The Creation of Pathos and War Poetry of Wilfred Owen

 

 When the war came to an end, literature from poetry to memoir contributed a vast majority of thorough visions on the insight of the war. Reading the war poetry is far more concerned to be an indirect way to give a bit of sense with those who do not have a chance to witness the poignant and devastating atrocity of the war. Besides some of the reputed authors like Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen is considered as an author whose works bring various realistic expressions to the insight of the war. As he devised methodically his poetic formulation that “Above all, I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity.” (Campbell) Viewed critically, he is a soldier and a poet too, his ideology thus articulates his subject and the inner voice of the war to let readers see all the pathos of his poems stressed by his trench lyric critics. In this writing, two of his poems “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Futility” will be discussed to bring out some of the techniques in which he used to accumulate the most pathos of the war poetry.

 

Firstly, having looked at the imagery of linguistic features, in “Futility”, different rhyme techniques are uniquely taken into account. It can be seen that para-rhyme along with half-rhyme is utilized such as sun/half-sown, once/France, snow/know, seeds/sides, star/stir/ and tall/toil. This wordplay considers an intriguing rhythm for the whole poem. Furthermore, when it comes to anchor the creation, one line shows an ideal genre like the imageries of nature replaced the atrocities that “Move him into the sun” (line 1), “At home, whispering of fields half-sown.” (line 3), or “Think how it wakes the seeds” (line 8), and “Was it for this the clay grew tall?” (line 12); while the other line sketches a feeling of rejecting the truth like “Always it awoke him, even in France,” (line 4), “Until this morning and this snow.” (line 5), “ The kind old sun will know.” (line 7), or “ Woke once the clays of a cold star.” (line 9) and “Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?” (line 11). Secondly, the tone is constructed in an optimistic mood. In the first stanza, the image of the sun inline 1 is repeated inline 7 making an earthly manifesto targeted to the war. That is “the commensurate shift in tone from grief and a kind of despairing hope to a tone of increasing helplessness and frustration.” (Cordery) Thus those juxtaposed lines give significance to the momentum of rhyme expression and to demonstrate a melancholic expectation that the author’s comrade might be back to life. That is concerned as a sumption for the second stanza.

 

Since the atrocity has gone, everything gets back to survive. The author with his confidence to “Think how it wakes the seeds – Woke once the clays of a cold star.” This is not the first time that he uses the word “wake/woke”. That is somehow a hopeful tone like a bud finding its own way of life to rise up after a storm and a ray of hope to his comrade can “rouse” (line 6) after the war. Furthermore, it may bring a bit of ambiguity that why the author places some rhetorical questions in the last lines. Linking this with the personification of the sun, it could be interpreted those questions brightly. The sun represents for life and existence, the author has no less than two times evoking its imagery but as a human being, he cannot resist the eternal truth that a person who lies in the netherworld cannot come back to life.

 

Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

-O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth’s sleep at all? (line 11-14)

 

It is time to know that war is something that cannot be forgotten. We can choose to be optimistic to live a life better. To those who sacrificed their lives for all that is absolutely precious, yet their deaths for the absurd war under the government propaganda without volunteering that is kind of “futility”. With that in mind, the anger of the author thus can be understandable. Consequently, the poem is a composition of many poetic elements to convey the thought of the author to the pathetic voice of the war and also broaden reader’s ability to a tangible world that is full of paradox yet cannot change.

 

Together, making a fulfill contribution to Owen’s anti-war poetry collection, “Dulce et Decorum Est” brings out another layer of the war with his insight vision. If “Futility” lets us see the truth of a wasted death, “Dulce et Decorum Est” also describes a death but in “least heroic and most ironic” trench life. (Campbell) Throughout the human history, the causes of wars are mostly from divergent perspectives from political parties or beneficial groups, therefore “the experience of violence puts tremendous pressure on nations, persons, ideas, and language.” (Dawes 131) That affects the ideology of those who directly participated in the battle, and many of authors witnessed it. In the beginning, “the poem opens its devastated imagery of soldier deprived their youth to sacrifice for the war and now they become dispossessed and “ like old beggars under sacks.” (line 1) There are ranges of poor soldier figures, which Owen listed in the poem such as those are “coughing like hags” (line 2), lost their masculinity and look aged; or “like a man in fire or lime” (line 12) which implicates to the agony; or “As under the green sea” (line 14) that refers to drowning man but in this context when soldier with their gas masks could not be strong enough to resist the effect of the shell-shock; or “Like a devil’s sick of sin” (line 20), in comparison with the image of “the green sea” this is not only an explicit description to the poor health condition of soldiers but also to manifest the horrifying atrocity of the war.

 

More seriously, the sight of death was flooding into the heart of the war when no one could remain their strength to combat and the side effect of disastrous bombs and poisonous gas made the man looked “obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud.” (line 23) As seen that the author resourcefully uses a simile to the entire poem to let readers imagine and reinforce the connection to the true face of the war. Again, the enjambment with juxtaposed lines is intensively used to bring out the traumatic scenario of the war. This is so-called alliteration, which can be investigated in most of the stanzas such as sacks/backs, sludge/trudge, fumbling/stumbling, pace/face and the repetition of “m” in those sentences “Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,/But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;” (lines 5-6). The use of alliteration somewhat depicts the war process that it was intensive, aggressive and it gave no time for the negotiations. Understandably, no one could listen to any sides when the only thing they need is winning the battle under the historical context. So that people in each of their nations, by no means, need to advocate for their right. This misunderstanding all of the time called patriotism when no one could distinguish that civilians had no reason to take part in or enlisted for the war and had to waste their lives of it. Here the ironic image is evoked when Owen, after a long poem drawn by the pathos, in just two lines to make an end for the poem. This might be a sweet answer to the barbarity of the battle and a silent poignant to what he witnessed from the war.

 

Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori. (lines 27-28)

 

In conclusion, war is probably an indescribable and shocking experience with many people. To an author who had a chance to witness the war, Owen with his poetic weapon gives a shot to accuse of the absurd war that brought many lives into deaths. By examining two of his poems, it can be realized that linguistic features and his skill to use literary elements such as alliteration, enjambment, personification, or simile not only bring out the meaning of the poems but also create a space for readers to imagine the historical context that what people had to suffer from war and how we can respect and treat them as honour and pride people who died from the war but left the peace for their offspring.

 

Work Cited

Campbell, James. “Combat Gnosticism: The ideology of First World War poetry criticism.” New Literary History, vol. 30, no. 1, 1999., pp. 203-215.

Cordery, G. “Owen’s FUTILITY.” Explicator 45.1 (1986): 50. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 16 Sept. 2016.

Dawes, James R.. Language of War: Literature and Culture in the U.S. from the Civil War through World War II. Cambridge, US: Harvard University Press, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 17 September 2016.

Norgate, Paul. “Wilfred Owen and the Soldier Poets.” The Review of English Studies no 40.160 (1989): 516-30. Web.

Poetry Foundation. Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. Poetry. Web. 17 Sep. 2016.

Poetry Foundation. Futility by Wilfred Owen. Poetry. Web. 17 Sep. 2016.