The Send-Off Analysis

First Stanza
Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men’s are, dead.
In the first line the narrator offers our first contrast. The people are singing which is
generally considered a positive and this stands in contrast to their environment
described as a “darkening lane”. Another oxymoron is used as the trains members, ie
the soldiers are said to look grimly gay. You can tell from the descriptions the narrator
uses that these men are proud men. However the foreboding is evident as the stanza
ends on the word dead. this is a classic example of the darkness that Wilfred Own is
famed for. The narrator also uses the word wreathes to describe the flowers that women
used to pin to the chests of their husbands. This is a very significant choice of words as
the word wreath has obvious connotations surrounding death.
The opening of The Send-Off is hauntingly dark – light is fading, and the lanes are
darkening. The use of the plural ‘lanes’ implies a sense of loss and labyrinthine
confusion. Owen’s references to ‘lined the train with faces grimly gay’ shows that even
their happiness is tempered by the oncoming misery of what awaits them; though they
do not know it yet, their lives are going to be short and full of pain, and Owen sheds light
on this by foreshadowing this reaction.
Foreshadowing plays an important role in The Send-Off. Through it, Owen creates two
realities: the one of the present, where the men have not yet left, are still at the station,
rejoicing with their families, and the one of the future, where the men are dead or dying
and miserable. Take, for example, the use of the line ‘their breasts were stuck all white
with wreath and spray’, and the two meanings that it holds up until that point: it is both a
joyous occasion (soldiers bedecked with flowers by their siblings and families) as well
as an image that brings about funeral associations. Death, to Owen, is never very far
from life.
Second Stanza
Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.
What is interesting about his stanza is the way that the narrator gives a brief descriptor
to each of the people mentioned in the stanza apart from the guard, the porters are dull
and the tramp is casual. What’s particularly interesting is the fact that you might
consider all tramps to be fairly casual! The line about missing them in the upland camp
is probably more poignant then at first suggested. It probably means they will be missed
because the likelihood is that they will not be returning from war. IE they will die. The
winking of the guard almost gives the impression that a conspiracy is in place. This
sense of foreboding and muted celebration all gives the feel that it is known a lot of
these men won’t come back and it seems like everyone seems to be aware of this on
some levels.

The sense of palpable secrecy and brooding darkness grows deeper as The Send-
Off goes on. Here, a lamp ‘winks’ at the guard, they go ‘like wrongs hushed-up’; note the
reference, as well to ‘they were not ourds: / we never heard to which front these were
sent’. There is such an air of confusion, such a poignant feeling of tumult and
unmatched chaos, and Owen’s soldiers are oblivious to it. Everyone, even the porter
and the train and the lamp, know that where they are going is a miserable place, and
yet they are powerless to stop their advance. Britain needs defenders, and the young
are chosen to defend her, though it would be more accurate to say that the young
volunteered themselves without knowing the full extent of what they would face in
Southern France.

Third Stanza
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.
The first line of this stanza only adds to the feeling that there is a conspiracy afoot, the
phrase “hushed up” especially. It suggests that nobody wants to talk about the
uncomfortable truth, that a lot of people die in war. In the second line the narrator says
“They were not ours” this could mean that the troops that have been sent to war were
not owned by their country. They are not owned by anybody. It could be a statement to
emphasise their humanity, perhaps?

It then continues to refer to the serviceman as if they are faceless. Are the men are
considered to be less then human? There is an undercurrent in this poem
acknowledges this. It almost pours scorn on the women who bequeathed them flowers.
The irony of adorning their men with flowers has already been highlighted in the first
stanza but now the narrator chooses to question their motives for doing this? This is
probably not the case. There is a strong suggestion this is meant sarcastically.
‘We never heard to which front these were sent’ gives an air of almost
interchangeability. Soldiers are not individuals, in these poems, but lots of men, to be
parcelled out to sections of France, and forgotten about until they return in either a
coffin or with accolades.

Fourth Stanza
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.
The first two lines of this stanza are a question that addresses the reader directly. This
pulls a reader in and makes them really think about the poem and is particularly well
used here. It is asking the rhetorical question of whether the men will have the same
sense of “fan fare” when they return as they has when they left. Focusing on the return
in this last stanza gives The Send-Off a nice semblance of coming full circle. But the
scenes upon return bear a stark contrast to the suggested merriment in the first stanza.
As we can see the narrator uses the word “few” three times the last time preceded by
“too” to emphasise that the amount of soldiers returning is drastically less then the
amount that left in the first place. There is no drums, no singing and yelling. Just tired
battle weary men “creeping back”. Perhaps the most poignant line in the poem is “Up
half-known roads” It is known that Owen suffered from PTSD. Could it be that a portion
of the soldiers that have returned are so depressed that they barely feel the belong
anymore? This line could well suggest just that.

The future of Owen’s imagining comes to a horrific end in the last section of The Send-
Off. Owen predicts that ‘a few, a few, too few for drums and yells / may creep back,
silent, to still village wells / up half-known roads’. Thus, he has already marked a lot of
soldiers for death. There is no escaping that reality that the soldiers that were sent are
going to die, and they are going to die young.
However, perhaps even more brutally, Owen’s imaginings devises a future where not all
the soldiers die. A few return, horribly alive, to their quiet villages. They are forever
marked by what they went through, and thus they are going to be apart from the rest of
society, no matter if they served their country or not. ‘Still village wells’ implies a deathly
calm, a peacefulness that the soldiers have forgotten about; ‘up half-known roads’ show
that they’ve forgotten even home. The soldiers who return, then, do not fully return, but
they return in pieces, with fragmented minds, and dark memories.