POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

ASSIGNMENT

WILFRED OWEN

Year 9 and 10 English Assignment

Wilfred Owen: Poetry of the First World War

Table of Contents

Unit Overview

Achievement Standards

Learning Outcomes

What will be expected of me during this unit?

Assessment Submission Acknowledgement

Part 1: Reading and Responding to Poetry

Part 2: The Poems

Part 3: Context Readings and Activities

Part 4: Directed Tasks

Part 5: Final Assessments

Part 6: Further Readings and Poems

Unit Overview: Wilfred Owen: Poetry of the First World War

The Australian Curriculum for English requires all pupils to ‘compare and evaluate a range of representations of individuals and groups in different historical, social and cultural contexts’. This Assignment is designed to do so through the study of Wilfred Owen’s poetry from the First World War.

The Unit is organised into five parts.

Part 1: Reading and Responding to Poetry

Part 2: The Poems

Part 3: Context Readings and Activities

Part 4: Directed Tasks

Part 5: Final Assessments

Part 6: Further Readings and Poems

Part 1: Reading and Responding to Poetry is designed to help students better understand the techniques and terminology that inform both the writing of poetry and the interpretation and analysis of poetry. Part 1 is divided into two sections.

The first section presents information on poetic theory under the headings ‘Voice, Register and Tone’; ‘Form, Pattern and Typography’ and ‘Imagery, Argument and Viewpoint’. Each segment finishes with ‘Questions to ask yourself when thinking about …’ summarises the concerns of the segment and equips students with strategies to apply when tasked with developing their own understandings and interpretations of the poems.

The second section is a glossary of words and meanings that students are expected to know and apply.

Part 2: The Poems presents students with a collection of eight poems by Wilfred Owen. This selection is by no means exhaustive; further poems are appended at the end of the Assignment if students and / or teachers wish to broaden their field of reference.

Part 3: Context Readings and Activities presents students with a selection of materials to better empower them to contextualise Owen and his poetry.

Part 4: Directed Tasks presents each poem again for close consideration. Students are first offered material that comments on particular language and features of the poem and possible meanings within and interpretations of the poem. Students are then challenged to engage with the poem and offer their own interpretations and insights in response to a range of questions and activities.

Other than the final poem – Spring Offensive; Owen’s last poem and thus the last presented – the sequencing of the poems does not presuppose that they will be studied in this order; nor are they chronologically arranged. Likewise, later questions and activities do not presuppose that earlier ones have been done and thus necessary insights and skills have been gleaned and practised.

In other words, teachers and students may pick and choose what poems they do and when without there being any consequence to realising Assignment outcomes and objectives.

Similarly, and embracing differentiation and self-directed learning practices and theories, it is not anticipated that all tasks will be done by all students all the time. In some instances, teachers may select and direct that particular tasks be done (by a whole class; by select students); at other times, students may choose what they do, with the understanding being that they are engaged with their learning and making choices that not only support and reflect their preferred learning styles, but that also challenge them and broaden and deepen their insights and capabilities.

The Assignment was designed in and for the context of a five (5) lesson week being divided into a “two on: three off” split; two lessons of direct and shared instruction (close analysis and discussion of a poem): three lessons of self-directed learning with designated or nominated activities and responses to be submitted before or at the start of the next learning cycle.

That being said, the Assignment is easily adaptable to suit and address variable needs and contexts.

Part 5: Final Assessments presents a range of both written and oral formal assessments tasks and activities. Again, a wide variety of and variably styled and structured tasks and activities have been presented to afford students and teachers differentiated choices.

Part 6: Appendices – Further Readings and Poems is, self-evidently, a collection of further readings and poems for those students inclined towards exploring matters further, but who may be limited in regards accessing suitable and appropriate materials.

Achievement Standards

The Years 9 and 10 English curriculum is built around the three interrelated strands of Language, Literature and Literacy. This Assignment and its associated activities have been designed to balance and integrate all three strands. Together the strands focus on developing your knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, reading, speaking, writing and creating. The learning will build on concepts, skills and processes developed in earlier years - your teacher will revisit and strengthen these as needed – and introduce, develop and refine new concepts, skills and processes.

Below is a written description of what you will need to know and be able to do by the end of Years 9 and 10. Each Assignment Unit should be seen as an opportunity to develop the skills and knowledge outlined. The Achievement Standards are broken down into six main parts.

Receptive modes (listening, reading and viewing)

By the end of Years 9 and 10, students are able to analyse the ways that text structures can be manipulated for effect. They are able to analyse and explain how images, vocabulary choices and language features distinguish the work of individual authors.

They are able to evaluate and integrate ideas and information from texts to form their own interpretations. They are able to select evidence from the text to analyse and explain how language choices and conventions are used to influence an audience. They are able to listen for ways texts position an audience.

Productive modes (speaking, writing and creating)

Students are able to understand how to use a variety of language features to create different levels of meaning. They are able to understand how interpretations can vary by comparing their responses to texts to the responses of others. In creating texts, students are able to demonstrate how manipulating language features and images can create innovative texts.

Students are able to create texts that respond to issues, interpreting and integrating ideas from other texts. They are able to make presentations and contribute actively to class and group discussions, comparing and evaluating responses to ideas and issues. They are able to edit for effect, selecting vocabulary and grammar that contribute to the precision and persuasiveness of texts and use accurate spelling and punctuation.

Learning Outcomes

Following is a list of learning outcomes that will be addressed in this Assignment. As this is a poetry unit, the material allows and compels such a wide variety of outcomes to be integrated into your study. These descriptions come straight from the Australian National Curriculum - English.

Understand that authors innovate with text structures and language for specific purposes and effects (ACELA1553)

Understand how punctuation is used along with layout and font variations in constructing texts for different audiences and purposes (ACELA1556)

Explain how authors creatively use the structures of … clauses for particular effects (ACELA1557)

Identify how vocabulary choices contribute to specificity, abstraction and stylistic effectiveness (ACELA1561)

Interpret and compare how representations of people and culture in literary texts are drawn from different historical, social and cultural contexts (ACELT1633)

Present an argument about a literary text based on initial impressions and subsequent analysis of the whole text (ACELT1771)

Reflect on, discuss and explore notions of literary value and how and why such notions vary according to context (ACELT1634)

Explore and reflect on personal understanding of the world and significant human experience gained from interpreting various representations of life matters in texts (ACELT1635)

Analyse texts from familiar and unfamiliar contexts, and discuss and evaluate their content and the appeal of an individual author’s literary style (ACELT1636)

Analyse text structures and language features of literary texts, and make relevant comparisons with other texts (ACELT1772)

Analyse how the construction and interpretation of texts, including media texts, can be influenced by cultural perspectives and other texts (ACELY1739)

Interpret, analyse and evaluate how different perspectives of an issue, event, situation, individuals or groups are constructed to serve specific purposes in texts (ACELY1742)

Use comprehension strategies to interpret and analyse texts, comparing and evaluating representations of an event, issue, situation or character in different texts (ACELY1744)

What will be expected of me during this unit?

• Engage with the material – poems and activities – in a consistent and concerted fashion

• Engage with the material – poems and activities – in an open and earnest fashion

• Contribute to the class dynamic and discussion

• Follow instructions carefully

• Take an active responsibility for your own learning

• Demonstrate maturity and independence

• Be organised and ready to learn when you come to lesson

• Take pride in your work

• Set learning goals and constantly review them

• Encourage and help others achieve their goals

• Respect the rights of others to learn

• Do your best

Assessment Submission Acknowledgement

This document must be filled-in, signed and submitted with a formal assessment, when completed.

Assessment Title: _________________________________________________________

Declaration: I confirm that I have completed and submitted this Assessment on the date noted below. The material submitted for assessment is my own work. Material from other sources has not been submitted, unless acknowledged.

Student’s name: __________________________________________________________

Student’s signature:_______________________________________________________

Submission date: _________________________________________________________

Teacher feedback:

Wilfred Owen

POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Part 1: Reading and Responding to Poetry

Reading and Responding to Poetry

One of the characteristic things about poetry is its richness or density of meaning. Poets work closely on language - they make it do as much as possible in the space of a small number of words. That's why poems need reading more slowly, and more often, than other kinds of text.

This quality of concentration is characteristic of all poetry whatever cultural tradition or context it comes from. It reflects the nature of poetry as an expressive art - that what a poem says or does matters to the person who is writing it. It's what enables poems to lodge memorably in our minds, and to go on extending and deepening their meanings over time.

Studying poetry in school is at least partly about learning to appreciate what goes into a poem's making. This introductory section looks at four broad aspects of poetic craft which contribute, in different ways, to the meanings readers are able to make.

VOICE • REGISTER • TONE

Poetry is written to be heard as well as seen, to be spoken as well as read. Poets listen to their drafts as they emerge and try to develop a distinctive voice or style across a body of work. One mark of enduring quality in a poet is a sense of a recognisable individual voice.

A poem's voice may also give us a sense of where it's coming from in a wider sense. It may be the characteristic voice of a particular place, time or literary tradition. Or it may be more universal.

VOICE is not always a matter of simple identity. In some poems there is more than one voice - for example, when the poem is set out in the form of a dialogue. In some poems, the voice which has been adopted is that of a 'persona', a kind of character within the poem - so the 'I' of a poem is not always the author.

As with other kinds of writing, a poet's choice of REGISTER - of vocabulary and grammatical structures - will strongly affect the way a reader responds.

The VOICE of a poem is often clearest when the poem is addressed directly to the reader, or to a third party whose conversation is overheard. This kind of voice will tend to be more personal, more like a drama than a written narrative.

The TONE of a poem is best explained as the 'tone of voice' in which we imagine the poem to be spoken. From the tone, we get our sense of the poet's relationship to the reader - or the nature of the adopted persona. We may also pick up an expressed attitude towards the things described. The tone of a writer's work is sometimes so consistent that it becomes a part of what we recognise about her or him. In other cases, tone may vary both between poems and within a single poem, as the variations of voice and mood track the development of the poem's ideas.

Questions to ask yourself when thinking about VOICE

• How would I read this poem aloud? Is there anything in the voice of the poem which makes it difficult for me to read it aloud?

• Does the voice in this poem sound as if it's coming from a particular time or place?

• Who seems to be speaking in this poem? Who is the poem speaking to?

• Does the poem's tone of voice suggest a particular attitude towards or relationship with, the reader?

• Is the poem characterised by a particular kind of vocabulary or sentence?

• Does the tone of voice suggest a particular attitude towards the subject matter of the poem?

• Is there more than one kind of voice in the poem? If so, what's the relationship between the two?

FORM • PATTERN • TYPOGRAPHY

Poetic FORM is to do with a poem's shape and pattern, both on the page and to the ear. One basic distinction is between what are called ‘metrical’ and ‘non-metrical’ forms. Metrical poetry (or verse) is composed to fit a recurring pattern of rhythmical stresses, and often a rhyme scheme as well. The poem is laid out in regular blocks. The verse unit ranges from simple couplets to elaborate stanzas. Most song lyrics are metrical, to match the repeating patterns of musical composition. In poems of this kind, the meaning is, to some extent, made to fit the shape: the poet's choice of words and word order must take account of the rhyme scheme and the pattern of syllables.

In a non-metrical poem, on the other hand, the structure is 'organic' in the sense that it finds its own shape line by line, resulting in irregular patterns and variable paragraphs, rather than fixed stanzas. This form of poetry, sometimes called 'free verse', is built around the varying rhythms of the speaking voice, and of natural grammar, so is likely to sound more like a person talking.

Before 1900, virtually all poetry in English was metrical. During the 20th century, the Modern movement greatly extended the boundaries of what was considered poetic, so that any kind of language could be incorporated into a poem, and irregular forms became much more common. Yet traditional metre hasn't died out and many contemporary poets are still strongly attracted to its music and its feeling of durability.

Although some modern poetry (like some modern art or music) may appear entirely fragmentary and 'unstructured', most poets consider carefully how a poem sounds and appears. In a non-metrical poem, poetic PATTERNING can be achieved in other ways, particularly through the repetition of words and phrases to build rhythmic and emotional energy. The majority of the poems in this Assignment Unit take a nonmetrical form, but build pattern and cohesion in other ways, such as through consistency of voice or line length, repeated grammatical structures or the echoes of half rhymes or rhythmic fragments.

Another aspect of FORM is to do with the visual presentation of the poem on the page, or its TYPOGRAPHY. Traditionally, each line of a metrical poem is marked with a capital letter (regardless of sentence grammar), and indentations at the start of lines correspond to rhyme patterns. There is also a tendency for punctuation to coincide with the ends of lines and for each stanza to end with a full stop so that 'running on' the grammatical sense across a line break is a definite variation on the established pattern.

In non-metrical poetry, lines are likely to be more fluid, varying in length for specific effects and running on as a matter of course. Capitals are used as in prose, to begin sentences, rather than lines. Lines aren't marked so emphatically, and punctuation marks, which are a written convention, may be replaced by spaces representing the breath-pauses of speech. In a lot of modern poetry, the upper case and other punctuation marks have been eliminated altogether. Instead, the poet relies on line breaks and spacing to suggest how the poem should be voiced and understood. Different fonts (typefaces) and other variations can also be used to structure or emphasise.

Questions to ask yourself when thinking about FORM

• Is there a formal structure to this poem? Does it have a regular metrical pattern? Is there a rhyme scheme? Could someone sing this poem?

• Are there other ways in which this poem is patterned? What elements of repetition are there?

• Is this structure associated with a particular type of poem or particular period?

• What typographic conventions does the poem use, or not use? How does that contribute to the style or voice of the poem?

• Do any of these things help me to understand what kind of poem this is?

• Does the form of the poem emphasise any aspect of its mood or meaning?

IMAGERY • REPRESENTATION • METAPHOR

In poetry, an 'IMAGE' is a sharply-focused descriptive detail. This is most often a visual detail (like an image in a film), though it can evoke any of the senses. It is through their images that poets engage the reader's imagination, evoking a place, mood or person, and also influencing us to respond in particular ways.

At the core of any IMAGE is a noun. Adjectives may extend and adjust the noun's meaning, as may the verbs which go with it, but the noun is what we see - so it will be a concrete (i.e. non-abstract) -noun. Images work because 'things' carry meanings of various kinds, depending on the context in which they occur - they can imply an event, an emotion or a wider idea.

IMAGES will often mean different things to different people, depending on their experience both as readers and as human beings, and one of the things poets do is to compel or encourage us to see things in a different way. However, images also work through the shared meanings and associations which any culture develops around particular words or objects - their connotations. When an image is consistently recognised and interpreted in the same way, it becomes an established symbol within that culture.

IMAGES can be either literal or figurative. In the case of literal imagery, connotation is achieved through selecting and emphasising details.

When an IMAGE is figurative (or metaphorical - the words are interchangeable), its connotations are doubly emphasised since that is the point of the shift into figurative language: the thing described acquires the connotations of the thing named. For that reason, METAPHORS tend to feature strongly in what is sometimes termed 'emotive language', whether in poetry or in propaganda. Metaphors are also a means of converting abstract ideas into the physical images with which poetry deals.

Discussion of METAPHOR in the classroom is sometimes sidetracked into the essentially trivial distinction between 'simile' and 'metaphor' as alternative forms of 'linguistic device'. What matters is not the difference between the two, but the way both are used to impose or suggest meanings.

A METAPHOR is not so much a decorative 'device' as a way of thinking. Some metaphors are so deep-rooted that they structure the way almost everybody thinks - that life is a journey, that love is a fire, that argument is a kind of warfare. Others, in poetry especially, are acts of invention, in which one object is fused imaginatively with another, in order to startle or disturb the reader into some fresh perception. Careful attention to the IMAGES in a poem helps to put us directly in touch with the poet's imaginative vision, and with the values and attitudes which underlie it.

Questions to ask yourself when thinking about IMAGERY

• Which image first caught my attention? Which image is most central to what the poem has to say? Did any of the images surprise me?

• Are some of these images metaphorical? What things are being superimposed here? How does this add to my understanding?

• Do some of the images suggest strong positive or negative connotations?

• Do certain images connect with each other, to create a particular mood, attitude or impression?

• Are there contrasting images in the poem? How do these contribute to meaning? Do they relate to shifts in the narrative or argument?

NARRATIVE • ARGUMENT • VIEWPOINT

The NARRATIVE of a text is the order in which events, images or ideas are recorded, and the way in which they relate to each other. In looking at the narrative sequence of a poem, we are focusing on the way it has been constructed in terms of the development of its content.

Many poems are like miniature stories. They record a series of events, perhaps leading to some kind of insight at the end. First person NARRATIVES give the appearance of personal memories. Third person narratives or descriptions can seem more detached, with less of a sense that the poet is present in the text.

The past is the natural tense for NARRATIVES, though telling a story in the present tense can produce a sense of reliving the experience, moment by moment. Looking carefully at the tenses used in a poem will help to establish its chronology, and to distinguish, for example, 'how it used to be' (also signalled by words like 'once' or 'then') from how it is now, or how it might be in the future.

The distinction between NARRATIVE and ARGUMENT isn't a hard and fast one - narratives can be used to illustrate arguments, for example. But many poems are built around the logical development of ideas, rather than the recounting of events. Arguments proceed by asking questions, stating propositions, referring to examples, drawing conclusions. However, while other kinds of writers deal in abstract debate, poets are more likely to make their point through resonant images, or other less direct means. This way of organising a poem is particularly common to those written in the second person.

The underlying structure of a poem can usually be detected through its use of connectives. In the case of ARGUMENT, these are likely to be logical conjunctions such as 'if', 'so', 'because', 'but', 'yet', rather than the conjunctions of time used in narratives.

Another way of thinking about the development of a poem is in terms of its transitions - the term used in film editing for the way shots are joined. Spaces between sections in a poem may signal a break in continuity: a kind of fade out and in. One image may effectively dissolve into another, or the cut may be more abrupt. And as with films, poems often leave it to the reader to make sense of such transitions for themselves.

Thinking about the sequence of a NARRATIVE or an ARGUMENT in this way may draw attention to the VIEWPOINT of the poem and take us back to the sense of 'voice' with which we started. We need to work out whose voice we are hearing, and who is seeing whatever is being described. Is the viewpoint fixed or does it shift between different observers, or over time? As with any other text, the beginning and the ending of a poem are likely to carry a particular kind of force.

Questions to ask yourself when looking at NARRATIVE

• Is the poem divided into sections? Do these correspond to shifts in the development of the story or the argument? How does the poet manage the transitions between them?

• What tenses are used here? Is there a dominant tense, or a mixture? What does this tell me about the poem?

• Which pronouns are used? Is this text broadly first, second or third person? Or is it a mixture?

• From what viewpoint is the story told? Where would the camera be if the poem were filmed? Does the viewpoint change?

• Is it clear what kind of sequence this is narration, argument, description?

• Which are the key connectives? What do they tell me about the way the poem develops?

• What questions does the poet ask? What questions are left for the reader to ask?

Glossary

The following definitions are provided so that you can further develop your ability to deploy language and terminology to adequately and effectively construct and convey qualified interpretations and insights regarding poets and poetry.

These are words and meanings that you are expected to know and apply.

alliteration: the repetition of initial letters in words next to, or near each other, to create a sound effect, for example: 'From pillar to post a pantomime'. Most often a consonant.

ambiguity: words and lines can sometimes suggest more than one interpretation, or meaning: poems are sometimes shaped so that their meaning is deliberately ambiguous, or uncertain, for example, ‘salients’ in Exposure.

assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences.

colloquial expressions: popular words and phrases which can be found in everyday conversation. This aspect of language is often linked to region, culture, historical period or occupation, for example: ‘Boche’ was a pejorative French euphemism for the Germans.

couplets: pairs of lines which are often rhymed.

imagery: the descriptive language used to create a particular picture, feeling, or mood in the reader's imagination.

metaphor: a particular kind of image, which describes something as though it were something else. For example, a carpenter's knuckles could described as 'silver knobs of nails'. A line like this works in two ways; it evokes the work-worn hands of the carpenter and the polished highlights of his skin, but it also suggests the nails which he hammers into the wood and the shine on them, created by the hammering. In an extended metaphor, the comparison is developed over the course of the poem.

mood: the atmosphere of a poem and the feelings which it evokes. Some of the sound patterns and images of a poem could, for example, evoke bitterness, energy and anger. Regular stanza lengths in a poem could help to reinforce a mood of cold fury and conviction, if supported by other techniques.

narrator: the speaker, the person who tells what happens in a poem or a story. The narrator's views and experiences may be those of the poet, but it would be a mistake to assume that this is always the case.

onomatopoeia: the sound of an onomatopoeic word helps to suggest what it describes or means, for example 'splash' or ‘plonk’.

para-rhyme: consists of two words with identical consonant-sounds and different vowels; they are incomplete forms of rhyme – the reader expects a perfect rhyme and is left vaguely unsatisfied and frustrated. The effect is one of sadness, of unfulfilled promise and of discord. Often, the second word in the pair is lower in pitch than the first (“escaped / scooped”, “grained / ground”), making a falling, despairing sound.

personification: a type of metaphor where an animal, object or abstract idea is described as though it were human. This can help make what is being described 'come to life' but it can also be used to suggest how closely people and things might be related to each other.

puns: sometimes called a play on words, a pun is any word or expression which allows the poet to create more than one meaning. Puns can also be created by using words which have similar sounds but different meanings.

rhyme: words that have a matching sound quality. Poems sometimes have rhyming words within the lines (internal rhyme) instead of, or as well as, at the end of them.

rhyme scheme: the pattern in which rhyming sounds occur within a poem.

simile: the direct comparison of one thing with another. Most similes make the comparison by using the words 'as' or 'like'.

sound pattern: this is a general term which refers to any words or lines where sounds are repeated to create a mood, a feeling, or the noises of everyday life, for example: 'hit, hurt and flattened'. In this line, repetition of the soft, consonant letters h, f and t combines with a succession of three short vowel sounds to suggest the quick, short, intakes of breath and the accompanying effort as the carpenter with knuckles described as 'silver knobs of nails' hammers the nails home.

stanza: poems are often organized into groups of lines called stanzas or verses.

syllable: the basic sound unit of a word : 'flat' has one syllable; 'flattened' has two.

tone: the attitude of the poem, for example; serious, humorous, or sarcastic.

voice: the voice of a poem helps to suggest its mood, attitude and purpose. Essentially, it can be defined as the way we might choose to express the words and lines, were we to read the poem out loud.

vowel sounds: the letters a, e, i, o, u are called vowels. The remaining letters of the alphabet are called consonants. It is difficult to define the 'length' of vowel sounds without taking into account the consonants placed next to them; if you are able to 'sing' or sustain a vowel sound, it is 'long'; if the vowel sound allows you to speak it abruptly, it is 'short'.

An Approach to Accessing Poetry #1: Entry-Level Empathy

Preamble:

There is no ‘right way’ to analyse and interpret a poem. There is no strategy or technique that you can learn and apply that will guarantee you a complete and correct analysis and interpretation.

This is so, I suspect, primarily because there is no correct or complete ‘answer’ to a poem. It is what it is, and works in the way that it does – its relative success is mediated by what you bring to it, and the manner and mindset with which you engage with the piece. Basically, a poem is what you make of it.

In effect, I think it’s fair to say that a poet doesn’t compose a poem with the intention to impose meaning – to be didactic. A poet doesn’t compose a poem anticipating that a reader will ‘get it’ or ‘won’t get it’ and that it’s one or the other. If that was the intention, why write a poem? Why not just lay out the idea, experience or opinion in prose form?

I think, and believe, that a poet composes a piece with the intention to challenge a reader to explore the possibilities inherent within language … and to consider how and why these possibilities afford a reader the opportunity to explore and consider different perspectives about shared concerns related to being bearers of the human condition.

Which is a long-winded and convoluted way of saying: the possible meanings of a poem will reveal themselves … but you need to draw them out.

Entry Level Empathy Approach.

1. Read and (re)read the poem – in isolation. That is, take the ‘clean version’ and read it, free of the distractions of other materials. ‘Own it’, as a language construction – as an ordered sequence of words on a page.

What does what is there on the page mean to you?

Irrespective of what you have thought or heard before, what do you understand the poem to be about?

2. Imagine that you had to explain the poem to an unfamiliar audience; make notes as to how you would do so. Consider integrating phrases like:

Dulce Et Decorum Est is about …

In the poem, Owen describes …

By describing this in this way (concept + example ?), Owen is trying to say/show that …

A distinctive feature of the poem is that … he makes this part of it like this in order to …

This is a fundamental need / concern at this stage – you have to fashion for yourself a ‘working knowledge’ of the poem, and be able to enunciate it.

3. On a clean copy version go through the poem and annotate the piece – this is a messy but necessary job. In effect, use a red or blue or green or whatever colour pen and go through and, in effect, interrogate the poem. Line by line, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence, stanza by stanza … note on and around the piece things that you consider to be of interest or importance and things that you don’t yet understand.

And by interrogate I mean interrogate – you’ve got to work the piece hard and thoroughly for information. Don’t settle for the superficial and easy – dig deeper for significances. If the poem won’t tell you something, don’t let up – push harder, or approach the problem from a different angle.

In this way, you will come to ‘own’ the poem – you engage with it as a subject and break it down. Thus, what you believed yourself to understand at point 2. will now be more fully realised and better able to be substantiated … or you might

have had that understanding challenged and now wish to reconsider and reconceptualise it.

4. Now that you own the poem in isolation – in its ‘it is what it is’ state – it should prove advantageous to consolidate and broaden and deepen your understanding by (re)reading any ‘context materials’. In effect, apply a filter of ‘known associations’ and ‘informing / overarching concerns’.

Then go back into the (recently) clean version and amend or update your annotations with any new or different insights or possibilities. This cycling back through the versions may seem tedious and tiresome … but it will yield significant positive outcomes. This is called being rigorous.

An Approach to Accessing Poetry #2: Close Analysis

Preamble:

Any opinion or critical response to a poem must be built upon a personal reading and the particular understandings and insights that come from your engagement. What you make of it and what it means to you are of utmost importance.

Close analysis will not tell you or reveal to you the meaning of, or answer to, a poem.

Close analysis might offer you new understandings and insights, because of the rigour it imposes … but its primary function and benefit is to offer you ways and means of substantiating and validating that which you already think and believe.

In effect, close analysis presupposes that you accept that a poem – just like any literary form – is a carefully considered and carefully contrived construct. It is made up of elements. Close analysis, then, is about deconstructing the poem – identifying those elements and analysing how they have been employed to realise an effect.

An analogy: the author is an artist that uses the tools at his or her disposal to fashion a piece of art. In this case, the tools of the author are called ‘literary techniques’. They are deployed to ‘make’ the poem – the words are sculpted into a poem.

And this is what we’re looking for: the techniques deployed through the words employed.

But you have to (re)read the poem closely and carefully … which you should already – given that this is Senior School English - be comfortable and familiar doing.

And every time you find something of interest or significance, you must then interrogate it: ask of it “and-so-what?”

Because there’s nothing ‘random’ in a poem. There’s no padding. Everything’s there for a reason. Everything in it has been carefully considered and judiciously deployed.

To return to the artist analogy: if the poet is a particular ‘type’ of artist, he is a sculptor. He takes the block of stone and cuts out and carves away the excess bulk, and then chips and chisels away the unnecessary bits, and then polishes and refines, polishes and refines until all that’s left is all that is necessary, and all that matters.

Poetry is language that has been sculpted into its most elemental of forms.

And like any piece of art it hopes for you to appreciate and enjoy it for what it is, but also expects you to consider and contemplate it closely and carefully … if you want to be rewarded for your efforts.

Close Analysis: What to look for in a poem …

Theme:

What issues and ideas do you think the poem deals with?

What is the poem saying? What is its message/moral?

What did the poet hope/intend to achieve in writing this poem?

Persona:

Who is telling the story of the poem? (n.b. persona does not necessarily = poet)

Through whose eyes do we see the characters and events of the ‘story’?

How would you characterise the ‘voice’ of the persona?

What do you believe are the thoughts and feelings of the persona?

To what extent / in what way is the persona significant to / in the poem?

Form:

How is the poem arranged?

Does it have stanzas?

How are they organised?

Does the physical appearance of the poem affect / contribute to its meaning?

To what extent / in what way is the form of the poem significant?

Rhythm:

What rhythm (if any) do you perceive in the poem?

Is the movement slow, steady, fast?

Is the rhythm constant, or does it vary?

To what extent / in what way is the rhythm of the piece significant to / in the poem?

Rhyme:

Does the poem use rhyme? If not, why not?

At the end of lines, or in the middle?

Which words do the rhymes draw attention to?

Why does the poet want you to notice the words that rhyme?

Mood:

What is the mood or emotion or ‘feel’ of the poem?

Happiness? Sadness? Anger? Seriousness? Amusement?

Does the mood of the poem change?

How is the mood of the poem achieved? Through word choice? Technique(s)?

Tone:

What does the poem ‘sound’ like?

What kind of ‘attitude’ does the poem have?

Does the tone of the poem change?

What do think is the poet’s attitude to the subject of the poem?

What do you think the poet’s attitude is to the intended audience?

How is the tone of the poem achieved? Through word choice? Technique(s)?

Sounds:

How do you think the poem should be read aloud? Softly? Loudly?

Do you think there are special words or phrases that need to be louder than others?

What effect does the rhyming scheme (if any) of the poem have on you?

Sounds - alliteration:

Does the poem use repeated consonant sounds? Why?

What words are emphasised by this alliteration?

Sounds – assonance:

Does the poem use repeated vowel sounds? To what effect?

Look at the vowel sounds ‘in general’. Does the poet slow the poem down with long vowel sounds, or use short sharp ones, crisply?

Are there other sound effects, like onomatopoeia (the sound imitating the sense/action)?

Imagery:

What effects do the metaphors, similes and symbols of the poem have on you?

What pictures and sounds are conjured up by the poem?

What associations do they expect you to make?

To what extent / in what way is the imagery of the piece significant to / in the poem?

Personal response:

What are your feelings about the poem?

Does the poem relate to or challenge your understanding and experience of life?

In this way, through close annotation and analysis, you will be able to ‘harvest’ material with which and upon which to qualify and substantiate your insights and interpretations and opinions.

This material will become the evidence upon which you build your case. This material will be the nucleus of your paragraphs.

Close Analysis: Theory in Application

For the above approach to ‘work’ – for it to yield useful material - the approach assumes that you have cultivated personal and particular understandings and insights from your engagement with a poem. What you make of it and what it means to you remain of utmost importance.

Close analysis serves only to help you substantiate or qualify for an audience your interpretation of a poem.

Close Analysis: What to look for in a poem … asks you a lot of questions. Or, more so, it gives you a lot of questions for you to ask of and about a poem.

But, coming up with answers is not the be all and end all; you also have to be able to explain to your audience how and why particularities of the poem have given you reason or cause to reach these understandings and insights.

This is when and where annotations become both useful and necessary.

And for these annotations to really work to your advantage, they have to be emergent from or in regards to the elements of the poem that YOU have responded to or identified to be of significance.

What I find that affects me might well affect you differently, or not at all.

You might find something that I miss, because maybe I missed it. Or, maybe I did find it, but didn’t find it to be of significance and therefore it didn’t warrant annotating.

All of which is why I am trying to encourage you to read a poem for your own meanings.

All of which is why I will be trying to encourage you to engage with poems closely and carefully and from different perspectives and with different approaches.

Because it’s what matters to you that matters most.

And all you have to do is figure out why it matters, and how whatever it is you’ve found affects the way you understand the poem.

Close analysis and rigorous reading will repay your efforts.

Perhaps not immediately all the time … but, most definitely, at some point.

Where this is all heading:

You know what the final assignment is – the essay question and the case that you will need to make.

You will need to choose a poem or poems upon and through which to make this case.

For each of the poems you must – in a clear and confident and (hopefully) compelling way – be able to contend with the following dot-points.

Or, another way of putting it: if you ever feel inclined to say or suggest or choose to believe that you “don’t know what to do” or “don’t know how or where to start”, well, contending with (i.e. “answering”) the following dot-points could / should be a good and necessary place to start.

What does your audience – the reader of your treatment – need to know in order to ‘get’ what it is that you want to say and/or show?

In writing this poem, what is it that you believe Owen sought to say and / or show – what was his motivation; what was the message or moral he might reasonably have expected the reader to glean from the poem?

How does he accomplish this in and through his poem?

In order to back-up your insights and interpretations, what evidence would you present to support your determinations?

Given this selection of evidence, how are you going to use it to validate your insights and interpretations.

Given this selection of evidence:

o how are you going to use it to support the making of your case?o how are you going to use it to validate your thesis / line of argument?o how are you going to use it to answer the set question?

Wilfred Owen

POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Part 2: The Poems

Futility

Move him into the sun -

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

5 Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, -

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

10 Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,

Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

- 0 what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth's sleep at all?

The Sentry

We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,

And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell

Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.

Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime,

5 Kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour,

And choked the steps too thick with clay to climb.

What murk of air remained stank old, and sour

With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men

Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den,

10 If not their corpses . . .

There we herded from the blast

Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last, -

Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles,

And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping

And splashing in the flood, deluging muck -

15 The sentry's body; then, his rifle, handles

Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.

We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined

"O sir, my eyes - I'm blind - I'm blind, I'm blind!"

Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids

20 And said if he could see the least blurred light

He was not blind; in time he'd get all right.

"I can't," he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids',

Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there

In posting Next for duty, and sending a scout

25 To beg a stretcher somewhere, and flound'ring about

To other posts under the shrieking air.

* * *

Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,

And one who would have drowned himself for good, -

I try not to remember these things now.

30 Let dread hark back for one word only: how

Half listening to that sentry's moans and jumps,

And the wild chattering of his broken teeth,

Renewed most horribly whenever crumps

Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath -

35 Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout

"I see your lights!" But ours had long died out.

A Terre

(BEING THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANY SOLDIERS)

Sit on the bed. I'm blind, and three parts shell.

Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.

Both arms have mutinied against me, - brutes.

My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

5 I tried to peg out soldierly, - no use!

One dies of war like any old disease.

This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.

I have my medals? - Discs to make eyes close.

My glorious ribbons? - Ripped from my own back

10 In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.)

A short life and a merry one, my buck!

We used to say we'd hate to live dead-old, -

Yet now . . . I'd willingly be puffy, bald,

And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys

15 At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose

Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting,

Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.

Well, that's what I learnt, - that, and making money.

Your fifty years ahead seem none too many?

20 Tell me how long I've got? God! For one year

To help myself to nothing more than air!

One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long?

Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,

And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.

25 My servant's lamed, but listen how he shouts!

When I'm lugged out, he'll still be good for that.

Here in this mummy-case, you know, I've thought

How well I might have swept his floors for ever.

I'd ask no nights off when the bustle's over,

30 Enjoying so the dirt. Who's prejudiced

Against a grimed hand when his awn's quite dust,

Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn,

Less warm than dust that mixes with arms' tan?

I'd love to be a sweep, now, black as Town,

35 Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load?

O Life, Life, let me breathe, - a dug-out rat!

Not worse than ours the existences rats lead –

Nosing along at night down some safe rut,

They find a shell-proof home before they rot.

40 Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,

Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys,

And subdivide, and never come to death.

Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth.

"I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone",

45 Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned:

The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.

"Pushing up daisies" is their creed, you know.

To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap,

For all the usefulness there is in soap.

50 D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup?

Some day, no doubt, if . . .

Friend, be very sure

I shall be better off with plants that share

More peaceably the meadow and the shower.

Soft rains will touch me, - as they could touch once,

55 And nothing but the sun shall make me ware.

Your guns may crash around me. I'll not hear;

Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince.

Don't take my soul's poor comfort for your jest.

Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds,

60 But here the thing's best left at home with friends.

My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest,

To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased

On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.

Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned

65 To do without what blood remained these wounds.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

5 No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

10 Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Disabled

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,

And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,

Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park

Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,

5 Voices of play and pleasure after day,

Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

***

About this time Town used to swing so gay

When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,

And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim, -

10 In the old times, before he threw away his knees.

Now he will never feel again how slim

Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands;

All of them touch him like some queer disease.

***

There was an artist silly for his face,

15 For it was younger than his youth, last year.

Now, he is old; his back will never brace;

He's lost his colour very far from here,

Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,

And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,

20 And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

***

One time he Liked a blood-smear down his leg,

After the matches, carried shoulder-high.

It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,

He thought he'd better join. - He wonders why.

25 Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts,

That's why; and may be, too, to please his Meg;

Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts

He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;

Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.

30 Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,

And Austria’s did not move him. And no fears

Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts

For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;

And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;

35 Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.

And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

***

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.

Only a solemn man who brought him fruits

Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.

***

40 Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,

And do what things the rules consider wise,

And take whatever pity they may dole.

To-night he noticed how the women's eyes

Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.

45 How cold and late it is! Why don't they come

And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

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.

5 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,

10 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.

15 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,

20 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, -

25 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.

Exposure

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us ...

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...

Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

5 But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

10 What are we doing here?

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow ...

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,

15 But nothing happens.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

Less deathly than the air that shudders black with snow,

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew;

We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,

20 But nothing happens.

Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces -

We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,

Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,

Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

25 Is it that we are dying?

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed

With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed, -

30 We turn back to our dying.

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

35 For love of God seems dying.

To-night, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,

Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.

The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,

40 But nothing happens.

Spring Offensive

Halted against the shade of a last hill,

They fed, and lying easy, were at ease

And, finding comfortable chests and knees,

Carelessly slept. But many there stood still

5 To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,

Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled

By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,

For though the summer oozed into their veins

10 Like an injected drug for their bodies' pains,

Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,

Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field –

And the far valley behind, where the buttercup

15 Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,

Where even the little brambles would not yield,

But clutched and dung to them like sorrowing hands;

They breathe like trees unstirred.

Till like a cold gust thrills the little word

20 At which each body and its soul begird

And tighten them for battle. No alarms

Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste –

Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced

The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.

25 0 larger shone that smile against the sun, -

Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together

Over an open stretch of herb and heather

Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned

30 With fury against them; earth set sudden cups

In thousands for their blood; and the green slope

Chasmed and steepened to infinite space.

* * *

Of them who running on that last high place

Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up

35 On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge,

Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge,

Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence' brink

Ventured but drave too swift to sink,

40 The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,

And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames

With superhuman inhumanities,

Long-famous glories, immemorial shames –

And crawling slowly back, have by degrees

45 Regained cool peaceful air in wonder -

Why speak not they of comrades that went under?

Wilfred Owen

POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Part 3: Context Readings & Activities

WILFRED OWEN 1893 - 1918Portrait by James Mitchell from a photograph of Wilfred Owen,

then an officer cadet, July 1916.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF WILFRED OWEN

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 1893 - 1918

Born Oswestry, Shropshire. Educated at Birkenhead Institute and Shrewsbury Technical College.

From the age of nineteen Owen wanted to be a poet and immersed himself in poetry, being especially impressed by Keats and Shelley. He wrote almost no poetry of importance until he saw action in France in 1917.

He was deeply attached to his mother to whom most of his 664 letters are addressed. (She saved every one.) He was a committed Christian and became lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden near Reading 1911-1913 – teaching Bible classes and leading prayer meetings – as well as visiting parishioners and helping in other ways.

From 1913 to 1915 he worked as a language tutor in France.

He felt pressured by the propaganda to become a soldier and volunteered on 21st October 1915. He spent the last day of 1916 in a tent in France joining the Second Manchesters.

Within a week he had been transported to the front line in a cattle wagon and was "sleeping" 70 or 80 yards from a heavy gun which fired every minute or so. He was soon wading miles along trenches two feet deep in water. Within a few days he was experiencing gas attacks and was horrified by the stench of the rotting dead; his sentry was blinded, his company then slept out in deep snow and intense frost till the end of January. That month was a profound shock for him: he now understood the meaning of war. "The people of England needn't hope. They must agitate," he wrote home. (See his poems The Sentry and Exposure.)

He escaped bullets until the last week of the war, but he saw a good deal of front-line action: he was subjected to artillery barrages, concussed and suffered shell-shock.

At Craiglockhart, the psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh, he met Siegfried Sassoon who inspired him to develop his war poetry.

He was sent back to the trenches in September, 1918 and in October won the Military Cross by seizing a German machine-gun and using it to kill a number of Germans.

On 4th November he was shot and killed near the village of Ors. The news of his death reached his parents’ home as the Armistice bells were ringing on 11 November 1918.

WORLD WAR I AND WILFRED OWEN AND WAR POETRY

BEFORE THE WAR

In 1914, most British people had forgotten what war was actually like. There had not been a major European conflict for a century. Only professional soldiers had fought in South Africa. Young men were restless. The Edwardian era was, to people of the time, stuffy and dull, and also shameful with its strikes, suffragette riots, and its extremes of wealth and poverty. In August 1914, the war seemed a glorious adventure.

Poets reflected this enthusiasm. They showed the war as an epic. Honour, Glory, Sacrifice were key words. Ideals of chivalry, the old code of medieval knights, were taken from Victorian writers and painters who had loved the stories of King Arthur. A soldier was now a 'warrior'; the enemy the 'foe'. The dead were the 'fallen'; fighting was 'strife'. 'Guerdon', a knight's reward for service, was often used.

OUTBREAK OF WAR

When the war began, the issues involved seemed entirely clear to the British peoples: Germany had invaded neutral Belgium, terrorized the civilian population, and prepared to attack France in great strength. There was no question but that Germany was an evil aggressor and that Belgium and France must be rescued. Any Briton with any self-respect at all had to "do his bit" for the war effort.

The enthusiasm with which the British public entered the war in August, 1914 now seems barely credible.

Poetry of the time expressed high ideals in a more forceful way than any other medium. There was suddenly a huge demand for poetry and booksellers found that their trade was booming. Dozens of patriotic anthologies were published and the public clamoured for more.

THE TRENCHES

The horrors of trench warfare did not become fully apparent even to the Army until 1915, and the civilian population at home remained in ignorance for much longer. It was supposed by most people at first that the professional army could dispose of Germany quite quickly; the thousands of young men who rushed to enlist in 1914 had no idea of the protracted nightmare that lay ahead. After a year or two, however, the troops realized that the war might be endless: at the cost of tens of thousands of lives, it was possible to gain a few miles of ground but not to score a decisive victory. The German strength seemed unbreakable; and Germany in her turn discovered, despite massive offensives at Ypres, Verdun, and other places, that neither Britain nor France could be shaken from their strongholds.

Men returning home on leave from the Front found that civilians seemed to have lost touch with what was happening: the 1914 enthusiasm still persisted. Some of the young officers decided they had a duty to explain the realities of war to the people at home. In 1915 and 1916, these new voices were unsure of themselves and not widely heard; but Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves had begun to work together on poems of protest.

1917

Wilfred Owen did not experience battle conditions until January, 1917. In the summer of that year, shell shocked and in the hospital, he met Sassoon; under Sassoon's encouragement, he began to write against the war. Sassoon himself had risked a public protest against the war earlier in the year, influenced by various pacifists who were convinced that the British government was no longer fighting for an honourable cause. The war had begun as a noble attempt to liberate Belgium from an evil aggressor: now it seemed that both sides were more concerned with grabbing territories and trade advantages. Challenged to state its war aims, the government seemed unable to do so. Men were being sacrificed for imperialism and money. The need for protest had never been clearer.

In addition to the political reasons for objecting to the continuance of hostilities, the poets had to face the reality of death in battle. For centuries it had been considered dulce et decorum, sweet and appropriate, to die for one's country; now modern warfare had made impossible the music, flags, splendid uniforms and exciting battles of traditional fighting. Men without adequate protection - even steel helmets were

not issued at first - had to endure high explosives, machine guns, and poison gas. What horrified Wilfred Owen most about the Front was the ugliness of it all - everything was hideous and deformed in a hellish landscape. Yet in England civilians were still talking of war as a glorious, beautiful thing.

1918

In the spring of 1918, the Germans suddenly broke through the Line and drove the Allies right back almost to Paris. It seemed that nothing could stop their advance. Even the poets realised that Germany was determined to achieve total victory: his protest silenced, Sassoon went back to fight. Still at home for medical reasons, Owen saw that simple protest was an inadequate reaction to the war ; he began to write poems that would express the pity and tragedy of the situation in which all men seemed to be trapped.

The German onslaught, however, was deceptive. As it turned out, Germany had gone too far: she was low in food and in morale, and her triumphant advance turned into a retreat. The Allies, gaining the psychological advantage of being suddenly released from what had seemed certain defeat, pursued their collapsing enemy. At home, newspapers demanded total victory and the annihilation of German military power; at the Front, battle-weary soldiers, sick of slaughter and hating their political leaders far more than the Germans, longed only for peace. Owen, back in the fighting at last, managed to write a few final poems before he was killed on November 4.

The war ended on November 11.

WILFRED OWEN, THE SHOCK OF WAR

On 30th of December 1916 Wilfred Owen, having completed his military training, sailed for France.

No knowledge, imagination or training fully prepared Owen for the shock and suffering of front-line experience. Within twelve days of arriving in France the easy-going chatter of his letters turned to a cry of anguish. By the 9th of January, 1917 he had joined the 2nd Manchesters on the Somme – at Bertrancourt near Amien. Here he took command of Number 3 Platoon, "A" Company.

He wrote home to his mother;

"I can see no excuse for deceiving you about these last four days. I have suffered seventh hell. – I have not been at the front. – I have been in front of it. – I held an advanced post, that is, a "dug-out" in the middle of No Man's Land. We had a march of three miles over shelled road, then nearly three along a flooded trench. After that we came to where the trenches had been blown flat out and had to go over the top. It was of course dark, too dark, and the ground was not mud, not sloppy mud, but an

octopus of sucking clay, three, four, and five feet deep, relieved only by craters full of water . . ."

WILFRED OWEN'S PSYCHOLOGICAL JOURNEY

This short account may give some insight into the development of Owen’s ideas and feelings and into the psychological change that probably takes place in most soldiers in some way, shape or form when subjected to the duress of battle.

It is reasonable to suggest that to fight in a war and kill fellow human beings it is necessary to abandon the basic morality of civilised life and this requires painful mental adjustments – before, during, and after such experiences.

Three statements by Owen:

"All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true poet must be truthful."

"The people of England needn’t hope. They must agitate." Letter 19 January, 1917, shortly after arriving at the front line in France.

"I am more and more a Christian. . . Suffer dishonour and disgrace, but never resort to arms. Be bullied, be outraged, be killed: but do not kill." Letter to his mother, May 1917.

For most of the time he was in the army Wilfred Owen lived and fought as an outsider. By his upbringing, character, religion and philosophy he was totally unsuited to the role of a soldier. He was shy, inoffensive, bookish, introverted, unworldly, sensitive, caring and deeply Christian.

He tried conscientiously to do his duty and play his part. The action he saw and the experiences he had were about as extreme and traumatic as any experienced by other soldiers on the Western Front – in effect, they were characteristic of army battle service during World War I.

In August in Craiglockhart War Hospital he came under the influence of Siegfried Sassoon, an officer, poet and dynamic, vocal and contentious pacifist. Owen, too, wanted to protest the experiences and horrors of military service, yet he couldn't identify with pacifists. His principles were locked into conflict. His role as a soldier and patriot demanded one thing: as a Christian, another. The psychological conflict within him could hardly have been greater.

In a letter in October 1917 he asserted, "I hate washy pacifists." And then, echoing Sassoon's example. "Therefore I feel that I must first get some reputation for gallantry before I could successfully and usefully declare my principles."

In his poetry - even if he had not consciously acknowledged this in his time at the front line - he was now expressing the soldier's loss of moral feeling, as in Apologia Pro Poemate Meo which Owen wrote in October and November of 1917:

Merry it was to laugh there -Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.For power was on us as we slashed bones bareNot to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

In this same period he also wrote a more extended account of the soldier's loss of feelings in Insensibility which he worked on between October 1917 and January 1918: "Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle now long since ironed, can laugh among the dying unconcerned."

By April 1918 he had taken another crucial decision. He had, in effect, decided to turn his back on life. Talking to his brother whilst home on leave he said that he wanted to return to the front line. "I know I shall be killed. But it's the only place I can make my protest from."

In July, encouraged by Robert Ross and the poet, Osbert Sitwell, Owen began to plan a volume of his poems. For it he wrote his first quick, half-thought-out draft of a preface. Some idea of his thoughts about his role may be gleaned from this extract:

“Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.”

On 26th August he was declared fit for front line action and instructed to embark for France. He wrote to Sassoon, "Everything is clear now; and I am in hasty retreat towards the Front."

Owen rejoined the Manchesters at la Neuville near Amiens on 15th September. As his company waited to go into the front line his fear was beginning to show. He wrote to Sassoon, pathetically blaming him for his predicament.

“You said it would be a good thing for my poetry if I went back. That is my consolation for feeling a fool. This is what the shells scream at me every time: ‘Haven't you got the wits to keep out of this?’"

Late afternoon on 1st October, and on through the night, the 96th Brigade of the Manchesters went into action near the villages of Joncourt and Sequehart, six miles north of St Quentin. There was "savage hand-to-hand fighting." At first the Germans were driven back, but they made repeated counter-attacks. Owen threw himself into his task. He wrote to his mother,

“I lost all my earthly faculties, and I fought like an angel . . . I captured a German Machine Gun and scores of prisoners . . . I only shot one man with my revolver . . . My nerves are in perfect order.”

The psychological change in Owen's personality was now definitely confirmed in action. Before this time we do not know what attempts, if any, he made to kill the enemy. His identification with soldiers and the soldiers' role, and his abandonment of his Christian principles, was now complete. Showing his habitual concern for his mother's feelings he implied that he had killed only one man, but the citation accompanying the Military Cross which he was awarded for his actions that night makes it clear that he used the machine gun to kill a large number of men. "He personally manipulated a captured machine gun in an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly."

He now rationalised his motives. In part, he was thinking as a soldier. Forgetting that he had been ordered there, he wrote, "I came out in order to help these boys - directly by leading them as well as an officer can ..." and then he added an idea which had long been with him, seeing himself once again as an outsider to the soldier's role, "indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak as well as a pleader can."

From now on his behaviour could be totally reckless; his writings suggest he was rewarded by surges of adrenalin and a sense of heart-warming camaraderie. He wrote to his mother again on 8th October telling her this story of the aftermath of the battle when his company was still surrounded by the enemy.

The letter concluded, "I scrambled out myself and felt an exhilaration in baffling the Machine Guns by quick bounds from cover to cover. After the shells we had been through, and the gas, bullets were like the gentle rain from heaven ... Must write now to hosts of parents of Missing, etc . . ."

Writing of the battle to Sassoon on 10th October he said, "I cannot say I suffered anything; having let my brain grow dull . . . My senses are charred."

Owen knew that the war was nearing its end. The Germans were in full retreat. The British soldiers were welcomed with joyful gratitude by the French, and he professed to be enjoying himself being part of a band of soldiers. In his last letter to his mother, written on 31st October, he describes the matey atmosphere in his billets as being a “scene of perfect soldierly brotherhood” , and Owen remarks on his lack of sensitivity to danger:

"It is a great life. I am more oblivious than alas! yourself, dear Mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside, and the hollow crashing of the shells. . . Of this I am certain: you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here.”

His mind was now perfectly prepared for his final action. There were now no crucial military objectives, yet the crossing of the seventy feet wide Sambre and Oise Canal, just south of the tiny village of Ors was treated as such. The Germans held the east bank, and were well defended with machine guns. At 5.45 on the morning of 4th November, under a hail of machine gun fire, the Royal Engineers attempted to construct an instant bridge out of wire-linked floats so that Owen's brigade and the 15th and 16th Lancashire Fusiliers could cross and destroy or capture the enemy. Group after group of soldiers went forward and were killed or wounded. Wilfred Owen, standing at the water's edge, was encouraging his men when he was hit and killed.

Seven days later the war was over. Church bells rang throughout the country. As they were ringing in Shrewsbury, Susan and Tom Owen received the telegram announcing their son's death.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LETTERS

Anyone who has ever had to leave home for a while knows what it is like to feel homesick. The desire for news from home becomes desperate. Men in the trenches could be away for a year or more, with little chance of leave to England. Post from home was looked for eagerly. Families could send parcels of food and useful articles to the troops. The Red Cross also sent parcels to troops in the front line.

Soldiers in the front line were not allowed to write letters home. It would, in any case, have been difficult for them to do so. They were allowed to send Field Service Postcards. When they were away from the front line they could write letters. These were censored by their platoon officers to make sure that they were not including information about the military situation which could be used by the enemy.

4th (or 5th) October 1918 In the Field

Strictly private

My darling Mother,

As you must have known both by my silence and from the newspapers which mention this Division - and perhaps by other means & senses – I have been in action for some days.

I can find no word to qualify my experiences except the word SHEER. (Curiously enough I find the papers talk about sheer fighting!) It passed the limits of my Abhorrence. I lost all my earthly faculties, and fought like an angel.

If I started into detail of our engagement I should disturb the censor and my own Rest.

You will guess what has happened when I say I am now Commanding the Company, and in the line had a boy lance-corporal As my Sergeant-Major.

With this corporal who stuck to me and shadowed me like your prayers I captured a German Machine Gun and scores of prisoners.

I'll tell you exactly how another time. I only shot one man with my revolver (at about 30 yards!); The rest I took with a smile. The same thing happened with other parties all along the line we entered.

I have been recommended for the Military Cross; and have recommended every single N.C.O. who was with me! My nerves are in perfect order.

I came out in order to help these boys - directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can. I have done the first.

Of whose blood lies yet crimson on my shoulder where his head was - and where so lately yours was – I must not now write.

It is all over for a long time. We are marching steadily back.

Moreover.

The War is nearing an end.

Still,

Wilfred and more than Wilfred

[punctuation and capitalisations as per original]

Questions for discussion

1. This letter from Wilfred Owen to his mother is simply addressed at the top as "In the Field". Why is he so vague about where he is writing from?

2. What does Owen mean when he says that if he wrote much about the battle he has been in he would "disturb the censor"?

3. What would you "guess" from Owen telling his mother that he was now "Commanding the Company" with a boy lance-corporal as his Sergeant-Major?

4. Why was Wilfred Owen awarded the Military Cross?

5. Owen had already seen a lot of active service. He had spent some time in the War Hospital at Craiglockhart and could have avoided going back to France. He explains at the end of this letter why he went back. What were his reasons?

Wilfred Owen

POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Part 4: Directed Tasks

Futility

Move him into the sun -

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

5 Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, -

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

10 Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,

Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

- 0 what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth's sleep at all?

Futility

Notes and Commentary

“Futility” was probably written in Scarborough, in June 1918

In this poem Owen considers a dead comrade - an unknown soldier referred to in the first line simply as him. We are not told how the soldier died. Perhaps he simply died of exposure in the bitter weather. Perhaps he was killed by a bullet. Certainly he was killed by the war.

Often, a first response to a poem can be - what does it mean? At one, very superficial level, the poet is saying, one of our soldiers is dead. Move him into the sunshine - perhaps this will revive him. The poet then wonders what the purpose of life is, if it can be destroyed so uselessly. And while this is a valid reading of the poem, does it really seem adequate? Is this what the poem is ‘about’ … or is it, more so, a rendering of what ‘happens’ in the poem?

In effect, and as ever, what do you think Owen was endeavouring to say and show in and through this poem?

The opening lines are not, of course, a literal account of something that happened. The poet does not really think that the rays of the sun can bring his dead comrade back to life. Rather the death, the waste of human life and the morning sunlight cause the poet to reflect on the eternal themes of life and death.

At one level it seems reasonable to infer that – given his experiences and their consequences - Wilfred Owen is saying that the whole of creation, the evolution of human life, has been a waste of time if men destroy each other so brutally and stupidly on the field of battle.

Perhaps, in the line "Was it for this the clay grew tall?" Owen is saying that the emergence of human life has all been wasted effort.

The opening stanza is remarkable for its gentleness. In this poem Owen is no longer recording the horrors of what he sees. He is no longer the observer of agony, blood and misery. In this poem he is filled with, first, a gentle pity and finally with a bitter anger that human life can be wasted in this way.

The poem is also remarkable for the simplicity of the language used in it - the bulk of it constitutes words of one syllable.

The form of the poem

The poem is written very simply but the technique involved is subtle and sophisticated. The two stanzas have 7 lines each. Each stanza rhymes a-b-a-b-c-c-c:

In the first stanza "the sun" rhymes with "unsown"

"once" rhymes with "France"

"snow" rhymes with "now" and "know"

Owen uses pure rhymes and half rhymes in this poem - not randomly but carefully organised. In each stanza the fifth and seventh lines end in pure rhymes – “snow” and “know” (“now” is a half rhyme with “snow” and “know”) and “tall” and “at all” (“toil” is a half rhyme with “tall” and “at all”). The rest are half rhymes - notice particularly “seeds” and “sides”, “star” and “stir”.

Futility

Questions and Activities

1. The mood and feelings in the first stanza are different from the mood and feelings in the second stanza. In your opinion, how are they different?

2. In the third line of the poem some editors print unsown, some print half-sown. Which do you prefer? Is the difference in meaning between the two readings

important? Is the difference in the sound of the two words important - which is preferable from the point of view of Owen's rhyming pattern?

3. Which words in the first stanza suggest the gentleness in Owen? How and why? Which word in the second stanza most clearly reveals Owen's bitterness at the waste of life? How and why?

4. At one level this poem is a simple poem. At another level it is a difficult poem. Write a few paragraphs dealing with its simplicity and complexity.

5. Write about the title of the poem. Comment on its appropriateness.

6. Read Rupert Brooke's sonnet The Soldier. Owen’s poem and Brooke's poem are both about death in battle. Both poems have a sad, wistful, elegiac quality. Both poems are very different from each other. Write about both poems explaining the ways in which they differ.

7. Look at the reproduction of the Imperial War Museum’s painting by William Orpen called A death Among the Wounded in the Snow. Write a story or description based on it. Try to bring in thoughts and ideas from Owen’s Futility.

The Soldier

IF I should die, think only this of me;

 

  That there's some corner of a foreign field  

That is for ever England. There shall be  

  In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;  

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,                 5

  Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,  

A body of England's breathing English air,  

  Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.  

  

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,  

  A pulse in the eternal mind, no less    10

    Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

 

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;  

  And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,  

    In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke. 1887 - 1915

Title A Death among the Wounded in the SnowCollection Imperial War Museum Concise Art CollectionArtist Orpen, William (Sir) (RA)Description a group of wounded soldiers gathered around a dead soldier,

mouth open in pain, lying on a stretcher, his steel helmet on his chest. An orderly is about to cover his face with a fold of blanket. His wounded companions react with horror to his death.

Id Number Current Repository IWM:ART 2985Measurements Dimensions 450 mm x 584 mmSupport paperMedium pencil & watercolourMaterial Medium pencil & watercolourMaterial Support paperRights Crown Copyright managed by the Imperial War MuseumStyle Period First World War

 

The Sentry

We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,

And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell

Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.

Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime,

5 Kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour,

And choked the steps too thick with clay to climb.

What murk of air remained stank old, and sour

With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men

Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den,

10 If not their corpses . . .

There we herded from the blast

Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last, -

Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles,

And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping

And splashing in the flood, deluging muck -

15 The sentry's body; then, his rifle, handles

Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.

We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined

"O sir, my eyes - I'm blind - I'm blind, I'm blind!"

Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids

20 And said if he could see the least blurred light

He was not blind; in time he'd get all right.

"I can't," he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids',

Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there

In posting Next for duty, and sending a scout

25 To beg a stretcher somewhere, and flound'ring about

To other posts under the shrieking air.

* * *

Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,

And one who would have drowned himself for good, -

I try not to remember these things now.

30 Let dread hark back for one word only: how

Half listening to that sentry's moans and jumps,

And the wild chattering of his broken teeth,

Renewed most horribly whenever crumps

Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath -

35 Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout

"I see your lights!" But ours had long died out.

The Sentry

Notes and Commentary

Wilfred Owen with his platoon had advanced and moved into a deserted German dug-out. The Germans knew they were there and shelled it. The dug-out was waterlogged. The steps into it were caked with clay and difficult to climb. It stank of past habitation - of the men who had previously occupied it and the fumes left behind by shells.

Owen and his men sheltered as best they could from the bombardment. Eventually a shell exploded at the entrance to their dug-out. The force of the explosion blew out their candles, put pressure on their eyes and took away their breath. The sentry Owen had posted on the steps was thrown back into the dug-out. They thought he was dead but when they picked him up they found that he was still alive but blinded by the blast.

Owen had to put him out of his mind for the moment and get on with his duty - posting a new sentry, sending a messenger off to try to get a stretcher and trying to get to the other positions nearby which were under his command.

There is a powerful realism in the poem. For most of the poem Owen is reporting exactly what happened and bringing it to life for the reader by his vivid, descriptive language.

Onomatopoeia is used very effectively throughout this poem. Note particularly line 13 - "And thud! flump! thud!"

The details of the scene are accurately recorded - the wet, the smells, the debris of trench warfare.

There is a powerful dramatic quality in parts of the poem. Look particularly at the dramatic description of the sentry falling down the steps into the dug-out.

The final line of the poem is deliberately ambiguous. The sentry moans "I see your lights!" Does the sentry really see the flame they are holding against his eyes or does he imagine it? The final six words are rich in ambiguity. On one level Owen is saying that the flame has died out. On a deeper level he is saying that the flame of life in them had long since died out. This ambiguity allows us to see the sentry's blindness and the absence of light in the dug-out as symbolic of the blindness of the war-lords and the civilian population to the tragedy taking place in the trenches.

The Sentry

Questions and Activities

1. Write about the way Owen accumulates DETAIL in this poem to create a feeling of realism.

2. Write about the way Owen uses SOUND in this poem to make his narrative vivid and dramatic.

3. Think about the word "den" in line 9. What does this word suggest? How and why does it work, and to what effect, in the context of this poem?

3. Imagine that the sentry in the poem later dies. Write the letter that Wilfred Owen, as his officer, might have written to the man's parents

OR

Imagine that you were one of the soldiers with Wilfred Owen. Imagine that the sentry was your friend. Write a letter to your mother explaining what happened.

5. Write as much as you can about the last line of the poem.

The events in The Sentry are reported in the following letter to Owen’s mother, Susan Owen, dated 16 January 1917.

Tues: 16 January 1917 (2nd Manchester Regt., B.E.F.)

My own sweet Mother,

I am sorry you have had about 5 days letterless. I hope you had my two letters 'posted' since you wrote your last, which I received tonight. I am bitterly disappointed that I never got one of yours.

I can see no excuse for deceiving you about these last 4 days. I have suffered seventh hell.

I have not been at the front.

I have been in front of it.

I held an advanced post, that is, a 'dug-out' in the middle of No Man's Land.

We had a march of 3 miles over shelled road then nearly 3 along a flooded trench. After that we came to where the trenches had been blown flat out and had to go over the top. It was of course dark, too dark, and the ground was not mud, not sloppy mud, but an octopus of sucking clay, 3, 4, and 5 feet deep, relieved only by craters full of water. Men have been known to drown in them. Many stuck in the mud & only got on by leaving their waders, equipment, and in some cases their clothes.

High explosives were dropping all around out, and machine guns spluttered every few minutes. But it was so dark that even the German flares did not reveal us.

Three quarters dead, I mean each of us 3/4 dead, we reached the dug-out, and relieved the wretches therein. I then had to go forth and find another dug-out for a still more advanced post where I left 18 bombers. I was responsible for other posts on the left but there was a junior officer in charge.

My dug-out held 25 men tight packed. Water filled it to a depth of 1 or 2 feet, leaving say 4 feet of air.

One entrance had been blown in & blocked. So far, the other remained.

The Germans knew we were staying there and decided we shouldn't. Those fifty hours were the agony of my happy life.

Every ten minutes on Sunday afternoon seemed an hour.

I nearly broke down and let myself drown in the water that was now slowly rising over my knees.

Towards 6 o'clock, when, I suppose, you would be going to church, the shelling grew less intense and less accurate: so that I was mercifully helped to do my duty and crawl, wade, climb and flounder over No Man's Land to visit my other post. It took me half an hour to move about 150 yards.

I was chiefly annoyed by our own machine guns from behind. The seeng-seeng-seeng of the bullets reminded me of Mary's canary. On the whole I can support the canary better.

In the Platoon on my left the sentries over the dug-out were blown to nothing. One of these poor fellows was my first servant whom I rejected. If I had kept him he would have lived, for servants don't do Sentry Duty. I kept my own sentries half way down the stairs during the more terrific bombardment. In spite of this one lad was blown down and, I am afraid, blinded.

This was my only casualty.

The officer of the left Platoon has come out completely prostrated and is in hospital. I am now as well, I suppose, as ever.

I allow myself to tell you all these things because I am never going back to this awful post. It is the worst the Manchesters have ever held; and we are going back for a rest.

I hear that the officer who relieved me left his 3 Lewis Guns behind when he came out. (He had only 24 hours in). He will be court-martialled.

In conclusion, I must say that if there is any power whom the Soldiery execrate more than another it is that of our distinguished countryman.

Don't pass round these sheets but have portions typed for Leslie etc. My previous letter to you has just been returned. It will be too heavy to include in this.

Your very own Wilfred x

Questions and Activities

1. Read again Owen's poem The Sentry. Write about the way Owen has used the experience described in this letter in his poem. What is the difference between this version of the blinding of the sentry and the version in the poem? How has Owen concentrated and dramatized the event in the poem? Which key words in the letter are also used in the poem?

2. Write a description of what you imagine a dug-out was like.

3. Can you think of any reasons why Owen would not want his whole letter passed round, but asked his mother to have portions typed for other people to read?

4. In the second paragraph of his letter Owen says "I can see no excuse for deceiving you about these last 4 days". Can you think of any reasons why a soldier would not write the truth in letters home?

5. 5. What effect do you think this letter would have had on his mother?

A Terre

(BEING THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANY SOLDIERS)

Sit on the bed. I'm blind, and three parts shell.

Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.

Both arms have mutinied against me, - brutes.

My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

5 I tried to peg out soldierly, - no use!

One dies of war like any old disease.

This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.

I have my medals? - Discs to make eyes close.

My glorious ribbons? - Ripped from my own back

10 In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.)

A short life and a merry one, my buck!

We used to say we'd hate to live dead-old, -

Yet now . . . I'd willingly be puffy, bald,

And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys

15 At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose

Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting,

Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.

Well, that's what I learnt, - that, and making money.

Your fifty years ahead seem none too many?

20 Tell me how long I've got? God! For one year

To help myself to nothing more than air!

One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long?

Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,

And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.

25 My servant's lamed, but listen how he shouts!

When I'm lugged out, he'll still be good for that.

Here in this mummy-case, you know, I've thought

How well I might have swept his floors for ever.

I'd ask no nights off when the bustle's over,

30 Enjoying so the dirt. Who's prejudiced

Against a grimed hand when his awn's quite dust,

Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn,

Less warm than dust that mixes with arms' tan?

I'd love to be a sweep, now, black as Town,

35 Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load?

O Life, Life, let me breathe, - a dug-out rat!

Not worse than ours the existences rats lead –

Nosing along at night down some safe rut,

They find a shell-proof home before they rot.

40 Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,

Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys,

And subdivide, and never come to death.

Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth.

"I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone",

45 Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned:

The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.

"Pushing up daisies" is their creed, you know.

To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap,

For all the usefulness there is in soap.

50 D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup?

Some day, no doubt, if . . .

Friend, be very sure

I shall be better off with plants that share

More peaceably the meadow and the shower.

Soft rains will touch me, - as they could touch once,

55 And nothing but the sun shall make me ware.

Your guns may crash around me. I'll not hear;

Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince.

Don't take my soul's poor comfort for your jest.

Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds,

60 But here the thing's best left at home with friends.

My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest,

To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased

On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.

Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned

65 To do without what blood remained these wounds.

A Terre

Notes and Commentary

This poem was probably written during the early part of 1918. Owen quotes part of it in a letter to his mother dated April 1918 in which he refers to it as a "photographic representation of an officer dying of wounds".

This poem takes the form of a dramatic monologue - a badly wounded officer expressing his thoughts out loud to a visitor to his hospital bed. The opening words of the poem invite the "listener" in - "Sit on the bed". The wounded man talks about his condition and his feelings, at times angrily, at times hopelessly, always with a fierce desire to hang on to life.

The title of the poem means to earth and is a reference to the Bible, to the Book of Genesis, Chapter 3, verse 19:

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

It also alludes to the expression, popular among the troops, that a dead soldier “turns to earth” and “pushes up daisies”.

A Terre

Questions and Activities

1. How do we know from the poem that the soldier is an officer? Which line tells us this?

2. In line 3 of the poem the soldier complains that his arms have "mutinied" (note the military metaphor) - that they no longer obey him; that he can't move them. Make a list of the other phrases in the poem which refer to the soldier's damaged body.

3. In what sense, do you think, could the feelings expressed in the poem be "the philosophy of many soldiers"? (See the sub-title to the poem)

4. How do the ideas expressed by the soldier develop during the poem? Write a few sentences tracing the thoughts developed in the poem.

5. Pay particular attention in this poem to the effect of Owen's half rhymes. The poem is rhymed in couplets (pairs of lines) but the rhymes are not full rhymes: shell/shall; brutes/brats. What effect, in your opinion, do these half rhymes have? What would have been the effect if Owen had used full rhymes? Imagine, for example, that the first four lines read something like this:

Sit on the bed. I'm blind, and three parts shell.Be careful; can't shake hands now; not feeling well. Both arms have mutinied against me like disloyal cats. My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

6. Explain as fully as you can the inferences and implications of "That's for your poetry book" in line 10.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

5 No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

10 Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Notes and Commentary

In this sonnet [14 lines; each line has five stressed syllables, and the lines end in rhymes in this pattern: ABABCDCD EFFEGG] Wilfred Owen writes about his feelings for the young men needlessly butchered in battle.

In the first eight lines of the poem (the octave) he asks, rhetorically, how their passing will be noticed, what religious rites will mark their death. He answers with bitter irony that the noise of the guns and the rapid fire of the rifles are the prayers said for them, that the choirs to grace their funerals are the shells wailing overhead.

In the last six lines of the sonnet (the sestet) Owen leaves the battlefield and takes the reader back to the homes and families of these dead young men. This part of the poem explores the conventional images of candles, flowers and the "drawing-down of blinds" as expressions of the grief felt at home.

Owen starts to change the mood of the poem in the eighth line - "And bugles calling for them from sad shires". The bugle call was often used at memorial services and the word at the end of the line, "shires", means at once the counties whence these men came and also their regiments, many of which had county connections - the Wiltshire Regiment, for example.

The first eight lines and the final six lines - the octave and the sestet - are quite different. It is a difference which can cause some confusion for readers, as in “Why the big shift?” The first eight lines are, to some extent, typical Owen - the inhumanity of the battlefield is suggested; Owen 's bitterness at the death of so many young men is evident; Owen's feeling that the establishment doesn't really care is clear to see. There is no place for sentimentality in the opening eight lines.

The sestet is different. The language of the sestet is almost romantic - sensual and sentimental. The images sanctify and give a spurious dignity to the deaths of the soldiers, and underscores loss in a different way. There will not be the usual token of death in the home, where, according to the old English custom, the body would normally be kept before burial in its coffin, under a funeral cloth (“pall”) and flowers. The coffin would lie in the front room, lit by candles, and all the blinds in the front of the house would be drawn down as a sign to the neighbours that a death had occurred. Instead, the candles will be replaced by the glimmer of tears in the eyes of boys; the pall by the pale, grieving faces of girls; the flowers by the gentle remembrance in people’s minds; and the “drawing down of blinds” by the daily setting of the sun. In short, the elegiac gentleness of these lines is juxtaposed against the savagery of the reference to (slaughtered) cattle in the first line.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Questions and Activities: Drafting and Redrafting

First Draft

Anthem for Dead Youth

What minute bells for these who die so fast?

- Only the solemn anger of our guns.

Let the majestic insults of their iron mouths

Be as the priest words of their burials .

Of choristers and holy music, none;

Nor any voice of mourning, save the wail

The long-drawn wail of high far-sailing shells.

What candles may we hold for these lost souls?

- Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall many candles shine; and I will light them.

And women's wide-spread arms shall be their wreaths,

And pallor of girls' cheeks shall be their palls.

Their flowers, the tenderness of all men's minds,

And every Dusk, a drawing-down of blinds.

Owen's poems went through several drafts. He often discussed his poems with others - particularly with Siegfried Sassoon who he met at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. He discussed Anthem for Doomed Youth with Sassoon; he suggested several changes.

Compare the above First Draft with the final published piece.

1. Consider the final title of the poem. What effect do the adjectives "Dead" and "Doomed" have? What different meanings are suggested by these two words? Which title do you prefer? Why?

2. Look at line 1. Why is "as cattle" more powerful than "so fast"?

3. There is a subtle and important change in line 2. "Our guns" in the first draft has been changed to "the guns" in the final draft. What is the significance of this change?

4. Why do you think Owen got rid of the phrase "the majestic insults of their iron mouths" in line 3 of the first draft?

5. The "priest words" in line 4 of the first draft means more or less the same as "patter out their hasty orisons" - both phrases refer to the saying of prayers. What has been gained in the final draft? In particular, how does the word "patter" enrich the final draft?

6. Critics have often praised the first eight lines of this sonnet and had doubts about the last six lines.

Why do you think the last six lines have been criticised?

Do you think Owen, by his changes to the last six lines, improved matters? How so?

Disabled

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,

And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,

Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park

Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,

5 Voices of play and pleasure after day,

Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

***

About this time Town used to swing so gay

When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,

And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim, -

10 In the old times, before he threw away his knees.

Now he will never feel again how slim

Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands;

All of them touch him like some queer disease.

***

There was an artist silly for his face,

15 For it was younger than his youth, last year.

Now, he is old; his back will never brace;

He's lost his colour very far from here,

Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,

And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,

20 And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

***

One time he Liked a blood-smear down his leg,

After the matches, carried shoulder-high.

It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,

He thought he'd better join. - He wonders why.

25 Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts,

That's why; and may be, too, to please his Meg;

Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts

He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;

Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.

30 Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,

And Austria’s did not move him. And no fears

Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts

For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;

And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;

35 Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.

And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

***

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.

Only a solemn man who brought him fruits

Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.

***

40 Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,

And do what things the rules consider wise,

And take whatever pity they may dole.

To-night he noticed how the women's eyes

Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.

45 How cold and late it is! Why don't they come

And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

Disabled

Notes and Commentary

On 25 June, 1917, Wilfred Owen was examined by a Medical Board. They noted that he seemed to be "of a highly-strung temperament" and described him as unfit for General Service for six months. He was posted to the War Hospital at Craiglockhart, Edinburgh, for observation and treatment. This poem dates from that period of Owen's life.

Disabled is concerned with a young man fearsomely injured and now confined to a wheelchair, destined to spend the rest of his life in an institution, unable to do anything for himself, totally dependent on others.

Section One Lines 1-6

The young man sits in a wheelchair. He has no legs and his arms have been removed at the elbow. In contrast to his hopeless and despairing situation the voices of boys at play can be heard in the distance.

Section Two lines 7-13

The poet looks back at the time before the young man was mutilated. At this time of night, he says, Town was beginning to get lively and exciting. Girls gave him loving glances - but this was "before he threw away his knees". Now there is no chance, young as he is, that he will ever again enjoy the physical excitement of being with a girl. All are repelled by him. Everyone is reluctant to touch him.

Section Three lines 14-20

Once he looked so very young and handsome that an artist had been desperate to paint him. But now he seems to be old. He will never straighten his back. He is now pale and colourless. Notice how much meaning the word colour carries here. Its primary meaning refers to the boy's white, drained features. But the word looks back to the artist in line 14 and the colours he uses; it also recalls the regimental colours - the regiment's flags and standards. When you have read the poem a few times the secondary meanings start to echo behind the main meaning. The "leap of purple" in line 20 is the blood spurting from a wound in his thigh.

Section Four lines 21-36

This part of the poem recalls something of the young man's immediate past. There had been a time when he had been quite proud of a minor scratch gained in a game of football - when he had been lauded ("carried shoulder-high") for his prowess on the football pitch. After such a game, when he'd had a bit to drink, he thought that he had better enlist in the army. He didn't really know why - perhaps because someone had said he would look good in the kilts of a Scottish Highland regiment, perhaps to please his girl.

Owen rather bitterly refers to young women here as "giddy jilts". These lines are intended to remind the reader of the recruiting drives the army often conducted at football matches. One poster of the time read: MEN OF MILLWALL - HUNDREDS OF FOOTBALL ENTHUSIASTS ARE JOINING THE ARMY DAILY. Women and girls put pressure on men to join the army. They would hand white feathers, symbols of cowardice, to men in the street still wearing civilian clothes. This young man knew nothing of the politics of the war and couldn't anticipate the Fear. He did think of strutting in his Highland uniform with the jewelled hilt of a dagger in his tartan socks and all the panoply of war.

Section Five lines 37-39

Three lines serve here to record his homecoming. There wasn't a great deal of cheering on his return. A clergyman brought him fruits and, perhaps anticipating his early death, asked about the state of his soul.

Section Six lines 40-46

All he has to look forward to now is spending the rest of what remains of his life as an invalid in an institution, doing whatever they deem best for him and accepting whatever pity they can spare him. He does notice that now the eyes of the young girls are for the whole, strong, unwounded men. There is nothing left for him. He simply notes that it is cold and late and he wishes "they" would come and take him in and put him into bed.

Disabled

Questions and Activities

1. Look through the first six lines of this poem.

Pick out the words which describe this young man's injuries. In your own words, write a description of the disabled soldier.

2. Look at line five of this poem.

The "voices of play" are the voices of children playing in the park. In the form of an internal monologue, relate what the disabled soldier would be thinking as he heard them play?

3. Write a paragraph describing the thoughts which go through this young man's mind as he waits for the nurses to take him in and put him into bed.

4. Imagine that Meg visits the soldier in hospital.

Script what they say to each other. (Bring in the pre-war memories; reveal through speech their thoughts about each other; use plenty of detail from the poem.)

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.

5 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,

10 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.

15 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,

20 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, -

25 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.

British casualties of gas attacks: Gassed by John Singer Sargent, March 1919

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Notes and Commentary

This poem dates from Owen's period at the War Hospital in Craiglockhart, Edinburgh. It is one of the best known of Owen's poems.

The title of the poem is a quotation from the Latin poet, Horace. The title tag is completed at the end of the poem: Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for one's country. This was frequently quoted during the days of the British Empire in the nineteenth century, during the Boer War, and at the beginning of the ‘Great War’ by patriotic poets. The feelings were by no means confined to the British side. A poem of 1914 by the German poet, Alfred Lichtenstein, begins "Gut ist und schon, ein Jahr Soldat zu sein" (It is good and beautiful, to be a soldier for a year). Like Owen, Lichtenstein was also appalled by the war and uses the phrase with bitter irony.

Owen was anxious to describe the war as it really was - he saw no point in telling lies to comfort the civilians at home – and attacks the sentimental, bogus patriotism of stay-at-home war enthusiasts: the poem was first addressed to Jessie Pope (a Daily Mail war advocate). She is the ‘you’ of the last section of the poem. She had published several shallow, right-wing, patriotic, empty verses in the English press encouraging men to join the army to fight for their country. Owen wanted such people to know what they were encouraging young men to go into. Dulce Et Decorum Est pulls no punches.

The first fourteen lines of the poem are in sonnet form. Here we have Owen the keen observer of just another incident in the misery and horror of trench warfare. There is nothing military about the soldiers described at the beginning of this poem - they are "like old beggars under sacks". In just a few lines Owen creates a picture for us of these exhausted men, bent double under the weight of their packs and capes, struggling away from the battlefield to the rest areas behind the lines. They are shaken out of their fatigue by the arrival of the gas shells and they struggle desperately to get their gas-masks on before the gas gets to them. One man fails to do so and Owen describes his death in clinical detail.

The sight haunts Owen's dreams. In the final part of the poem he allows his anger to boil up as he describes the dead man's final journey in the back of the cart they have flung him in.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Questions and Activities

1. Write a description in your own words of the men struggling back to their rest positions.

2. Write a few paragraphs as part of a short story in which the dramatic arrival of the gas shells occurs.

3. What feelings do you think most motivated Wilfred Owen in this poem - pity, regret, anger, compassion? What things do you think spurred him to write the poem?

4. This is obviously a very powerful poem. Do you think Owen is in full control? If there is any lack of control on Owen's part do you think the poem gains or loses by it? How so; why?

5. Recast the material in the poem into a letter written by Owen to a friend at home. Try to include and / or allude to the ‘story’ of the poem, its angry theme, and some of the force and indignation of its language.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Drafting and Redrafting

Sassoon and Owen worked together on Dulce Et Decorum Est. Two of the several known drafts are presented below. Compare each with the final version.

Look, in particular, at: haunting rather than clawingguttering rather than gurglingthe comparison of the dead soldier’s face to a rosethe completely recast sections

Exposure

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us ...

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...

Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

5 But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

10 What are we doing here?

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow ...

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,

15 But nothing happens.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

Less deathly than the air that shudders black with snow,

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew;

We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,

20 But nothing happens.

Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces -

We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,

Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,

Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

25 Is it that we are dying?

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed

With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed, -

30 We turn back to our dying.

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

35 For love of God seems dying.

To-night, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,

Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.

The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,

40 But nothing happens.

Exposure

Notes and Commentary

"We had 5 Tommy's cookers between the Platoon, but that did not suffice to melt the ice in the water-cans."

"The marvel is that we did not all die of cold. As a matter of fact, only one of my party actually froze to death before he could be got back, but I am not able to tell how many may have ended in hospital."

"We were marooned on a frozen desert.There is not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death."

These are all extracts from a letter Wilfred Owen wrote to his mother on Sunday, 4 February 1917. He describes the hard, bitter weather they were experiencing in the trenches - a cold just as deadly as the enemy gunfire. These conditions form the background to his poem Exposure.

The stanza form and the use of half-rhyme are particularly effective in this poem. Each stanza consists of five lines, the first four lines rhymed a-b-b-a and the fifth line left unrhymed.

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us ... a Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ... b Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ... b Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, a But nothing happens.

The short, unrhymed fifth line stands out in sharp contrast to the lines which precede it; it is given prominence by its context. This fifth, almost dirge-like, line impresses its motif on the reader - "But nothing happens", "What are we doing here?", "Is it that we are dying?" ...

Exposure

Questions and Activities

1. Write one or two paragraphs describing the harsh, bitter conditions which the men experienced in the trenches in the winter months of 1917.

2. Wilfred Owen uses alliteration very effectively in this poem. Consider, for example, "rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy".

Choose several examples of alliteration from the poem which seem to you to be particularly successful and comment upon ‘how’ and ‘why’ they serve the poet and the poem.

3. In this poem Owen rapidly creates a very realistic sense of place and mood. In the first stanza the jumpy, tense, nervous conditions as day breaks are vividly suggested: "Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous ..."

Write about other parts of the poem where Owen gives you a strong feeling of place and mood and qualify ‘how’ and ‘why’ this has been cultivated through the use of techniques.

4. What do you think would be gained by accepting the reading "His frost" in line 36 rather than "this frost" which is what Owen had written in earlier drafts?

Exposure

Descriptive and Emotive Writing

1. In the first five lines the poet describes the soldiers waiting. He uses the words:

silence whisper curious nervous

Write a descriptive and emotive paragraph describing the scene as the soldiers wait, expecting the enemy to attack.

2. The poet describes the weather. He uses the words:

rain soaks stormy shivering black with snow

Write a descriptive and emotive paragraph describing the miserable weather as these men wait for the enemy.

3. The men think about home. They remember their own homes.

In the sixth verse the poet writes about the cosy fires and the comfortable things of home.

Write a descriptive and emotive paragraph describing the thoughts of the men as they wait in the bitter weather in a foreign country.

4. Pick out FIVE phrases from this poem which you particularly like.

Explain what each phrase makes you imagine and qualify ‘how’ and ‘why’ this has been cultivated through the use of techniques.

Spring Offensive

Halted against the shade of a last hill,

They fed, and lying easy, were at ease

And, finding comfortable chests and knees,

Carelessly slept. But many there stood still

5 To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,

Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled

By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,

For though the summer oozed into their veins

10 Like an injected drug for their bodies' pains,

Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,

Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field –

And the far valley behind, where the buttercup

15 Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,

Where even the little brambles would not yield,

But clutched and dung to them like sorrowing hands;

They breathe like trees unstirred.

Till like a cold gust thrills the little word

20 At which each body and its soul begird

And tighten them for battle. No alarms

Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste –

Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced

The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.

25 0 larger shone that smile against the sun, -

Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together

Over an open stretch of herb and heather

Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned

30 With fury against them; earth set sudden cups

In thousands for their blood; and the green slope

Chasmed and steepened to infinite space.

* * *

Of them who running on that last high place

Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up

35 On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge,

Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge,

Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence' brink

Ventured but drave too swift to sink,

40 The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,

And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames

With superhuman inhumanities,

Long-famous glories, immemorial shames –

And crawling slowly back, have by degrees

45 Regained cool peaceful air in wonder -

Why speak not they of comrades that went under?

Spring Offensive

Notes and Commentary

Written in September 1918, Spring Offensive is one of – if not the last – of Owen's poems. Briefly, it deals with an attack in spring, the feelings and tensions of the soldiers and the poet's reflections prompted by this and many other violent clashes which he had experienced.

Owen had taken part in an attack in May 1917, which he described in a letter.

“The sensations of going over the top are about as exhilarating as those dreams of falling over a precipice … there was an extraordinary exultation in the act of slowly walking forward, showing ourselves openly … When I looked back and saw the ground all crawling and wormy with wounded bodies, I felt no horror at all but only an immense exultation at having got through the barrage … “

Stanza One lines 1-6

The poem opens in a quiet, relaxed mood. The soldiers have been advancing and are now waiting under the brow of a hill for their attack to begin. Some of the men are able to relax, apparently unconcerned, making themselves comfortable and going to sleep. Others, more able to imagine the horrors ahead, are tense and remain standing, nervous, feeling that they have "come to the end of the world". Nature seems not to care either way: the sky is "blank" - unfeeling and without concern.

Stanza Two lines 7-12

Those unable to sleep stood, marvelling at what they saw. The landscape is described in rich, evocative language, reminding us and, no doubt, the soldiers, of quiet, relaxed days at home in England - the grass is ruffled by the gentle breeze, the wasps and midges murmur on the air. At this point Nature is seen as beneficent, healing. Summer, Owen tells us, "oozed" into their veins and became part of them. The medical term, "injected drug", reinforces this sense of the healing powers of Nature. An ominous note is introduced in the final two lines of this stanza. The "imminent line of grass" which they must attack is before them; the mirror of the sky fearfully reflects the flashes of gunfire.

Stanza Three lines 13-18

Their wait is a long one. With regret they look back at the way they have come, at the valley behind them. It almost seemed as if Nature wanted to hold them back, to prevent them advancing to their deaths. The "slow boots" suggest their half-hearted, reluctant progress. But the buttercups they had slogged through sprinkled their boots with golden pollen, as if in blessing; the brambles clutched at their clothes as if to hold them back.

Stanza Four lines 19-26

The mood changes dramatically in this stanza. The first line (line 19) strikes a harder note with "cold gusts" and the word of command, "the little word", the order to advance. From this point the language in this stanza is sharper, more brittle, its rhythms broken.

Stanza Five lines 27-32

The excitement rises in this stanza. The soldiers reach the top of the hill and they race towards the enemy, out in the open, suddenly exposed. The word "exposed" comes sharply defined at the beginning of the line followed by a strong pause, the moment before the attack reaches its point of greatest intensity. Then the sky is no longer "blank" and neutral as in the first stanza - now the sky "burned / With fury against them". Nature is no longer benign and gentle. The "sudden cups" - the buttercups which had "blessed" them on their way up, were now receptacles to catch their blood. In another sense the "sudden cups" are the thousands of cratered shell holes caused by the enemy artillery. Owen seems to mark the end of the immediate action with the stars after this stanza.

Stanza Six lines 33-37

Owen says that some people say (line 37 - "Some say...") that God caught those who were killed before they fell; the equivocation in "Some say" suggests Owen's reluctance to see the Christian God's work in the events of the day. The description in this stanza is savage ("the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge") in contrast to the holiday atmosphere of the opening stanzas.

Stanza Seven lines 38-46

Some survived. Some "rushed in the body to enter hell" but some managed to come out physically unscathed. Owen asks why they don't talk about their comrades who were killed, why they "speak not of comrades that went under". Owen leaves us to ponder that question ourselves. He has made his point.

Spring Offensive

Questions and Activities

1. Write a paragraph, in your own words, describing the first phase in this poem - the movement forward to prepare for the attack described in the first three stanzas of the poem.

2. Not all the soldiers reacted to their situation in the same way. Explain the ways that different groups of soldiers behaved in the first stanza.

3. Write a paragraph in your own words describing the attack.

4. What can you learn about Owen's attitude to religion in this poem?

5. Choose FIVE phrases or images from the poem which seem to you to be particularly effective. Explain why you have chosen them and comment upon ‘how’ and ‘why’ they serve the poet and the poem.

Spring Offensive

Extended Writing: Narrative

There is a strong sense of STORY in Spring Offensive. Owen tells us what happens and describes the atmosphere and feelings of the men. There is much in the poem which works to show what happens and what the atmosphere / feelings / mood were.

A plan of the ‘story’ Owen might have contrived prior to crafting the piece might be as follows:

the men scramble up the hill (lines 14-18) the men arrive near top of the hill and restthey get the word to prepare for attack (line 19) they make their preparationsthey race over the hill towards the enemy they come under heavy firemany are killedsome survive and struggle back

Use this paragraph plan (or a one of your own devising) as the basis for a story with the title SPRING OFFENSIVE.

Make up extra details to fill out your paragraph plan.

You may decide to include a character and see the events through his eyes.

You may want to see the events as if you were an enemy observer - one of the men being attacked who has observed all the preparations.

Use the events and feelings described in the poem as a starting point for your story. You may use some of Wilfred Owen's phrases as part of your description.

Length: 750 – 1000 words

Due Date: ____________________________

Assessment Criteria: appended

Spring Offensive

Extended Writing: Narrative

Note: this is not expected to be an exercise in linear translation or direct retelling.

We stopped on the side of a hill. We ate and rested. Some of us slept; some of us had a look around. We were a little depressed because we knew that on the other side of the hill was where the Germans were and that when the attack was called that could be the last of it for any of us. With that in mind – that death was near – the whole wonder-of-nature thing hit a few of us pretty hard.

There’s nothing ostensibly ‘wrong’ with the above rendering; neither is it especially engaging or illuminating. ‘Perfunctory’ seems an appropriate descriptor.

I hope for your rendering to be – rather than a translation or retelling – more so a transfusion; an exercise wherein you make manifest the concerns, the concepts, the ideas, the issues that Owen develops or challenges … in particular in Spring Offensive, but also in and through the body of poems that you have considered.

It would be ‘nice’ to think that you have been inspired by the poetry, such that you can comfortably and confidently and clearly show its sense and sensibility in and through a different form.

When drafted, I want for you to take the form of the narrative and shape it – the overall structural features of the piece, and also in and with paragraph sizes and styles.

As ever, I want for you to experiment and take risks with a range and variety of language techniques and strategies to make meaning and cultivate effect. I want for you to consciously and carefully manipulate your audience.

I want and expect your piece to say something, to show something, without resorting to telling what it is that is of concern or consequence.

I want for your writing to be fluent and precise, clear and compelling, insightful and illuminating; in short, I want for your piece to work – to reward your reader for the investment of their time. I want for you – the author – to know that your audience will be affected by what they read.

You have the power and potential to realise these aims and expectations.

But – you’ve got to want to realise them. And, you also know that to do so is, by its nature, hard work. Trust in the fact that it is painfully obvious when a piece has been written without (adequate) care and consideration.

To do this well will demand of you the sacrifice of time. It takes time to write well. Be exacting of yourself. Take Owen’s practice as a lead – you’ve seen throughout this Assignment evidence of his drafting and redrafting; how he didn’t settle on what was inadequate; how he carved and sculpted his writing; how he solicited and embraced the opinions of others.

Please, be consistent and concerted in your application to this task. Rigorously plan and prepare but, most of all, craft this piece with care and consideration. Considered care. Careful consideration.

However you do it, do it well.

Wilfred Owen

POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Part 5: Final Assessments

Poetry of the First World War: Wilfred Owen

WR ITTEN ASSESSMENTS

1. Write a detailed analysis of The Sentry and Wilfred Owen's letter to his mother dated 16 January 1917.

Show how Owen's poem grew from his experiences in the trenches.

2. Write an essay, based on your study of a series of three (3) poems by Wilfred Owen about the war, in which you describe the horrors of war and the techniques used to make them manifest.

3. Choose two of the poems from this selection which have made the deepest impression on you.

Write about these poems in as much detail as you can. Qualify how and why the poems affected you in the way that they did.

4. Do we read the poems of this period for their poetry or for their history? Do we read them because they move us as poetry or because the human suffering they portray appals us? Owen said, "The Poetry is in the pity".

What is your opinion?

Write an essay discussing these points of view.

5. Choose two poems from this selection that you do not like.

Write a reasoned account of both poems explaining why you feel strongly about them.

6. Discuss the ways in which Wilfred Owen uses the structural features of his poems to present ideas.

7. Discuss the ways in which Wilfred Owen uses poetry as a form of protest.

8. Discuss the ways Owen explores a sense of loss.

9. Discuss the ways in which Wilfred Owen creates pictures with words in order to engage the heart and mind of the reader.

10. “Poets are the most concise storytellers.” Discuss the ways in which Owen uses narrative as a device to evoke emotions and explore ideas.

Length: 750 – 1000 words

Due Date: ____________________________

Assessment Criteria: appended

Wilfred Owen Assignment: Written Assessment

Student Name:

Assessment Criteria: O VH H G S M U

Depth of knowledge and understanding of texts(s).

Recognition and analysis of the author’s structural, conventional and language features used to convey ideas and shape reader response.

Awareness of the relationship between the text and the author and reader’s contexts, as well as the experiences and values the reader brings to the text.

RRJ).

Sophistication in making connections and drawing comparisons / contrasts between texts and concepts.

Ability to sustain an argument with coherence and clarity.

Drawing on relevant evidence from texts in support of argument (includes embedding quotations appropriately).

Writing is expressive, well structured, fluent and precise, and uses a sophisticated vocabulary, style and register.

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Poetry of the First World War: Wilfred Owen

ORAL ASSIGNMENTS

1. Working in small groups.

Imagine that you have to produce an anthology of poetry of the First World War. Each poet can only be represented by two (2) poems.

Discuss which two of Wilfred Owen’s poems you will include.

Consider your reasons for rejecting some poems and including others.

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Reach a consensus.

You will present your case for the two poems to the class and be expected answer questions from the rest of the class that challenge either your choices or the exclusion of other poems.

2. Working in small groups.

A composite poem.

Look through all the poems you have studied in class.

Choose from these poems several short phrases which seem to you to be particularly effective.

Work these phrases together, using linking phrases of your own where necessary, to create another, hybrid poem.

Give your new poem a title and be prepared to read it aloud to the other members of your class.

3. Working in pairs. Sir Douglas Haig and a newspaper reporter.

Imagine that you are a newspaper reporter for an important national newspaper.

You have been granted an interview with Sir Douglas Haig, Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France .

In the form of a scripted drama, question "Haig" about his military tactics; about his feelings about the thousands killed; about conditions in the trenches.

4. Solo performance.

From those studied, choose one poem which has made an impression on you.

Practise reading the poem aloud.

Prepare a few comments about your reasons for choosing the poem.

Read the poem to your class.

Explain the reasons why you chose it. Be prepared to answer questions from the rest of the group.

Length: approx. 6 minutes

Due Date: ____________________________

Assessment Criteria: appended

Wilfred Owen Assignment: Oral Assessment

Student Name :Assessment Criteria: O Vh H G S M U

Is the introductory entry clear about the reasons for selecting the text(s)? Do comments show evidence of questioning, analysis, interpretation, speculation and evaluation rather than limited summaries?

Were comparisons and contrasts made between texts?

How well is the student’s personal engagement with the texts reflected in his or her comments and contributions? Has the student been drawn into the author’s world or is the material drawn from the critical studies of others?

Is there evidence that the texts have challenged and extended the student’s interests and linguistic abilities (rather than being chosen for brevity and ease of understanding)?

Are textual references incorporated naturally and fluently in the line of discussion and integrated with the student’s own language?

Does the Oral Presentation have a clear focus derived from the student’s growth in understanding evident in and from Assignment studies?

Does the Oral Presentation have a clear structure? Are the major points “signposted” clearly – are they natural and logical, appropriate to the discussion? Does the argument of the Oral Presentation follow logically in a clear, relevant line of discussion?

Is the Oral Presentation a “polished piece”? Is it presented in a formal style, with accurate expression, vocabulary and pronunciation? Is consideration given to effective use of voice, eye contact, posture and gesture? Is the presentation creative and interesting, worth listening to?

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Wilfred Owen

POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

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Part 6: Appendices - Further Readings and Poems

Appendix 1.

WAR IN THE TRENCHES

The war in Flanders soon became static. The allied and German armies settled down to face each other from a series of trenches. Within a few months of war breaking out the system of trenches stretched from the English Channel as far as Switzerland. During the remainder of the war there was very little movement. A few hundred yards of territory were often gained at the expense of enormous casualties.

Going over the top to attack the enemy trenches was a costly business. Men had to advance over open ground towards the enemy trenches, straight into a hail of machine-gun bullets. Sometimes the enemy trenches were as close as 45 metres.

In some places additional trenches ran out towards the enemy lines to be used as listening posts and by snipers. These are also known as salients (see Exposure).

The fire trenches were constructed in a zigzag pattern, partly to localize the effect of a shell exploding in the trench and partly to shorten the length of trench which could be hosed with bullets if a patrol broke into it. Pumps and drainage pipes were sometimes used in an attempt to keep the trench dry. Wooden duckboards were used to keep men's feet out of the mud.

"Stand-to" occurred thirty minutes before sunrise every day - a favourite time for the enemy to attack in the hope of finding their opponents unprepared. Sentries would be posted and the day's business, starting with the preparation of breakfast, would begin.

There were usually three lines of trenches. The one nearest the enemy was the firing trench. Some distance behind this was the support trench, connected to the firing trench by communication trenches. Even further back was the reserve line.

The firing trench was usually six to eight feet in depth and four or five feet wide. A rather deeper sump was dug along the bottom of the trench to drain off as much water as possible. This was covered with wooden duckboards. Dug-outs were dug into the sides of the trench at intervals to provide places were men could sleep and to give some protection during an artillery barrage. Some of these were very small, just big enough for one or two men. Others, used as command posts and officers' quarters, were bigger and contained crude furniture. The fire-step was two feet high. You never looked over the top of a trench - a sniper's bullet would be likely to find you if you did. Periscopes were used for looking out towards the enemy.

The German trenches were usually much more elaborate. Deep dug-outs were often provided with bunk beds, tables, cupboards and other items to make life more comfortable. Walls, floors and ceiling were sometimes boarded. Some were provided with real kitchens and some were even found with wallpaper on the walls!

Appendix 2.

Remembering Wilfred Owen

An edited article by T. J. Walsh, March 2011

Wilfred Owen’s work has been widely commemorated internationally. American poets, for example, writing of the Vietnam War regarded him as an inspirational figure. He is often referred to as a poet’s poet because the four major editors of his poems, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, C. Day Lewis, and Jon Stallworthy, are themselves eminent poets.

The esteem in which his work is held was shown by the notable contributors to A Tribute to Wilfred Owen, published by the poet’s old school, Birkenhead Institute, in 1964. These included T.S. Eliot, Sassoon, Blunden, Herbert Read, Day Lewis, Spender, and the poet Francis Berry. The centenary of Wilfred Owen’s birth in 1993 was widely celebrated nationally, and attracted many visitors to Birkenhead.

Owen is far more than a national institution, not merely fodder for school syllabuses: he is a living presence acting as a catalyst for new generic work through a process of intertextuality and creative co-operation. Interestingly these tributes, in paying homage to Owen, suggest his unique status as a symbolic figure in the iconography of war. The range of forms in which his life and work have been portrayed, extending from televisual and cinematic to radio and documentary, both lament and praise the dead hero as a spokesperson for our time.

At the core of Wilfred Owen’s poetry is his language of respect for the men he served with. Several of his finest poems such as “Futility“, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, and “Greater Love”, achieve a commensurate dignity, a rare and assured objectivity and calm. This distancing effect creates a tone of mourning and elegy that communicates compassion for the soldiers’ loss. A restrained linguistic register of subdued rhythms, measured diction, and sombre syntax achieves this. Counterpointed against this reflective mood and poise is a contrasting voice of outrage, protest, and anger that constitutes an appeal to the reader’s understanding and recognition of their suffering. “Apologia Pro Poemate Meo” belongs to this more didactic and admonitory category as do “Dulce et Decorum Est”, “Insensibility”, “Mental Cases”, and “Disabled”.

Underlying Owen’s poetry are a set of larger intellectual and emotional concerns which may be considered his prevailing sensibility. His work embodies a growing sense of identification between the poet and the men he commanded. The gentle, slightly pampered Shropshire lad developed into a formidable officer, an authentic war hero awarded the Military Cross for bravery under fire. A way of making sense of this process is to observe how Owen gradually recognised the qualities of his men, their resilience, sense of comradeship, gallows humour, and dedication to duty. “Miners”, together with similar resonances in “The Send-Off”, “Arms and the Boy”, and “Parable of the Old Men and the Young”, exemplifies this solidarity and emotional closeness, as do some of his letters to relatives.

Although Owen’s own family were middle class in outlook, the poet’s early life in Birkenhead deepened his experience of people less fortunate than himself. The industrial townscape of the area, the Mersey, the Port of Liverpool, Laird’s shipyard, the docks, the railway, and streets of working class people, infiltrated his youthful consciousness. Compared with the Oxbridge educated Sassoon and Robert Graves, his closest literary peers, Owen’s family were of relatively low income which probably prevented him going to university. His own economic circumstances and consciousness of the struggles of working class people, even at a subconscious level, shaped his developing empathy with their situation.

His education at the aspirational and well-run Birkenhead Institute was probably as good as that of a minor public school at the time. Despite the rather disparaging comments of some biographers about Birkenhead, the young Owen was happy in the town, shared in its cultural vibrancy, and was intellectually stretched at school. He made excellent academic progress there, and his characteristic love of poetry from Dante to Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson was fostered by his erudite English teachers.

Wilfred Owen left behind a magnificent legacy, a body of work that has ensured his global reputation as a canonical literary figure. He has written one poem that T.S. Eliot praised as indisputably great, “Strange Meeting”, a haunting, visionary encounter with a dead enemy soldier. Here is rhetorical grandeur, prophecy, and a ghostly warning to echo his famous Preface. This poem reveals his technical dexterity notably through its controlled use of para or half rhyme. Its mythical and epic structure frees the poet from the limits of realism found in other poems such as “Disabled”, “The Sentry”, and “Mental Cases”. Its closest comparable poem is “The Show”, a surreal vision of the pock-marked battlefield disfigured by cannibalistic bugs. The “pity” he endorses in his Preface is here represented through empathy with the suffering of unknown soldiers seen from afar.

“Exposure” and “Spring Offensive” are less surreal but equally powerful. The latter is built upon a series of highly evocative images that signify the sorrow of war, and express Owen’s own crisis in religious belief. The shock and misery of warfare is rarely, if ever, expressed more tragically than in this poem. It typifies Owen’s versatility and the irreplaceable loss his death represented.

Appendix 3.

Why World War I Resonates

By William Boyd; Published: Daily Telegraph, January 21, 2012

French troops under fire during the Battle of Verdun. General Photographic Agency/Getty Images

IN France I live near a little village called Sadillac. It’s no more than a cluster of houses, an old chateau, a church and a graveyard surrounded by a few farms and vineyards. The village probably hasn’t changed much since the French Revolution; its population hovers around 100. By the graveyard is a simple obelisk with the names of the 30 or so young men from Sadillac who died in the First World War, 1914-18. It’s almost impossible to imagine the effect on this tiny community of these fatalities over four years. Every year on Nov. 11 at 11 a.m. — the hour and the day of the 1918 armistice — villagers gather to participate in a short memorial service around the obelisk.

In 2014 it will be a hundred years since the First World War began, and yet its presence in novels, films and television has never been greater — in “Downton Abbey,” on television, in Steven Spielberg’s movie “War Horse,” in a mini-series of Sebastian Faulks’s “Birdsong” and, coming soon, in Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s “Parade’s End.”

The last old soldier or sailor has died and almost all of the witnesses have gone, but the war exerts a tenacious hold on the imagination.

For us British, the memories, images and stories of 1914-18 seem to have a persistence and a power that eclipse those of the Second World War. I’m symptomatic of this urge to revisit the conflict: my new novel will be my third with the First World War at its center. When I wrote and directed a movie, “The Trench,” about a group of young soldiers in 1916 waiting for the Battle of the Somme to begin, I was obsessed with getting every detail right: every cap-badge worn and cigarette smoked, every meal eaten. It was as if I wanted the absolute verisimilitude to provide an authentic, vicarious experience so the viewer would be in a position to say, “So this is what it was like, this is what they went through, how they lived — and died.”

I think this is the key behind the enduring obsession with that war. To our modern sensibilities it defies credulity that for more than four years European armies faced one another in a 500-mile line of trenches, stretching from the Belgian coast to the border of Switzerland. The war was also fought in other arenas — in Galicia, Italy, the Bosporus, Mesopotamia, East and West Africa, in naval battles on many oceans — but it is the Western Front and trench warfare that define the war in memory. It was a deadly war of attrition in which millions of soldiers on both sides slogged through the mud of no man’s land to meet their deaths in withering blasts of machine-gun fire and artillery. And at the end of four years and with about nine million troops dead, the two opposing forces were essentially where they were when they started.

IN France and Germany, the traumas of the Second World War have to a degree erased memories of the First. But in Britain, where almost a million servicemen died, it’s still images of the trenches of the Western Front that are shown and that resonate on Remembrance Day. One of the reasons for this is, paradoxically, the resonance of the poetry. The poets of the First World War — Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Isaac Rosenberg — are taught in almost all British schools. I can remember Wilfred Owen’s terrifying poem “Dulce et Decorum Est,” about a mustard-gas attack, being read aloud to us in the classroom when I was 10 or 11. One boy actually ran outside, he was so overcome and upset. The war poems shaped your earliest perceptions of the First World War and were swiftly buttressed by the familiar images of the trenches and the histories of the futile, costly battles.

Intensifying the powerful art was the visual documentation, because it was the first war to be extensively filmed.

And finally, there were family stories. One hundred years is not so very long ago. My great-uncle Alexander Boyd was wounded and decorated at the Battle of the Somme. His brother, my grandfather William Boyd, was wounded a year later at Passchendaele, as the Third Battle of Ypres was known. Family legend and anecdote fueled my interest in the war.

But there is another deeper, perhaps more profound reason the war continues to preoccupy us. It was a conflict between 19th-century armies equipped with 20th-century weapons — hence the unprecedented carnage. To put it in an American context: imagine an officer in the United States Army — in his 50s, say — on the Argonne front in 1918. As a young soldier he could conceivably have fought, 30 years earlier, in the last of the wars against the Plains Indians in the late 1880s. Yet now he stands surveying a different world. The tactics were 19th century — advance on the enemy. But the enemy had weapons of mass destruction — the battlefield was dominated by tanks, machine guns, howitzers, aircraft and poisonous gas. Some 117,000 American servicemen died in the 19 months of United States participation in World War I — more than twice as many as in Vietnam, nearly 20 times as many as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No society today would accept such a horrendous casualty count. At the beginning of the Battle of the Somme, on July 1, 1916, the British Army suffered 60,000 dead and wounded — in one day. It was arguably the worst butcher’s bill in military history, of army versus army. There is a very real sense in which the modern world — our world — was born between 1914 and 1918. Something changed in human sensibility. Soldiers wouldn’t be willing to engage in such slaughter. Toward the end of the First World War, even, tolerance for past norms had begun to end. In 1917, much of the French Army mutinied and refused to attack. They would defend but not attack. The days of cannon fodder were over forever as a result of that war, which is a further reason artists try to re-imagine it constantly.

To quote another poem, Philip Larkin’s “MCMXIV”: “Never such innocence again.”

After the First World War, nothing in the world would ever be the same.

Appendix 4.

MCMXIV

By Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)

MCMXIV

Those long uneven linesStanding as patientlyAs if they were stretched outsideThe Oval or Villa Park,The crowns of hats, the sunOn moustached archaic facesGrinning as if it were allAn August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleachedEstablished names on the sunblinds,The farthings and sovereigns,And dark-clothed children at playCalled after kings and queens,The tin advertisementsFor cocoa and twist, and the pubsWide open all day--

And the countryside not caring:The place names all hazed overWith flowering grasses, and fieldsShadowing Domesday linesUnder wheat's restless silence;The differently-dressed servantsWith tiny rooms in huge houses,The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,Never before or since,As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving the gardens tidy,The thousands of marriages,Lasting a little while longer:Never such innocence again.

Appendix 5.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

(A “close analysis” essay – of sorts – from back in the day.)

In general terms, Wilfred Owen's poem is describing a specific example of the horror and squalor of war. While trudging back from the front line, there is a gas attack. One soldier is too late in putting on his gas mask and is gassed.

The title and last lines of this poem are taken from one of the Odes of the Roman poet Horace. These Latin words are best translated as 'It is sweet and honourable to die for one's country'. This same belief of the Romans was (still) espoused by the English two thousand years later up to and during the First World War. Owen, by presenting the reader with the abject horror of the battlefield and its suffering and squalor, mockingly condemns the 'old Lie' that it is sweet and honourable to die for one's country.

Owen's graphic description of the suffering and anguish of the soldiers endeavours to shock the reader. At the beginning of the poem, Owen confronts his audience with the utter exhaustion and indignity of the soldiers struggling back to their position. The simile 'like old beggars under sacks' not only evokes the difficulty of the soldiers' movements through the sludge but it also shows the degradation that war brings. The soldiers have no glory. The simile 'like hags' following closely upon the previous one further arouses pity for the men.

Owen's vivid visual images following quickly one upon the other cultivate and impose the sense of sharing the men's weariness and hardship. Owen elicits compassion for the soldiers who are so exhausted that they 'marched asleep'. The use of the verb 'cursed' to describe their movement further suggests how difficult it is, how physically enfeebled they are that only by cursing can they make their way through the mud. The bluntness of the expression 'bloodshod' brings home to a reader the hardship the soldiers are suffering, and the muted words 'lame', 'blind', 'drunk' and 'deaf convey how the senses of the soldiers are stopped up: they are so exhausted they can no longer feel.

Having established the tiredness of the men in the first stanza, the second stanza begins with a dramatic and abrupt end to the soldiers' weariness. The sudden appearance of gas brings with it the fear of death, and both the reader and soldiers are shocked out of their stupor with actual words spoken: 'Gas! GAS! Quick boys! ' Suddenly there is violent movement described as 'an ecstasy of fumbling' as the weary soldiers become alert and agitated as they struggle to save themselves from the horrifying death by gas. The pacing and motion here is in stark contrast to the heavy weary movement of the first stanza. The word 'ecstasy' usually describes a supremely happy feeling, but here the excitement associated with the word is applied to something that can affect life or death. The alliteration of the letters 'f’ and 'm' in

the words 'An ecstasy of fumbling,/ Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time' creates a sense of frenzied and distraught movement as the soldiers hasten to put on their gas masks.

The poem then focuses on the plight of the unfortunate soldier who either couldn't fit his mask in time or didn't have one. The scene quickly assumes nightmarish qualities. Owen likens the gas to a green sea enveloping the soldier who seems to be 'floundering' as would a drowning swimmer. He emphasises the consuming and destructive qualities of the gas through his use of the simile 'like a man in fire or lime'. He uses this comparison to convey a disturbing effect: the gas is made into something concrete ('fire or lime') that can be visualised eating the man up. Then comes the image of the man drowning - appropriate because the man is gasping for air as though drowning and because he is being viewed through the green cellophane like window of the gas mask the poet is wearing, which makes the whole world look as though it is under water.

With the next short verse, the poet comes up to the present, stating how his dreams ever since have been haunted by this figure. The use of the word 'plunges', by its violent action, suggesting the man is almost attacking the poet in his effort to get help, is in the present tense as though the action is still taking place, being repeated and repeated in dreams. It also reinforces the idea of drowning with its suggestion of plunging through water. 'Guttering' and 'choking', by their very sound - harsh, hard, unpleasant - bring to mind the fate the man has suffered, which is doubtless quite gruesome.

The final stanza entwines the reader into the events of the narrative and places before him/her the situation Owen presumably had to face. The gassed soldier is thrown on a wagon. His eyes 'writhe' in agony; his blood comes 'gargling' from his lungs. Both of these words suggest violent effort and pain. The associations of the comparisons 'like a devil's sick of sin', 'froth-corrupted', 'obscene as cancer', 'bitter as the cud / Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues' - all graphically emphasise the horror of the occasion.

It is here, when Owen focuses on the horrifying effects of the gas on the soldier in the wagon, that audiences are forced to experience greatest compassion. Owen's words 'And watch the white eyes writhing in his face' both shock and cause the reader to have pity for the soldier. The alliteration of the 'w' and the assonance of the 'I' intensify the horrifying picture of the destruction of the soldier's eyes. Owen not only confronts readers with the sight of the dying soldier, but also the sounds made by his 'froth-corrupted lungs'. The onomatopoeic word 'gargling' shocks audience sensibilities with the sounds of the soldier's terrible suffering.

Now that his readers' senses have been touched by those same horrors that he himself has endured on the battlefield, Owen passionately endeavours to convince them to refrain from preaching 'The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori' to the innocent young. The very restraint of the language after the grim description of

the gassing itself emphasises how bitter the tone is, and how resentful Owen is that people should still believe in such a sentiment at the time this poem was written.

[1056 words]

Appendix 6.

The Soldier: Commentary

The Soldier

IF I should die, think only this of me;

 

  That there's some corner of a foreign field  

That is for ever England. There shall be  

  In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;  

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,                 5

  Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,  

A body of England's breathing English air,  

  Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.  

  

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,  

  A pulse in the eternal mind, no less    10

    Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

 

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;  

  And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,  

    In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Right from the start of the war, there was apparent a polarity between the living and the dead that underpinned the dialogue between writers and their audience. Rupert Brooke's poem 'The Soldier' is one of the most famous and (by some) one of the most derided poems of the twentieth century - though its survival, and the survival of interest in Brooke as a person, suggests it has a literary robustness that has often been undervalued. It is accused of naïveté and - worse still - of being a 'ridiculous pastoral’ ('some corner of a foreign field I That is forever England'). And yet, as a poem it is far from being a straightforward piece of sentimental patriotic verse.

Look how it actually begins:

If I should die, think only this of me...

The speaker is addressing a listener, who is told to 'think', meaning here, 'use your imagination to remember me in this way'. Who is this listener? A girl friend, a mother, a fellow soldier?

The poem is not, in one sense, concerned with the speaker's own feelings for and about England so much as with how the listener whoever he or she is - might be able to come to terms with his death, if and when it occurs. The instruction 'think' is repeated at the start of line 9 of the sonnet ( 'And think, this heart, all evil shed away ...'); again, it means 'imagine that...’. To remember him, if he dies, in these nostalgically English terms may - the poem implies - help to make sense of his death.

With the war only starting, the poem looks forward to the need people will have for remembrance when it is over. Read in this way, the patriotic imagery ( 'A body of England's, breathing English air', etc.) is not flag-waving by the speaker, but a set of reference points offered to the listener. Brooke's 'The Soldier' is in fact one of the earliest examples of Great War writing that is, in essence, a dialogue between the living (the survivors) and the dead or (in Brooke's case) the soon-to-be-dead.

Appendix 7.

Further Poems

Mental Cases

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked? Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic, Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms Misery swelters. Surely we have perished Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished. Memory fingers in their hair of murders, Multitudinous murders they once witnessed. Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,

Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter. Always they must see these things and hear them, Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles, Carnage incomparable, and human squander Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented Back into their brains, because on their sense Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black; Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh. -Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous, Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses. -Thus their hands are plucking at each other; Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging; Snatching after us who smote them, brother, Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

Apologia Pro Poemate Meo

I, too, saw God through mud-- The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled. War brought more glory to their eyes than blood, And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there-- Where death becomes absurd and life absurder. For power was on us as we slashed bones bare Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

I, too, have dropped off fear-- Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon, And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear, Past the entanglement where hopes lie strewn;

And witnessed exhultation-- Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl, Shine and lift up with passion of oblation, Seraphic for an hour, though they were foul.

I have made fellowships-- Untold of happy lovers in old song. For love is not the binding of fair lips With the soft silk of eyes that look and long.

By joy, whose ribbon slips,-- But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong; Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips; Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight; Heard music in the silentness of duty; Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell, Whose world is but a trembling of a flare And heaven but a highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth: You shall not come to think them well content By any jest of mine. These men are worth Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.

Insensibility

I

Happy are men who yet before they are killedCan let their veins run cold.Whom no compassion fleersOr makes their feetSore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.The front line withers,But they are troops who fade, not flowersFor poets' tearful fooling:Men, gaps for fillingLosses who might have foughtLonger; but no one bothers.

II

And some cease feelingEven themselves or for themselves.Dullness best solvesThe tease and doubt of shelling,And Chance's strange arithmeticComes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.

They keep no check on Armies' decimation.

III

Happy are these who lose imagination:They have enough to carry with ammunition.Their spirit drags no pack.Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.Having seen all things red,Their eyes are ridOf the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.And terror's first constriction over,Their hearts remain small drawn.Their senses in some scorching cautery of battleNow long since ironed,Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.

IV

Happy the soldier home, with not a notionHow somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,And many sighs are drained.Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:His days are worth forgetting more than not.He sings along the marchWhich we march taciturn, because of dusk,The long, forlorn, relentless trendFrom larger day to huger night.

V

We wise, who with a thought besmirchBlood over all our soul,How should we see our taskBut through his blunt and lashless eyes?Alive, he is not vital overmuch;Dying, not mortal overmuch;Nor sad, nor proud,Nor curious at all.He cannot tellOld men's placidity from his.

VI

But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,That they should be as stones.Wretched are they, and meanWith paucity that never was simplicity.By choice they made themselves immuneTo pity and whatever mourns in manBefore the last sea and the hapless stars;Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;Whatever sharesThe eternal reciprocity of tears.

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of the battle I escapedDown some profound dull tunnel, long since scoopedThrough granites which Titanic wars had groined.Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and staredWith piteous recognition in fixed eyes,Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.'Strange, friend,' I said, 'Here is no cause to mourn.''None,' said the other, 'Save the undone years,The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,Was my life also; I went hunting wildAfter the wildest beauty in the world,Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,But mocks the steady running of the hour,And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.For by my glee might many men have laughed,And of my weeping something has been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,The pity of war, the pity war distilled.Now men will go content with what we spoiled.Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.Courage was mine, and I had mystery;Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;To miss the march of this retreating worldInto vain citadels that are not walled.Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheelsI would go up and wash them from sweet wells,Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.I would have poured my spirit without stintBut not through wounds; not on the cess of war.Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.I am the enemy you killed, my friend.I knew you in this dark; for so you frownedYesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.Let us sleep now ...