Poetry Analysis Josh Ehl

Wilfred Owen was born on March 18th, 1893, in Shropshire, England, to Welsh-English parents. He spent his childhood as what many would call a devout intellectual, his two biggest passions being religion and literature, especially that of the Big Six poets, in particular John Keats. Later, as he began to write his own poetry he would draw much of his early inspiration from Keats. In 1915, with the outbreak of WW1, Owen joined up with Artists' Rifles' Training Corps. After several months of training, he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment. Initially Owen had great disdain for the men he commanded, thinking of them as brutish, lazy, and uncultured. However, a series of incredibly traumatic events (For instance, he was blown out of his trench by a mortar) left Owen in a state of shell shock, known today as PTSD. This diagnosis led to Owen being transferred to a regimental hospital in the rear, where he met fellow poet and contemporary Siegfried Sassoon. His friendship with Sassoon would have a huge impact on both his life and his writing, and many consider their meeting to be the impetus of some of Owen's greatest and most famous poems. Owens would go on to win the Military Cross for gallantry in battle in 1918, but was killed in action shortly thereafter, exactly a week before the signing of the armistice that officially ended the war. To date, he is considered the greatest poet to emerge from the battlefields on the Western Front during WW1.

Owen's work features heavily the themes of realism and the abhorrence of war. His poems are incredibly emotional and describe in great detail how horrible really was for the men on the front lines, offering a stark contrast to the romanticized notion of warfare prevalent throughout England and much of Europe at the time. His most well known poem Dulce Et Decorum Est, is itself a biting criticism of the Latin phrase parroted by many of those who were in favor of the war. Another one of his poems, titled Arms and the Boy, sharply contrasts the innocence of the boy with the malicious and hateful nature of the weapons of war.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Owen, Wilfred. "Dulce Et Decorum Est." <i>Poets.org</i>. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 07 Jan. 2016.