Wilfried Owen wrote many poems in the First World War, with one of the most famous being “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. Written in 1917 when he was recovering from injuries in the hospital, it depicts the dark destiny of young men fighting in the war to die. It is a warning against romanticizing the war, saying that the soldiers are ordinary and do not experience glory, and that rituals can never fully capture the horrors and undignified deaths that the soldiers go through. It instead tells the people to remember all the soldiers who died by showing patience and continuing to live their lives. The ordinary, expendable soldiers are not romanticized warriors who die glorious deaths, but rather die violently and undignified. Fancy rituals can never be enough to honor them and are in fact mockeries. Rather, their sacrifice should be honored by keeping the soldiers’ memory alive and learning from the war, showing the patience necessary to prevent it from happening again and living life normally.

Narratives glorifying war often present soldiers as larger than life figures performing heroic exploits, and in doing so obscure the reality of war. But not Owen. He instead asks: “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” (1) This appears like a question, but it is in fact a loaded question. Through the simile at the end of the line, the men are compared to “cattle”: that is, they are expendable, have been brought up simply to be slaughtered like animals. Nothing is special about them; they are simply ordinary. Thus, the poet asks why they should be honored with something as ornate as “passing-bells”. This is also captured by the fact that although the poem is mostly in iambic pentameter, the last word of this line, “cattle” is a falling, or weak syllable. This shows that the soldiers are not dying dignified deaths, but pointless ones. Despite the war supposedly being to end all wars, one much worse would arrive 20 years later, and many of the soldiers of the first one believed they had fought in vain. World War 1 has been often seen as one of the most meaningless wars in history. “Only the monstrous anger of the guns. / Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle/ Can patter out their hasty orisons” The use of “monstrous anger” (2-4) in line 2 is meant to convey the worst of human emotions, setting it in stark contrast to the peaceful atmosphere of the bells. These emotions are what cause war in the first place, and the soldiers die experiencing them both in themselves and other people. This is the only thing they feel, nothing glorious. The use of the word “monstrous” shows how the guns and the people that are firing them are acting out of inhumanity, out of pure malice and animalism. The guns have taken away their humanity. Line 3 uses alliteration, with the 3 consecutive words beginning with “r”. This conveys the speed of the gunfire being fired at the soldiers, which is so fast that it drowns out everything else and fits well with the terrible sounds in the poem. It is a stark contrast to the passing bells in the previous line, which are nice sounds but because they are slow are drowned out by the gunfire. The next line speaks of this rapid fire “pattering out” the hasty prayers of the soldiers, showing that this cannot save the soldiers from their deaths, no matter how much they pray. The bullets will always be faster than their prayers. This shows a sense of nihilism, since not even religion provides protection.

Fancy rituals do not fully honor the soldiers, because they do not capture the moment. There are “no mockeries for them from prayers or bells” (5) The “prayers” and “bells” are in fact “mockeries” because they try to whitewash and glorify the suffering that the soldiers go through, try to make them something that they are not. But the people who pray or use the bells will never have to go and fight these wars, so they cannot truly know it. They are just spectators on the sidelines. These are also peaceful and holy rituals which are being used to glorify a pointless war, and a war against mostly other Christian powers in that, so it is also blasphemous against Christianity.  There is no “voice of mourning save the choirs, / The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;” (6-7) The only choirs that these soldiers will ever hear are the “wailing shells” that kill them. They are “demented”, the very opposite of holy, further emphasizing that the poor soldiers are not protected by God but have been cursed to fight in this war. The similar stress of “shrill” and “shells” is meant to emulate the high-pitched sound coming from these weapons of war. They sound terrible and demonic. The war is hell itself and the shells are like demons. These are the last things that they will ever hear. The rhyme between “bell” and “shells” also further emphasizes the contrast between the ritual idealization of the war, which is presented as good, and the terrible realities. The shells are “wailing” because they are an augur of the soldier’s approaching death, they cannot escape them, and they know this. Shells were one of the many weapons in World War 1 that killed vast numbers of people simply because of how advanced they were: no matter how experienced you were it was difficult if not impossible to escape them. They capture death better than any ritual. Owen is not trying to argue against these rituals, and knows that they have their place, but simply does not see them as adequate.

If Owen does not see these types of rituals as enough, there are others that he recommends to them. He says that “The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their [the soldiers’] pall” (12). That is, the soldiers shall not just be buried underneath the pall, but also in the heads of their loved ones where the memory of them will be kept. This is strengthened by the first four letters of “pallor” being “pall” and the syllable being very similar for both words. “Pallor” means an unnatural paleness in the skin, which could be among other reasons for emotional distress. So, the fact that the color of the loved one’s eyebrows change would be a marker for the death of the soldiers. Memory is more important for Owen, and it would be worse to be forgotten by the family than to not be buried. That is his first call. His second call is for “Their flowers [to be] the tenderness of silent minds” (13). He is arguing that rather that their graves should be decorated with the patience, compassion and understanding that will prevent such a war from occurring again. The previous parts of the poem were filled with hard emotions such as anger and hatred, with many terrible sounds. One key reason World War 1 occurred was because the Great Powers were very bellicose and itching for a fight against each other: in fact, they had prepared for it through building up their militaries and creating alliances. Demonization was also a common tactic in the war: for example, the British would call the Germans “Huns” and would create propaganda demonizing them as baby-killers. If the soldiers had to die for such a meaningless war, they should at least not have died in vain, and measures should be taken to make sure that a war will never happen again. War should not be looked forward to. If the same mistakes are repeated, then the traditional forms of remembrance are completely pointless. Finally, Owen wants at “each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds” (14). Owen is telling people that they should simply go on living their lives every day. The “drawing down of blinds” suggests death’s darkness, but also the cycle of everyday life with one person going to sleep and living on the next day. This says that the soldiers died so that the people could live in peace, so the best way to honor them is to continue living life. The dead would not want the people that they died for to suffer because they are not there, because they themselves are at peace. All these actions would make sure that the rituals spoken of by Owen are not in vain.

Wilfried Owen’s poem conveys a powerful anti-war message through its portrayal of the soldiers as ordinary, expendable beings destined to die brutally. Traditional rituals do not honor them adequately, and alone they spit on their faces. So, the real way to make sure the soldiers did not die in vain is to remember them in the heart, preventing the war from happening again through temperance and continuing the cycle of life. This is important to keep in mind and to be careful about wishing for war, as it may be more than one bargained for. Westerners during World War 1 did not anticipate the length and destruction of the war, or the arrival of another one in twenty years, but believed they would be home by Christmas. Finding out that they were wrong had terrible consequences on their self-esteem, leading to nihilism and despair. It was also not the commanders or leaders of the Great Powers who suffered the most, but the ordinary young men of the different fighting powers. Through the title of this poem, Owen truly does convey that wars such as World War 1 are not good actions for a patriot to take, and that a true patriot would want to prevent them from occurring in the first place.

Works Cited

Owen, Wilfred. “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” Black, Joseph et al. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: One-Volume Compact Edition, The Medieval Period through the Twenty First Century. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2015. 1829. Digital.