Anthem For Doomed Youthh

Anthem for Doomed Youth" A Critical Analysis

War is a part of human nature and will continue to be for years to come. Through many depictions of war one might assume that war is for courageous individuals and full of many heroes. The truth is that war is brutal, dangerous, and an uncivilized practice. The theme of "Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen is that people should see war as young men going into the face of death with their family being left behind to mourn them.

The beginning of Owens poem uses comparison by relating the boys on the front dieing to cattle being slaughtered. This line also says there is no bells for the boys that are dieing.

"What passing bells for these who die as cattle

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Only the monstrous anger of the guns

3Through Personification, the guns responsible for taking so much human life are made out to be monstrous, even evil

Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle

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Can patter out their hasty orisons

and I should have added an explanation of 'patter' which is an English word that means 'words spoken without much thought': it comes from the opening line of the Latin version of The Lord's Prayer - "Pater Noster..."

5orisons=prayers for the dead at burial

No mockeries of for them from prayers or bells

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Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs

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The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells

And bugles calling for them from sad shires

A Bugle looks a lot

like a trumpet without the keys and is a bit shorter.

The Last post is played at all military funerals in the British army and has been sounded in Ypres every night since the twenties.

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What candles may be held to speed them all

Candles play a major part in Catholic ritual - although Owen had been brought up as an Evangelical Anglican, we know he went to at least one (probably far more than that)Catholic Mass (as in the poem "Maundy Thursday") whilst he was in France in 1913-15. At a Catholic funeral, there is (or used to be)a candle at each corner of the coffin; also, the altar-boys at a Catholic Mass carry large candles. So what I think Owen is doing here is re-making the rituals. Traditional rituals would be "mockeries", but the dead deserve something - and the only ritual they would value comes from those who loved them and remember them. There is formalised remembrance (the bugles) and personal remembrance - the sad eyes and pale faces of those who remain. Owen calls soldiers "boys" in several places (poems and letters)so "the holy glimmers of goodbyes" are in the eyes of those who survive, but cannot forget their dead comrades. This is a recurring theme in Owen's poems - for example, in "Spring Offensive"