W.B Yeats wrote “Second Coming” which had reflected the effects of world war one and another war poet known as Welfred Owen wrote the poem ‘1914” which also discussed about the world war one which broke out in 1914. These poems had evoked the theme of fall of civilization and chaos in the world specially the European countries who were involved in the war. Both the Irish poets blamed the greed and irrational acts of the people whose immoral deeds had ensued in the inception of great destruction in the world. In the ‘Second coming’ Yeats had employed images of falcon and falconer to symbolize the fall of civilization which had leaded to a catastrophic war. And Owen had employed the symbolism of the season such as the “spring” and “winter” to show the conditions of the world due to the war. The major similarity between the Second coming and “1914” could be the poets view over the First World War and their hopes of seeing the world rejuvenating into peaceful and blissful one. …show more content…
During the war over 59 million troops were mobilized, 8 million died and 29 million were injured. (wilde, 2014). Both the poems had exhibited the effects of the destructive war.” War broke: and now the Winter of the world With perishing great darkness closes in”(1914). Here Owen was trying to convince that the war was like a winter which was cold and harsh affecting the world by making it dark. Dark here means destructive and terrifying which will deprive the happiness and prosperity of the world. ”The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere. The ceremony of innocence is drowned;” (Yeats. 1919). This statement also has a similar point of view as the in Owen’s “1914” the consequences of war was likely to be devastating as it snatched the peace and happiness from the people. Yeats had associated the war with bloodshed and downfall of
Wilfred Owen's war poems central features include the wastage involved with war, horrors of war and the physical effects of war. These features are seen in the poems "Dulce Et Decorum Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth" here Owen engages with the reader appealing to the readers empathy that is felt towards the soldier. These poems interact to explore the experiences of the soldiers on the battlefields including the realities of using gas as a weapon in war and help to highlight the incorrect glorification of war. This continuous interaction invites the reader to connect with the poems to develop a more thorough
However, the result of the War had produced some outstanding poets and Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was a of the war poets who was widely regarded as one of the best poets of the World War One period. He wrote out of his intense personal experience and memory as a soldier and wrote with unrivalled power of the physical, moral and psychological trauma of the First World War . Heavily influenced by Keats and Shelly, a young Owen intrigued to become a poet began to absorb himself in poetry. He did not go into religious life like his mother. Instead, he left for Bordeaux, France to teach English in the Berlitz School after the war had erupted. Although he thought of himself as a `Pacifist', he enlisted in the Artist's Rifles in October 1915 and later in 1917 changed to France. There he began writing poems about his war experiences. Owen finally suffered from shell-shock in the summer of 1917 and was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital and met his friend Siegfried Sassoon, who shared his feelings about the war and who became interested in his work. Reading Sassoon's poems and discussing his work with Sassoon revolutionized Owen's style and conception of poetry .
Wilfred Owen can be considered as one of the finest war poets of all times. His war poems, a collection of works composed between January 1917, when he was first sent to the Western Front, and November 1918, when he was killed in action, use a variety of poetic techniques to allow the reader to empathise with his world, situation, emotions and thoughts. The sonnet form, para-rhymes, ironic titles, voice, and various imagery used by Owen grasp the prominent central idea of the complete futility of war as well as explore underlying themes such as the massive waste of young lives, the horrors of war, the hopelessness of war and the loss of religion. These can be seen in the three poems, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and
Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem made of four stanzas in an a, b, a, b rhyme scheme. There is hardly any rhythm to the entire poem, although Owen makes it sound like it is in iambic pentameter in some lines. Every stanza has a different amount of lines, ranging from two to twelve. To convey the poem’s purpose, Owen uses an unconventional poem style and horrid, graphic images of the frontlines to convey the unbearable circumstances that many young soldiers went through in World War I. Not only did these men have to partake in such painful duties, but these duties contrasted with the view of the war made by the populace of the mainland country. Many of these people are pro-war and would never see the battlefield themselves. Owen’s use of word choice, imagery, metaphors, exaggeration, and the contrast between the young, war-deteriorated soldiers and populace’s favorable view of war creates Owen’s own unfavorable view of the war to readers.
Fighting in a war is a very traumatizing and a horrendous experience, leaving people feeling abhorrent. Wilfred Owen is a leading poet of the first world war as well as a soldier. Wilfred Owen suffered the second he went into war and his perception on it didn’t change as time went on. Owen said in one of his letters to his family, “All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true poet must be truthful.”
In the poem “The Second Coming”, by William Butler Yeats. He writes this poem after World War I, around 1919. Yeats is a Irish poet, who came from Protestant parentage. The over all theme of the poem is that God will come back again. There are many versions to how God will appear, but in this poem bad things happen first in order for God to come. In “The Second Coming,” Yeats uses symbolism to unfold the meaning of the poem.
“In his poetry, Wilfred Owen depicts the horror and futility of war and the impact war has on individuals.”
In my opinion, the interwar years from 1914 to 1945 was a period of continually changing. Those 32 years together formed one part of history which was the turning point of European World Dominant System. The origin of events happened in this phase was inter-tangled, sometimes one caused another, sometimes shared the same cause.
Owen’s poem has the clear intention of showing the true nature of war to the reader, which is mainly achieved by contrasting reality against the ways in which war is so
The First World War not only reshaped boundaries, watched empires rise and fall, but it also saw a drastic change in the literary art, and the view of war and all its “glory”. With authors such as Wilfred Owen, the world was beginning to get exposed to the brutality of war from the front line. Like most poets of his time, Owen wrote in the modern period. “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” (Dulce et Decorum Est). This gruesome line paints a picture of a gas attack. Although his life on earth was cut short, Owen has truly made a spot for himself among the greatest war poets in history.
For thousands of years mankind has been obsessed with the subject of war, from the clash of swords to the bitter thunder of artillery mankind has brought upon itself an immense amount of suffering. Good evening teachers and students I am here today with the aim of convincing you on why Wilfred Owens poetry must not be ignored but instead explored to find the deeper meaning of his poems. The poetry of Wilfred Owen was different to that of other war poets of his time as it revealed the horrors and agony of the so-called Great War which were concealed by the Church and British Authorities for the purpose of deceiving the youth. The idea of romanticising war goes strongly against Wilfred Owens moral purpose, thus his Poetry is didactic and condemnatory. Throughout his short life he had first hand experience with the scourge of war. From this he aimed to debunk those romanticised notions of the glorification of war that were present at the time by challenging poets such as John Keats who glorified war. Owen effectively conveys the truth of war through his use of techniques such as imagery, ambiguity and many others in his poems of "Dulce Et Decorum EST" and Anthem For doomed youth.
Poems using strong poetic technique and devices are able to create a wide range of emotions from the readers. Wilfred Owen’s poetry effectively uses these poetic techniques and devices to not only create unsettling images about war but to provide his opinion about war itself with the use of themes within his poem. The use of these themes explored Owen’s ideas on the futility of war and can be seen in the poems: Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility and The Next War. The poems provide unsettling images and belief of war through the treatment of death, barbaric nature of war and the futility of war.
In both poems Owen shows us the physical effect of war, Wilfred starts the poems showcasing unendurable stress the men were going through. Appalling pictures are created and expressed through similes and metaphors. Owen’s lexical choices link to the semantic field of the archaic which conveys the atavistic effects of war. The men are compared to old beggars, hags, the once young men have been deprived of their youth and turned into old women, the loss of masculinity express the how exhausting and ruthless war was. The men were barely awake from lack of sleep, they “marched in sleep” their once smart uniforms resembling “sacks”. He also expresses how
Throughout Wilfred Owen’s collection of poems, he unmasks the harsh tragedy of war through the events he experienced. His poems indulge and grasp readers to feel the pain of his words and develop some idea on the tragedy during the war. Tragedy was a common feature during the war, as innocent boys and men had their lives taken away from them in a gunshot. The sad truth of the war that most of the people who experienced and lived during the tragic time, still bare the horrifying images that still live with them now. Owen’s poems give the reader insight to this pain, and help unmask the tragedy of war.
William Butler Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” after World War 1 ended, in a time when the image of society was catastrophic. Yeats was deeply affected by these horrors caused by the war. Yeats predicts this image of a catastrophic society due to war will reappear in the near future. In “The Second Coming”, William B. Yeats uses a variety of literary devices to portray his idea of what the downfall of society will look like.