Wilfred Owen Poetry Comparison Chart Essay Example

the original was apparently very different and it was said that the poem was not a sonnet before Sassoon’s input. Senseless devastation the war created for civilians. Loss of identity the soldiers endured. Underlines the physiological trauma of the war and the poor treatment soldiers receive.

Exposure Companies of soldiers suffer the bitter cold of a night at the front. Dawn brings snow and few bullets. They dream of spring in the countryside – but their lot is to lie out in trenches.  Uses compelling personification of the weather to show that war is all around them. Weather is something of which no man can control. This poses a question of whether they could escape war? We don't control war, therefore the circumstances and results of these men’s destinies is not in our hands.

The use of ellipses i. e. " Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent... causes the reader to reflect on what is being said. Usually silence is a beautiful tranquil state of mind. Yet, here it is something that creates, "nervous" and "curious" soldiers. This truly creates pathos for the soldiers- do they ever have a chance to relax? In the second stanza Owen uses a compelling simile "mad gusts tugging on the wire like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. " This reiterates that the men are similar to the weather. God controls the weather, and what happens to them is God's fate -" For love of God seems dying.

The connection to "Ode to a Nightingale" is significant - "My heart aches" - "Our brains ache". As well as this the lines - there are several light/dark color contrasts

- "shivering ranks of grey", "dark-red jewels, etc. The "house" which is said to belong to the "innocent mice" with "Shutters and doors, all closed" could perhaps be being used to refer to the dead bodies of the soldiers - as well as a reference to their old homes - being emptier when they are away and so more prone to visitors? Set in a bad conditioned trench.

Owen described No Man’s land in a letter to his mother on 19 January 1917. its like the eternal place of gnashing teeth…it is pock-marked like a body of foulest disease and its odor is the breath of cancer. I have not seen any dead. I have done worse in the dank air I have perceived it, and in the darkness felt…No Man’s Land under snow is like the face if the moon, chaotic, crater-ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of , madness.The fact that each stanza is numbered gives the poem a mechanical structure. This enhances the idea of the soldiers being like robots with no feelings, emotions or clear thoughts and therefore further de-humanizes the soldiers.

The poem echo's the beatitudes with a recurring motif of religion leading each stanza. Euphemisms like "Losses" in place of ‘Death’ reinforce this religious beatitude style poem. Some lines reflect other poems by Owen. Lines such as "but no one bothers" compare with "but nothing happens" in his poem, Exposure. The second stanza presents the idea that if a solider accepts death is his fate, and then he is able to cope with the stress, irrational thoughts, and fear that heavy artillery, from the opposition, can bring.

The tease and doubt of shelling"

suggests that death is playing with the men, teasing and provoking them, antagonistically fluttering grenades around the men, no place is safe. The present tense stanza opening "Happy are these who lose imagination" makes this applicable to any soldier in any present war to the reader; he makes it current and more personal. This opening line suggests that man is dehumanized by war, the loss of imagination. We then move through Owen's war semantics and recurring motif's throughout his poems in the next stanza. The reader is surrounded with "wounds","cold","ache" and "blood".

Who lose imagination’ (etc) Owen's sarcasm therefore suggests that the soldiers were, in fact entirely unhappy, as their experiences in war made them void to all feeling. the fact that the title enables the audience to be able to sensitize with it and be able to come up with loads of different meanings within the text contrasts with how different people pursue the war and how soldiers are belittled and how they never get the respect or never have the life that they thought war was going to be like especially with the propaganda and how they thought that it was sweet and right to die for the country because what they have to go through and what they have had to do with themselves and be able to jeopardize even having their own feelings now and how this has become more realistic and evolves the readers more because they are now emphasizing with the soldiers and how just within the title you can establish this.