Wilfred Owens Anthem For Doomed Youth Essays - Dulce Et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen's Anthem For Doomed Youth Notes for students Anthem for doomed Youth 1 Anthem - perhaps best known in the expression The National Anthem; also, an important religious song (often expressing joy); here, perhaps, a solemn song of celebration 2 passing-bells - a bell tolled after someone's death to announce the death to the world 3 patter out - rapidly speak 4 orisons - prayers, here funeral prayers 5 mockeries - ceremonies which are insults. Here Owen seems to be suggesting that the Christian religion, with its loving God, can have nothing to do with the deaths of so many thousands of men 6 demented - raving mad 7 bugles - a bugle is played at military funerals (sounding the last post) 8 shires - English counties and countryside from which so many of the soldiers came 9 candles - church candles, or the candles lit in the room where a body lies in a coffin 10 pallor - paleness 11 dusk has a symbolic significance here 12 drawing-down of blinds - normally a preparation for night, but also, here, the tradition of drawing the blinds in a room where a dead person lies, as a sign to the world and as a mark of respect. The coming of night is like the drawing down of blinds. 1 DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean It is sweet and right. The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country 2 rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines (See illustration, page 118 of Out in the Dark.) 3 a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer 4 the noise made by the shells rushing through the air 5 outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle 6 Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells 7 poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned 8 the early name for gas masks 9 a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue 10 the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks 11 Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling 12 normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew; here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth 13 high zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea 14 keen Disabled 'He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark' (L.1) The immediate appearance of 'dark', 'grey' , and 'shivered' sets up the isolation of the wounded soldier. It strikes a strong comparison to the warmth of the second stanza. Return to poem 3.'used to swing so gay' (L.7) The next few lines mirror the tone of such poems as 'The Ruin', an Old English poem, in which the poet (anonymous) looks on a ruined building, now frost-bitten and decrepit, imagining the sound and warmth that once rang through its walls. Return to poem 4.'glow-lamps' and 'girls glanced' (L.8 & L9) Both are linked effectively by the use of alliteration. Return to poem 5.'before he threw away his knees' (L.10) The implication that this was a needless loss (sacrifice) is reinforced by Ll.23-4 where the wounded soldier fails to remember why he joined up, pointing only to a distant sense of duty, and euphoria after the football match. Fussell notes that: 'Owen's favourite sensuous device is the formula 'his - ', with the blank usually filled with a part of the body.' (p. 292). Return to poem 6.'Now he will never feel again how slim/Girls' waists are' (L.11 & L.12) Showing not only the physical loss of his