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READ THIS
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:
"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge."
- Comment on the very rich imagery of these two lines. (4)
[Need help?]
The poet uses a sustained simile here, comparing the soldiers to old beggars, weighed down ("bent
double") under their loads ("under sacks"). The weight of their burden and their sheer tiredness
makes them knock-kneed.
Their weeks of living in water-sodden trenches, in the rain and in the cold -- and possibly breathing in
wisps of the lung-destroying chlorine or phosgene gas -- makes them cough. The coughing is wrenching
-- as if they are old, malnourished women ("coughing like hags").
They cursed through "sludge". "Sludge" is a thick, sticky oozing mud which sucks at their
feet and holds them down, making walking difficult.
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"Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge."
- Why are the flares said to be "haunting"? (4)
[Need help?]
The word "haunting" has an other-worldly meaning. Ghosts haunt. Ghosts also cause fear.
Because of this, "haunting" tends to be associated with death and with fear.
In this passage, the flares are "haunting" because the soldiers are all weighed down, hardly having
time to look up at the flares which light up the night sky in a strange, eerie sort of way, creating an other-
worldly picture. At the same time, the flares are forerunners of another attack, which the soldiers also fear.
And so, within the context of this poem, the flares are "haunting" because they are other-worldly
and conjure up fear in the soldiers.
It is also possible that, because death is all around the soldiers, the flares appear like the ghosts of their
fallen comrades, lighting their way but frightening them lest they too become ghosts when a falling shell
kills them.
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"All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind."
- Comment on the use of the words "hoots" and "disappointed" in the context of these
lines. (4)
[Need help?]
The word "hoots" is onomatopoeia, is it not? The shells fall with a dull thud
in the thick mud. It is possible that some fail to explode, thus making a dull thud that sounds like
"hoots". It is also possible that shells filled with gas don't make an exploding sound but make a
noise that sounds like "hoots".
Now a shell's sole purpose in life is to explode. Failure to do so must be dreadfully disappointing for the
shell! Hence they are "disappointed shells". On the other hand, it is possible that they do explode
but the soldiers quickly put on gas masks. The shells also fail to achieve their purpose and are
disappointed.
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"Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time."
- Is the word "ecstasy" not a rather strange one to use in this context? Why do you think the poet
has used it? (4)
[Need help?]
The word "ecstasy" means "an overwhelming feeling of joy or rapture". It can also mean
"an emotional or religious frenzy or trance-like state".
The first meaning would indeed be very strange in this context. The soldiers are not in a state of joy or
rapture. They are, however, very much in a "trance-like state". They are exhausted, probably not
having slept for days.
And then the shouts of "Gas! GAS!" Because of their state, they fail to hear the first call. It is the
second call that causes them to scramble for their gas-masks. And so they put on the masks in an
"ecstasy", i.e. in a trance.
Note the upper-case "GAS!" which indicates that the second was shouted louder and more
demanding.
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"Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning."
- Explain the sustained image used in these two lines. (4)
[Need help?]
The sustained image is that of being under water in a thick, green sea. The soldiers are drowning. Of
course, the greenness is caused by the misty panes of glass of their gas masks. But the strange light of
the flares, eerily lighting up the night sky, adds to the green effect.
The poet takes the underwater image a step further by referring to the soldier as "drowning". He
is not drowning in water, of course. He has been slow to put on his gas mask and has inhaled the chlorine
or phosgene gas which corrupts the lungs, eats away the tissue so that the man is drowning in the froth
of his own blood and mucous.
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"In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning."
- Comment on the choice of the words "guttering, choking, drowning". (4)
[Need help?]
Notice that all three words contain short, stabbing syllables. They are designed to tear at one's
imagination, stab into our hearts.
Both "guttering" and "choking" are also onomatopoeic words, words which sound like the
noise the soldier is making as he inhales his own blood and drowns in it.
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"And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin."
- What does the poet mean by "His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin"? (4)
[Need help?]
Think of the devil and what should you think of? Sin! The devil tempts people to sin. The worse the sin,
the more the devil likes it.
But it is like someone who likes eating ice-cream. After about two litres of ice-cream, that person will start
becoming sick of it, and might throw-up. And so, although the devil likes sin, he too will get sick of it if he
has too much to eat.
The poet is stressing, of course, that warfare is sinful. The sin is seen in the dying soldier's writhing face,
the white eyes, the hanging look. The sin is so great that even the devil has eaten too much of it and
wants to throw-up.
Is there a double-meaning in the words "hanging face"? The soldier's head is hanging as he
drowns in his own blood. But he also has the face of a man who has been wrongly sentenced to hang,
and is now hanging, dying with a rope unjustly tied around his neck.
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"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."
- The poet's selection of words here puts across the theme of this poem in a most dramatic fashion.
In what way is this true? (4)
[Need help?]
The theme of the poem is the horror of warfare. The poet chooses his words carefully to project that
theme.
Do you notice the short, sharp, cutting syllables in the words "obscene", "cancer",
"bitter", "cud" and "vile"? These words spit at you. They stab home their point of the
horrors of warfare.
The word "gargling" is onomatopoeic. It sounds like the dreadful noise the soldier is making as he
drowns in his own blood, it sounds like the noise people make when they gargle -- in this case gargling
in blood.
The poet asks you to listen to the sounds of these words so that you too will hear the sound of the soldier
dying through his lungs corrupting after inhaling phosgene gas, causing him to die in the froth of his own
blood.
The soldier's tongue is full of cancerous sores caused by the gas. But, the poet says, his tongue is
innocent. The soldier has done nothing to deserve any of this.
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"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."
- Why is "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" said to be "the old Lie"? (4)
[Need help?]
The words "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" is Latin for "It is a sweet and wonderful thing to
die for your country".
The poet says that this is a lie. It is not sweet and wonderful at all. It is horrible, disgusting.
It is an "old Lie" because it has been told over and over in order to convince men through the ages
to step forward and fight for their country.
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- Why is "Lie" written with the upper-case "L"? (4)
[Need help?]
Why is "Lie" written with the upper-case "L"? Is it not to emphasise the lie? Or perhaps, by
using the upper-case "L", the poet has turned the lie into a person, has personified it. The lie has
been told so often that it has become a being in its own right, living and breathing.
Can you think of any other reason?
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