and the speaker of “ The dead-
Beat” describes “the bold uncles” of the shell-shocked solider who “ smile ministerially” .
“Insensibility”, describes the British public as stones who can’t feel their sons on the battlefield:
“cursed are the dullards whom no cannon stuns,\ That they should be as stones.” The civilians of
England become dullard, unfeeling.

In the final pages of this chapter, the writer explain yet another important poem, “ Stanger
meeting”. As the speaker takes a strange journey down to “Hell”, the poem is an epic
thematically and as its hero concerned. The hero of the poem descends from the upper world into
the under-world. The speaker in this poem must confront an overpowering sense of meaningless
that only can be described through images of sublimity. The speaker says: “It seemed that out of
a battle I escaped\ down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped\ through granites which
titanic wars had groined.” Then the speaker meets a poet-solider like own who wants to tell the
pity of war. This man is dead tells the solider that “ None,” “ save the undone years,\ The
hopelessness.” In this poem after the fourteen lines, the poet-solider stops writing and keeps
watching hell as more soldiers join, unlike “Chances”.

The poem “Spring Offensive”, which is mentioned in the final pages of this chapter, never
directly speaks of the war and Germany but explains natural elements like the sun. Finally, Owen
wouldn’t have called himself a nihilist, but the circumstances of the war certainly made him one.
Works Cited

Jackson, Patrick Earl. “This side of despair: Forms of hopelessness in modern poetry”.
University of Oregon, 2007.