[Anthem for Doomed Youth] Sample Essay
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I found some useful resources from my old IGCSE notes that might be useful to use. Feel free to read and take some notes. DO NOT COPY, This is my writing and my product. If you copied and paste it as your work, you teacher might knew it since they will be using turnitin to check it. If you got caught, too bad, it’s your fault. This is for learning the writing style, structure to get the top mark in IGCSE English as 1st language Poem part II.
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Anthem for Doomed Youth
Question: How does the poet evocatively convey his feelings about war in the poem Anthem For Doomed Youth?
Essay:
Anthem of Doomed Youth is focusing on the pain and loss of the young men who went to war without knowing anything about it and returned back wounded and dead. The word Anthem in the title is ironic to the poem below as war is something deadly that people shouldn’t be praised for or encouraged to go. The word Doomed is representing something deadly and he used the world Anthem before it, which is contrasting to the rest of the title.The word Anthem is lamentation of the war, not for cheering and supporting soldiers. These helped him creates a clear impression to the readers that he evocatively conveys his feeling about the war in the poem.
Firstly, the poet has explored the theme destruction of war by describing the unbearable and harsh condition of the war where the Youth is fighting. Owen described the soldiers “dies as cattle”. Owen has used metaphor to show how much people had died during the war. This suggested that they had to be in critical condition and died without glory or reputation-just like the cattle. Owen has done this to show the pain that the Youth endured during the war and uselessly accepted it without doing anything. This emphasizes the carelessness of people, they didn’t care of the dead people because there were too many “cattle” and no one can really do anything about it. Not only dying as cattle, the survivors had to constantly face fears of gun sound. The gun sound is described as “rifles’ rapid rattle”. The poet’s used of alliteration to portray the sound of the gun, which bring sound effects to the reader and creates the vivid image of the soldiers falling down with the sound of guns, which created terrors of war. Owen has done this to show how dreadful and disastrous the war is and gives the reader the brutal truth that war isn’t as pleasant as it was told. He gave the readers a true experience of what the war is like since he was in war once, which is the reason why he can dramatically create image about war. This is also consonance, which suggested that Owen wanted to make the reader see that the war is harsh and create bitter tones, like sympathizing the for soldiers who had fought in the war. The uses of repeating “Only” in the poem has suggested that the soldier’s daily lives are torture and nothing more than the fear of dying with the sound of guns going on constantly. This, again portrayed a clear image for the reader to see the horror of war and the unbearable living condition that the soldiers had faced every day.
The poet also explored the theme being forgotten by time and the senselessness of the people by using the structure and imagery to portray the pain and loss of the youth who attended the war. In the first stanza, Owen has used of the rhetorical question in the first line, as to ask why there is no one remembering the sacrificed soldiers after all of their effort for defending and fighting for their country. The author's done this to show that they will be forgotten sooner or later since they are nothing compared to other. No one really knew what they have been through in the trenches. Owen also used of repetition to emphasize the pain of being forgotten by repeating “No” and “Nor”. This suggests that the how brutal the reality was for the soldiers who fought in trenches and lost their lives without even remembered by the civilian. Owen also references to the religious image in line fourth line in stanza one, “Can patter out their hasty orisons”. This shows the absence of god since he isn’t there to save them even though they were praying every day for peacefulness and he gives people, which suggests the loneliness of the soldiers as no one remembered them- a callous fact that the god won’t come and save them from the deaths.
Wilfred Owen also conveyed his feelings about war through the loss of families and the sacrificing of the youth in this poem after they came back. In the last line of stanza one, the poet said “bugles calling for them from sad shrines”. This suggests that their parents, families are calling from afar. The word “bugles” shows the distant as physical and mentally as their lives are drifting away from them. The author has used imagery to create a lonely and painful moment for the reader but also shows that war is destructive and bring apprehension to everyone. It isn’t only broke families and kill the younths. This is contrasting to stanza above as Owen said he will be forgotten by everyone. The poet’s uses of rhetorical question again at the start of stanza 2, to emphasizes the loss of youth. The pains, experiences, terrors of the young soldiers are shown “In their eyes” through the “candles”. This suggests that their lives are like the candle when they were young, it burns vigorously and full of energy and all of that is waste for the war. Owen's done this to show how the youth is being taken easily of the young soldiers and left them back uselessly. The image “candle” is like a mirror, which portrayed the war image and showed the pain in both physically and mentally. Owen has used Sonnet poem- a romantic type-structure poem, which contrasts with the destructive image of war that he shows in the poem and represented a death. Owen ‘s done this to show the dark irony in the poem, the romantic is hard to forget both in positive and negative but the war is also hard to forget in a more negative way, there are too many deaths to get over in such a short time.
Lastly, Owen’s pain and hatred with the war has evocatively conveyed his hostility and malice about war, which shows the reader that he once attended the war when he was young, therefore, he clearly understood the pain and loss of the soldiers. The image “passing-bells” is representing the slow motion of time running away, slow but desperate like the author is hoping the time to go faster as the death is too painful for him to endure. This symbolizes the terror and the brutal reality of the war, as something Owen hated the most. The uses of caesura throughout the poem reflect the injuries that the poet once experienced in his life, like telling a dark and harsh real life story to the people who didn’t know what life was like in the war. It made people think that the story had ended but it isn’t and somehow, the readers sympathizes more to the soldiers. The poet has used of metaphor in “ Nor any voice of mourning save the choir”. This shows the voice of people calling the soldiers from home and suggest that the despair on the front line is something can’t be replaced. The pain they endured and loss can never be replaced by the cheer of people at home, which suggests Owen suffered much from the war, which made his poem can be this painful. Additionally, he wrote “slow dusk” in the last stanza, also describe the loneliness and the helplessness of the situation. The war shouldn't have happened, because it’s the thing that took away their time, youth and lives. Owen didn’t lose his lives on the battlefield but he lost it due to the physical wounds. Lastly, he wrote “blinds”. The author’s uses of imagery to not only describe a physical wound that the war brought but also the absence of hope, deaths and darkness are swallowing them from the bottom of their heart. They lost their target in lives due to the war, young soldiers who killed many people and broke many people promises and dreams, which made great anxieties to the young people and the feeling of fearful of war, which is similar to Owen and through his poem, the reader can see the painful and destructive, but also dreadful and melancholy of the war in the poem Anthem of Doomed Youth.