Wilfred Owen Tone

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The First World War was a global war which lasted for four years and resulted in over thirty seven million casualties making it one of the deadliest human conflicts in history. Wilfred Owen, a soldier suffering shell shock was a war poet who used poetry to express his horror at the war. His anti-war poetry contrasts the political propaganda about the glories of trench warfare and the heroism of British soldiers with the reality of the true nature of war. Owen’s poetry explores the physical, emotional and psychological impact on men who had to kill in order to survive. He wrote out of his own personal experience as a soldier and wrote with unmatched power to expose the reality of war. Owen wanted to inform awaken and enlighten people about…show more content…
The poem contrasts a light-hearted tone with a serious message. Owen does this by using a paradox in the following line: “our eyes wept but our courage didn’t writhe”. Despite everything the soldiers are still going on and there is a tone of admiration and pride by Owen which shows how he feels towards the soldiers. This point is further emphasised by the letter which he wrote to his mother on the 1st of October in which he now rationalised his motives. In part, he was thinking as a soldier forgetting that he had been ordered there and wrote to his mother: “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”. It makes the audience question is their courage inspired by bravery or are the soldiers delirious as a result of the impact of wat on their sanity. The last three lines of the poem: “we laughed knowing that better men would come and greater wars: when each proud fighter brags he wars on death, for lives; no men for flags. “. The war was a situation where men had to survive, not a place where defending a land, country or a flag. Here Owen shows the reality of war: every death in a war is an absurd death. Therefore the mental health of the soldiers is questioned as a result of the daily horrors they experienced and constant blood-shed they were exposed
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