Anthem for Doomed Youth

BY WILFRED OWEN

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Summary

Anthem for Doomed Youth, as the title suggests, is a poem about the waste of many young men
in the First World War. The word ‘anthem’ in the title, unlike a national anthem that glorifies a
country, is ironical, for there is just the opposite of glory in the absurd death of younger people
shooting each other for nothing. The youth in the poem is doomed less by other (which the poem
doesn’t mention) than by his own decision to join the battle.

The poem reminds us of the sonnet that Mr. Brooke wrote to glorify war and England in that
jingoistic manner; Owen has used the same sonnet form (that was originally used to express
love) to demystify the conventional glorification of war, by exposing the meanness and absurdity
of dying in the battle. The poem is written in the form of a sonnet. The poem as a whole is about
how to conduct the funeral of a certain (or any) soldier who has died in war.

The first eight line stanza (octet) describes how the guns and rifles, bursting bombs and the
bugles will take the place of church bells, choirs of religious hymns, prayers, voices of people
mourning and wailing, and the calling from the sad countryside. In the second six line stanza
(sestet), he replaces more conventional objects and activities in mourning and funeral by more
abstract and symbolic things back at home. The first stanza is full of images of war that will do
the mourning, so that no human sympathy and ritual is necessary, because this is not natural and
meaningful death. The second stanza is more devastating in its irony.

The octave begins with a rhetorical question. “What passing-bells for these who died as cattle?”
The soldiers die like cows; their death doesn’t evoke much sorrow. The persona is not actually so
apathetic; the viewpoint is ironic that of the indiffere4nt people who stay in the protection of
home and never know that war is horrible and disgusting. The rhetorical assertion that no bells
may be rung in the name of these soldiers is not so much about the manner of their dying but the
little value that the society attaches to their death. So at the deeper level, the poem also reads like
a direct invective scorn expressed by someone exasperated by war and senseless killing of the
young. If a man dies, the bell is rung at the church but when the cattle die, we don’t ring the bell
in the church. When a soldier dies, in situations like the World Wars, there is no much value
attached to the death of mere soldiers.

By using the fixed form of the sonnet, Owen gains compression and a close interweaving of
symbols. The structure depends, not only on the sonnet form but also on a pattern of echoing
sounds from the very first line to the last, and upon Owen’s careful organization of groups of
symbols and of two contrasting themes – in the octave the mockery of doomed youth, and in the
sestet the silent personal grief which is the acceptable response to immense tragedy. The symbols
in the octave suggest cacophony and the visual images in the sestet suggest silence. The poem is
unified throughout by a complex pattern of alliteration and assonance. Deposited its complex
structure, this sonnet achieves an effect of impressive simplicity in theme.

Analysis
This searing poem is one of Owen's most critically acclaimed. It was written in the fall of 1917
and published posthumously in 1920. It may be a response to the anonymous preface
from Poems of Today(1916), which proclaims that boys and girls should know about the poetry
of their time, which has many different themes that "mingle and interpenetrate throughout, to the
music of Pan's flute, and of Love's viol, and the bugle-call of Endeavor, and the passing-bells of
death."
The poem owes its more mature imagery and message to Owen's introduction to another WWI
poet, Siegfried Sassoon, while he was convalescing in Edinburgh's Craiglockhart Hospital in
August 1917. Sassoon was older and more cynical, and the meeting was a significant turning
point for Owen. The poem is structured as a Petrarchan sonnet with a Shakespearean rhyme
scheme and is an elegy or lament for the dead. Owen's meter is mostly iambic pentameter with
some small derivations that keep the reader on his or her toes as they read. The meter reinforces
the juxtapositions in the poem and the sense of instability caused by war and death.

Owen begins with a bitter tone as he asks rhetorically what "passing-bells" of mourning will
sound for those soldiers who die like cattle in an undignified mass. They are not granted the
rituals and rites of good Christian civilians back home. They do not get real prayers, only rifle
fire. Their only "choirs" are of shells and bugles. This first set of imagery is violent, featuring
weapons and harsh noises of war. It is set in contrast to images of the church; Owen is
suggesting organized religion cannot offer much consolation to those dying on the front. Kenneth
Simcox writes, "These religious images...symbolize the sanctity of life – and death – while
suggesting also the inadequacy, the futility, even meaninglessness, of organized religion
measured against such a cataclysm as war. To 'patter out' is to intone mindlessly, an irrelevance.
'Hasty' orisons are an irreverence. Prayers, bells, mockeries only."

In the second stanza the poem slows down and becomes more dolorous, less enraged. The poet
muses that the young men will not have candles – the only light they will get will be the
reflections in their fellow soldiers' eyes. They must have substitutions for their coffin covers
("palls"), their flowers, and their "slow dusk". The poem has a note of finality, of lingering
sadness and an inability to avoid the reality of death and grief.
The critic Jon Silkin notes that, while the poem seems relatively straightforward, there is some
ambiguity: "Owen seems to be caught in the very act of consolatory mourning he condemns...a
consolation that permits the war's continuation by civilian assent, and is found ambiguously in
the last line of the octet." Owen might be trying to make the case that his poetry is a more
realistic form of the expression of grief and the rituals of mourning.

Irony is another important device in this poem. It is a terrible irony that men are dying as cattle.
It is ironical that sympathy seems to have dried up, and men are patient about the death of the
thousands of soldiers. Amidst these terrible ironies, the poet suggests ironically how we, as
typical war lovers, conduct the funeral. Since the soldier loves to glorify the gun, it is perhaps his
wish that the beloved guns sing the hymns after his death. The church is not as important as the
bombs that will do the prayers. The second stanza is even more devastating in its irony. The poet
has replaced not only the normal religious rituals; he has also supplied new materials for the
funeral program. These metaphorical symbolic materials like the sad voice, the mourning, the
pale expressions, patient minds and brightness of the eyes will no longer come to use, because
they had been used to conduct the funeral of the soldier the very day he had decided to leave
normal life and chosen to go to the battlefield and die! When the poet remembers today, he feels
that the shining in the eyes or sad girls who said goodbye to the foolish soldiers was the funeral
candle for them that very day! This idea of leaving funeral is certainly exaggerated, but it is also
very true because the decision to go to kill your brothers is well high a departure for death. So
the poet says that the funeral in human terms had been done and therefore it is no longer
necessary now. Their death was a foregone conclusion, nothing shocking; that is why the people
are patient. What is left now is for the guns and bombs to perform (or celebrate) the funeral of
the soldiers who die as cattle.

The poem is remarkable for its sound symbolism. The sounds of the guns and rifles are echoed
by the words like monstrous, anger, stuttering, rifle, rapid, rattle, patter hasty orisons, demented,
and the like, all of which contain sounds like /r/ /d/ /t/, etc. The alliteration imitates the sound of
the bullets blowing in the battlefield. In the sestet there is no sound of war but a vast funeral
service for the dead soldiers. The poet asserts that there is no need for candles. The candles are
replaced by the glimmering tears in the eyes of beloveds. Their glimmering tears become the
candles for the funeral services. The flowers come from the tenderness of patient minds. A
drawing of curtain symbolizes the darkness or the passing of the sun. The sestet concerns with
different insight. It pictures the melancholy state of the mind of the beloved who thinks of her
dead lover. She sees her fate caste with darkness.

Themes

THEME OF WARFARE

The speaker of "Anthem for Doomed Youth" never says the words soldier or war. He never
names a country or particular dispute. In a way, he's signaling to us that this poem is not about
specific battles or individual loves lost. Nope, Owen is writing all about a much more universal
topic: the terrible costs and realities of all wars, and the inability of our rituals to alleviate the
death and suffering it brings about.

THEME OF RELIGION

Choirs, candles, palls, and bells? "Anthem for Doomed Youth" is chock full of religious
imagery, but it lacks the peaceful, contemplative feel you might expect. Instead, our speaker is
bent on comparing religious rituals to the weapons of war, which is an alarming, but effective
way of getting us to face facts: are the religious rituals and institutions that glorify and promote
war just as destructive as the instruments used to carry out war? And will the religious rituals we
participate in to mourn our lost loved ones really be enough to honor them after they have died as
cattle?

THEME OF DEATH

Here's the deal: the big problem with war is that people die. We know, we know. Duh. Still, we
figure it's worth pointing out that even though "Anthem for Doomed Youth" doesn't directly
mention death after the first line, it's still completely obsessed with the concept. We move
between the sounds of incoming death (rifle and artillery fire) and images of mourning (coffin
covers, candles, passing-bells). Where do we end up? At dusk, a.k.a. the dying of day.

Dulce et Decorum Est

BY WILFRED OWEN
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring 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.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
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,—
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.
Summary

First Stanza

The first stanza or movement might comprise of the first eight lines. Here Owen is describing
the soldiers as unwilling to fight and marching in their sleep. They are dog tired. It does not
matter if bombs keep exploding near them. They just walk on to their place of rest. The stanza
brings out the pathetic existence of the soldiers.

The first line takes the reader straight into the ranks of the soldiers, an unusual opening, only
we're told they resemble "old beggars" and "hags" (note the similes) by the speaker, who is
actually in amongst this sick and motley crew.

The initial rhythm is slightly broken iambic pentameter until line five when commas and semi-
colons and other punctuation reflect the disjointed efforts of the men to keep pace.

Also note the term "blood-shod" which suggests a parallel with horses, and the fact that many are
lame, drunk, blind and deaf. The trauma of war has intoxicated the soldiers.

Second Stanza

The next eight lines comprise the second stanza or movement. Here the action begins abruptly as
in another poem called Exposure by the same master. The gas attack comes suddenly like a bad
news and engulfs one weary soldier who got confused or too tired to wear his mask. The soldier
drowns in the green sea of the gas but soon re-surfaces only to garb at the poet and make him see
death up close and personal.

Suddenly the call goes up: "Gas!" We delve deeper into the scene as chemical warfare raises its
ugly head and one man gets caught and left behind. He's too slow to don his gas mask and
helmet, which would have saved his life by filtering out the toxins.

"An ecstasy of fumbling," the poet writes. The ecstasy is used here in the sense of a trance-like
frenzy as the men hurriedly put on their helmets. It has nothing to do with happiness.

Here the poem becomes personal and metaphorical. The speaker sees the man consumed by gas
as a drowning man, as if he were underwater. Misty panes add an unreal element to this
traumatic scene, as though the speaker is looking through a window.
Third Stanza

Only two lines long, this stanza brings home the personal effect of the scene on the speaker. The
image sears through and scars despite the dream-like atmosphere created by the green gas and
the floundering soldier. Owen chose the word "guttering" to describe the tears streaming down
the face of the unfortunate man, a symptom of inhaling toxic gas.

Fourth Stanza

The speaker widens the issue by confronting the reader (and especially the people at home, far
away from the war), suggesting that if they too could experience what he had witnessed, they
would not be so quick to praise those who die in action. They would be lying to future
generations if they though that death on the battlefield was sweet. Owen does not hold back. His
vivid imagery is quite shocking, his message direct and his conclusion sincere.

The last four lines are thought to have been addressed to a Jessie Pope, a children's writer and
journalist at the time, whose published book Jessie Pope's War Poemsincluded a poem titled The
Call, an encouragement for young men to enlist and fight in the war.

Analysis
"Dulce et Decorum est" is without a doubt one of, if not the most, memorable and anthologized
poems in Owen's oeuvre. Its vibrant imagery and searing tone make it an unforgettable
excoriation of WWI, and it has found its way into both literature and history courses as a paragon
of textual representation of the horrors of the battlefield. It was written in 1917 while Owen was
at Craiglockhart, revised while he was at either Ripon or Scarborough in 1918, and published
posthumously in 1920. One version was sent to Susan Owen, the poet's mother, with the
inscription, "Here is a gas poem done yesterday (which is not private, but not final)." The poem
paints a battlefield scene of soldiers trudging along only to be interrupted by poison gas. One
soldier does not get his helmet on in time and is thrown on the back of the wagon where he
coughs and sputters as he dies. The speaker bitterly and ironically refutes the message espoused
by many that war is glorious and it is an honor to die for one's country.
The poem is a combination of two sonnets, although the spacing between the two is irregular. It
resembles French ballad structure. The broken sonnet form and the irregularity reinforce the
feeling of otherworldliness; in the first sonnet, Owen narrates the action in the present, while in
the second he looks upon the scene, almost dazed, contemplative. The rhyme scheme is
traditional, and each stanza features two quatrains of rhymed iambic pentameter with several
spondaic substitutions.

"Dulce" is a message of sorts to a poet and civilian propagandist, Jessie Pope, who had written
several jingoistic and enthusiastic poems exhorting young men to join the war effort. She is the
"friend" Owen mentions near the end of his poem. The first draft was dedicated to her, with a
later revision being altered to "a certain Poetess". However, the final draft eliminated a specific
reference to her, as Owen wanted his words to apply to a larger audience.

The title of the poem, which also appears in the last two lines, is Latin for, "It is sweet and right
to die for one's country" - or, more informally, "it is an honor to die for one's country". The line
derives from the Roman poet Horace's Ode 3.2. The phrase was commonly used during the WWI
era, and thus would have resonated with Owen's readers. It was also inscribed on the wall of the
chapel of the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst in 1913.
In the first stanza Owen is speaking in first person, putting himself with his fellow soldiers as
they labor through the sludge of the battlefield. He depicts them as old men, as "beggars". They
have lost the semblance of humanity and are reduced to ciphers. They are wearied to the bone
and desensitized to all but their march. In the second stanza the action occurs – poisonous gas
forces the soldiers to put their helmets on. Owen heightens the tension through the depiction of
one unlucky soldier who could not complete this task in time - he ends up falling, "drowning" in
gas. This is seen through "the misty panes and the thick green light", and, as the imagery
suggests, the poet sees this in his dreams.

In the fourth stanza Owen takes a step back from the action and uses his poetic voice to bitterly
and incisively criticize those who promulgate going to war as a glorious endeavor. He paints a
vivid picture of the dying young soldier, taking pains to limn just how unnatural it is, "obscene as
cancer". The dying man is an offense to innocence and purity – his face like a "devil's sick of
sin". Owen then says that, if you knew what the reality of war was like, you would not go about
telling children they should enlist. There is utterly no ambiguity in the poem, and thus it is
emblematic of poetry critical of war.

The poem is written in the style of French ballade poetic form, a medieval Renaissance French
style verse which is written in three eight line stanzas each with a consistent meter and a
particular rhyme scheme. Owen brings this poetic form, but distorts it and breaks some poetic
conventions. By breaking its patterns and rhyming style, the poet highlights the disturbing and
frenzied events being told in the poem. The first part of the poem is written in eight line stanzas
and six line stanzas. The second part of the poem is composed in the two line stanza and twelve
line stanza. The first part is in the present tense and all the actions are shown as if it is happening
right now and everyone is reacting upon it, but the second part is narrated from a distance and
even a recollected bitter past.

As Dulce et Decorum est is a reactionary poem, Owen vividly draws terrific and mind disturbing
picture of war and its after effects in the mind of people. He is so annoyed with the war that he
addresses his fellow poet Jessie and requests her not to encourage the youth to fight and die for
the nation by writing patriotic poems. He shows his extreme anger by distorting the conventional
French poetic form to illustrate the breakdown of the age old established system.

To support the theme of violence and inhuman nature of war, Owen uses horrific and striking
imagery in the poem. The traditional expectation and glory of the war is reversed in the poem
through the use of imagery. At the beginning of the second stanza, when someone says ‘Gas!
GAS! Quick, boys!’ the terror starts. The use of capital letters and the exclamation marks enforce
the horror and the sudden attack at the Frontline. The brave soldiers are reduced to ‘like old
beggars’ and ‘coughing like hags’ and their dignity is hurt. The pain of the burning soldier is
merely ‘like a man in the fire or lime’ and his falling is described ‘as under a green sea’. The
fallen soldier’s face is ‘like a devil’s sick of sin’ who is horrified by the sudden gas attack and
who cannot move further to survive. The effect of the gas in the soldier and in his body is
narrated as ‘bitter as the cud/of vile incurable sores’. All these imagery creates a terrific and
unwanted scene of the battlefield where the soldiers are badly bleeding and coughing just for the
sake of one’s pride for the nation which Owen finds too savage and brutal.
Themes

THEME OF WARFARE

As Owen describes it, war becomes a never-ending nightmare of muddy trenches and unexpected
gas attacks. Interestingly, with the new-fangled technology of WWI, there doesn't even need to
be a real enemy present to create the devastation and destruction. Set in the middle of a gas
attack, this poem explores the intense agony of a world gone suddenly insane – and the
unfortunate men who have to struggle through it. As the poem itself asks, how can anyone
condone so much suffering?

THEME OF SUFFERING

Physical pain and psychological trauma blur in this searing description of a World War I
battleground. Caught in the memory of a gas-attack, the poem's speaker oscillates between the
pain of the past (the actual experience of battle) and the pain of the present (he can't get the
image of his dying comrade out of his head). As Owen argues, war is so painful that it becomes
surreal.

THEME OF PATRIOTISM

In this poem, dying for your country (or even fighting for your country) seems a lot less
worthwhile than the trumped-up truisms of old patriotic battle cries imply. Strategically drawing
his readers through the ghastly reality of life in a battle zone, Owen turns patriotic fervor into a
kind of deadly life force. The people at home just can't understand how horrible life on the front
actually is. The soldiers in war can't remember why they are fighting. Everyone, it seems, is lost:
lost in a fog of war or in the useless ideals that sacrifice youth at the altar of national glory.

THEME OF VERSIONS OF REALITY

"Dulce et Decorum Est" creates a sharp and deeply ironic line between the civilians who prop up
war efforts and the men who fight their battles. As Owen suggests, there's almost no way for
either group to understand the other. Only those who have experienced the horror of battle can
understand the trauma of losing a fellow soldier. Ironically, however, these soldiers don't have
the ability to communicate fully with those at home who could bring the war to an end – the
people who reiterate old slogans about honor, duty, and patriotism without ever having to
experience the terror of battle themselves. The very word "war" begins to mean two very
different things for the two populations in this poem. Tragically, these views seem increasingly
irreconcilable.