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This is a powerful anti-war poem. It is set in the trenches of northern France during the Great War --
a.k.a. World War I -- and describes with graphic detail the horror of the war, especially the gas that
dissolved the lungs and caused the soldiers to die an excruciating and humiliating death by drowning in
their own blood.
Dying for one's country, the poet concludes, is in no way a glorious and honourable thing.
ABOUT THE POET
Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in Shropshire to a family of committed Christians. He was educated at
the Birkenhead Institute and Shrewsbury Technical College.
Owen wanted to become a teacher but his father could not afford the university fees. Instead, therefore,
he journeyed to France in 1913 where he worked as a tutor. He also wrote occasional poetry, none of
which is particularly known.
When the Great War broke out in 1914, Owen maintained a vague interest in events through cuttings from
newspapers sent by his mother with whom he had a close relationship.
Eventually, however, the pressure of propaganda overcame him and, in October 1915, he returned to
England and enlisted. He was then 22 years of age.
The poet spent a year in training. Letters to his mother reveal that he enjoyed the prestige of wearing the
military uniform.
His training finished at the end of 1916 whereupon he joined the 2nd Manchesters in France where he
took command of No. 3 Platoon.
His enthusiasm initially abounded but soon he was sent to the frontline and witnessed firsthand the gross
tragedy of warfare: living in trenches which were forever knee-deep in mud and water, the rotting corpses
of soldiers, the dreadful war injuries.
"I have suffered seventh hell," he wrote to his mother. "I have not been at the front. I have been
in front of it . . . to where 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 . . . "
Initially Owen's character and temperament did not suit his being a soldier. He was a scholar and a poet,
introverted and sensitive. Moreover, he was a committed Christian whose ideals were opposed to warfare
in any form. It was during this period that he appears to have penned most of his anti-war poems.
The war forced him to face a conflict between his Christian beliefs and his role as a soldier, a scholar
wrote. "I am more and more a Christian," he wrote to his mother in May 1917. "Suffer
dishonour and disgrace, but never resort to arms. Be bullied, be outraged, be killed: but do not kill."
Late in 1917 Owen was sent home, suffering from shell-shock. While recuperating in the military hospital,
he fell under the influence of the anti-war poet, Siegfried Sassoon, who aided him in polishing his war
poetry.
Yet Owen appears to have had a distinct dislike for pacifists and did not want to be identified with them.
Indeed, he felt that his poetry could have a far deeper impact if emanating from a soldier in the trenches.
For that reason, therefore, he re-enlisted for the army and, in October 1918, he rejoined his company in
France. This time, however, he appears to have identified himself with the soldiers and took tremendous
risks in battle.
During one encounter, he captured a German machine gun and used it to decimate a host of enemy
soldiers, for which deed he won the Victoria Cross. Although he denied it in letters to his mother, he
appears now to have become a killing machine.
In early November, just one week before the armistice which ended the war, he supervised the
construction of a bridge to cross the Sambre and Oise Canal. Wave after wave of his own men were
massacred in the attempt. Wilfred Owen too fell in a flurry of machine gun bullets.
He was buried in a small British cemetery in northern France. He was then just 25 years of age.
Have you looked at the questions in the right column?
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TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer the following questions:
"Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time."
- What is the tone of "GAS!"? (2)
[Need help?]
The tone is one of fear, coupled with desperate urgency.
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- Why is the first "Gas!" not written in upper case (capital letters)? (2)
[Need help?]
The use of lower case in "Gas!" indicates that the soldiers do not register the danger at first; it
takes a while for the message to sink into their brains and for them to react.
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- What does the word "fumbling" tell us about the soldiers' state of mind? (2)
[Need help?]
The soldiers are panicking, trying to work so quickly that they cannot get anything done.
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"But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering 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."
- Why was the man "stumbling" and "flound'ring"? (2)
[Need help?]
The soldier had been overtaken by a particularly nasty gas that the Germans used in the Great War, a
gas that ate away one's lungs. His lungs were therefore dissolving and he could no longer breathe
properly.
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- What are the "misty panes"? (2)
[Need help?]
The misty panes refer to the glass panes of the gas mask. They were dirty with the grime of the muddy
trenches so that the world outside was murky and misty when viewed through this glass.
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- Why is the man described as "flound'ring" in "lime"? (2)
[Need help?]
Lime is a sticky substance which was placed on branches to trap birds. The soldier is unable to get away
from the gas. He is trapped like a bird that has become stuck on the lime. Lime dust -- the chalk dust
used for marking sports fields -- also burns dreadfully if one gets it in the eyes.
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- Explain the use of the simile in the words, "As under a green sea, I saw him
drowning". (2)
[Need help?]
The gas was green in colour and so it looked to the soldiers, who were wearing their gas masks, as it they
were walking in a green sea.
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- What happened to the man referred to in these lines? (1)
[Need help?]
The soldier was overcome by the gas and his lungs were eroding, dissolving.
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"In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning."
- Why does the man "plunge" at the poet in his dreams? (2)
[Need help?]
The soldier is desperate for someone to help him. He needs a gas mask. The scene becomes so
indelible in the poet's memory that he dreams constantly of this soldier plunging at him.
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- Identify the figure of speech in "guttering"? (1)
[Need help?]
It's onomatopoeia, isn't it? The word "guttering" creates the exact sound
that the soldier makes as he gasps for air through his bleeding lungs.
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