If you are in Year 11, you will have started to write your first short texts essays and you may like a little help with them. To do that, I have added a student’s essay on Wilfred Owen for you to consider. What do you think works in the essay? Why? What would you change?
Describe an effective use of imagery in each text. Explain how this effective use of imagery helped you to understand an idea or ideas in each text.
Wilfred Owen was a World War One poet who used his poetry to provide gruesome imagery to convey to the reader the horrific reality of war and death at war. In his poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” Owen shows his raw anger at how young men’s lives have been brutally disfigured through the reality of war and death at the front.
“Anthem for Doomed Youth” carries a more sombre tone and also explores death at the front by comparing it with death at home in Britain.In the poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” Wilfred Owen’s strong use of similes conveys the harsh realities of war and death at the front.
In the first stanza Owen uses the simile “bent double, like old beggars” creating the image in my mind of old deformed men, but when in reality it is young soldiers prematurely aged and disfigured by the horror of the war. He continues in this vein to show how the soldiers were affected by the reality of war with the image ” knock kneed, coughing like hags” this simile helped me to understand Wilfred Owen’s opinion of the horror of war by contrasting the popular view of glorious, healthy young men with the image of sick, seemingly old people. By doing this Owen helped me to understand through his imagery how the war had transformed the young men.
In the second stanza Owen describes the death of a soldier in a gas attack, likening the death to the man drowning. “floundering like a man in fire or lime” showing the helplessness of the soldier to help his comrade. He continues this image by saying “as under a green sea I saw him drowning.” Owen uses these similes to help the reader understand what death was like at the front.
In the final stanza Owen’s pure fury at what the war was portrayed to be is shown. He addresses the reader, directly involving them “if you too could pace” He expresses his anger through the similes “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud” He uses these graphic similes to undermine the idea that to die in war was a glorious and noble thing, and by doing so he helped me to understand the true reality of war and death at the front.
The idea about the horror of death in war is continued in Owen’s poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth” but it is in a more sombre tone, and he shows us a sadder more pitiful image of death in the trenches, compared to Dulce Et Decorum Est’s pure fury. He uses alliteration, personification and metaphors in “Anthem for Doomed Youth” to carry across his idea of the reality of war and especially death at the front.
The first stanza in “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is strongly aural bringing across the noise of the battlefront upon which soldiers died. In the first line he asks “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” already we see Owen’s view that death at the front was as nameless and pointless as cattle being slaughtered. In the following line he answers himself with “only the monstrous anger of the guns” by personifying the guns as “monstrous” we understand that they are huge and grotesque things to be feared in the minds of the soldiers. Aurally Owen conveys to us the sound of death at the front by using harsh sounding alliteration “stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle” and graphic metaphors “the shrill demented choirs of wailing shells”. By doing this Owen conveyed to me the idea that there was no sad song of mourning for the soldiers at the front, only the sounds of battle were heard as they died in their nightmarish reality.
In the second stanza we have moved away from the harsh sounds of battle at the front, and into how the deaths were recognised there. Using the metaphor “not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes” Owen made me realise that even thought there was no proper funeral or burial of the dead at the front, the sad acknowledgement of a glance from a soldier to a fallen comrade was just as sincere if not more so than the traditions practices by those in Britain. Through his use of metaphors and other language techniques, Owen made me truly understand what life and death was like in reality at the front.
In the poems “Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and “Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen, he explores the idea of the reality of war as life and death at the front. Through his use of graphic similes, metaphors and personification Owen helped me to understand that death at the front was not a glorious and heroic thing, but rather a sad and horrific way for lives to be finished.
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