Dulce et Decorum est †Anthem for Doomed Youth Essay

Dulce et Decorum est and Anthem for Doomed Youth are two poems written by Wilfred Owen during the prototypal World War. Owen, like most soldiers, joined up after(prenominal) being convinced that war was fun by propagandist posters, poems and stories, and once he had realized that the truth was quite the opposite of this, he decided that it was his responsibility to oppose and protest against poets like Jessie Pope through poetry itself. People were not inclined(p) for the sheer scale and manner of death and the mechanised nature of trench warfare, and had false expectations of the heroic endeavour, but little sensory faculty of the realities.However, compared to Dulce, the anger portrayed is dramatically understated. Dulce is an outrageous protest, displaying the haunting and bitter effects of war, and after describing in great detail the horrid story of a soldier drowning and strangulation in gas, Owen reveals his lustful hatred for the false and misleading idealisms of her oism in war using particularly emphatic imagery in cancer and froth corrupted lungs.The detail that Anthem is a sonnet, is ironic in that they are usually about love, and because it is actually about regret, it somewhat lulls the reader into a false sense of security, whence making the poem more effective. Both poems seem to talk about the vile and painful conditions in war, Dulce using onomatopoeia in trudge, giving the pictorial matter that war is truly appalling, immediately going against the common belief that it is a game from poems like Whos for the game?. Also, true to both poems is the idea of mortifying and casual death, rather than the heroic, glorious death promised by governmental propaganda. For example, in Dulce, Owen talks about the way they flung the dead soldier in a wagon with such(prenominal) brutal nonchalance.Furthermore, Anthem introduces a typical Victorian funeral with singing choirs, and juxtaposes it with the shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells o n the battlefield, and with the constant end-stopped lines, this conveys a sense of solemn grief rather than the vicious anger in Dulce, which tends to use enjambment more frequently. Also, Anthem discusses the lack of ceremony and dignity in which people are honoured after their death on the battlefield, and Owen reveals his anger for this using the powerful, hyperbolic alliteration in rifles rapid rattle. In addition, the fact that the sound of machine gun kick upstairs is reflected in the devise rifles rapid rattle presents to the reader that the fierce realities of war are indeed more than just frightening.In addition, a sense of indispensability and immediacy is portrayed in the atomic number 42 stanza of Dulce, when Owen uses direct speech and exclamations in Gas Gas, while the epizeuxis and use of the present continuous tense gives hike up emphasis to this desperate urgency .On the other hand, Anthem has a strong sense of sympathy and general tranquillity throughout the second stanza, which is juxtaposed by something quite the opposite in the first. As well as this, the light lexis used in words such as glimmers and tenderness in the second stanza, give the impression that it is a poem of mourning and respect rather than anger and hate.In general, Dulce uses fairly vulgar and crude language, conveying his disrespect for propagandistic poets, as well as his anger at the unawareness of the dangers of war of the British publicHe plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.Owens use of the words guttering, choking and drowning, has numerous implications and effects. Firstly, a gutter represents the bottom of society, and therefore shows how soldiers dying is in fact not a respectable act, but rather an act that is scarcely noticed by society. Also, the onomatopoeic sounds of guttering and choking, give an even more emphatic image of death on the battlefield, portraying Owens desire for the awareness of the harsh realities of war in youth culture as w ell as in everyday men. Finally, the fact that Owen uses three separate adjectives to describe the horrific scene, in addition to the tri-conic feel it gives, the phrase implies that Owen could not put what he was seeing into words, and therefore persuading the reader that war is simply a catastrophic, desperate absolve for a fight, sacrificing millions of men in the process.Unlike Dulce, Anthem brings out the mournful, respectful side of Wilfred Owen through the melancholy atmosphere he creates through the modulation of harsh imagery to a more resigned toneThe monstrous anger of the gunsbut in their eyesShall shine the holy glimmers of sayonaras.This dramatic contrast between unwashed and frightening imagery in monstrous anger of the guns and the solemn melancholy in the holy glimmers of goodbyes is a very moving one. This is not only because the phrase refers to tears in young mens eyes, which in itself is a saddening image, but also because it refers to goodbyes, forcing a mor e personal image of saying goodbye to close friends or relatives as they go to war upon the mind of the reader, again, creating a sombre mood. In addition, the end-stopped line following goodbyes is very effective in that it makes the goodbye seem all the more sudden, harsh, and hurtful.In conclusion, Dulce and Anthem, although they are both written in protest against the deceiving propaganda made by various people, they go about it in different ways. Dulce is an outright outrage at individuals, which we know from Owens draft that it was targeted at Jessie Pope, using coarse and harsh language to do so. Anthem on the other hand is a more solemn and moving poem, although it starts as if it were to be an outrage, before we learn that in fact, it is only suffer for the dead and their lack of ceremony, and it becomes literally, an anthem for doomed youth.