Analysis Of The Last Laugh By Wilfred Owen

Both Ted Hughes and Wilfred Owen present war in their poems “Bayonet Charge” and “Exposure”, respectively, as terrifying experiences, repeatedly mentioning the honest pointlessness of the entire ordeal to enhance the futility of the soldiers' deaths. Hughes’ “Bayonet Charge” focuses on one person's emotional struggle with their actions, displaying the disorientating and dehumanising qualities of war. Owen’s “Exposure”, on the other hand, depicts the impacts of war on the protagonists' nation, displaying the monotonous and unending futility of the situation by depicting the fate of soldiers who perished from hypothermia, exposed to the horrific conditions of open trench warfare before dawn.

With every journey comes a destination which is dependent on the degree of the individual and their will to potentially better themselves. A journey offers travelers the opportunity to extend themselves physically, intellectually and emotionally as they respond to challenges. Ruby Moon by Matt Cameron is a contemporary fractured fairytale in the form of a play that explores the grim, Australian legend of the missing child. This text portrays real issues in an absurd representation which forces the reader on an imaginative journey as well as the characters in an inner journey to establish an identity. Beach Burial by Kenneth Slessor is a distressing elegy about loss of life through war. Slessor’s sophisticated language, allows the responder

This disheartening conceit, that eternally battles time for relevance, illuminates lack of importance people place on living beings, and on life in general. Humankind has lost sight of the original divinity of existence a

"Billy Pilgrim could not sleep." The "Men marched asleep." War conjures a myriad of images, opinions, experiences and stark realities. Of the many insights about war offered by Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five, the most profound is that war is not a grandiose circumstance that some make it out to be. Similarly, in Wilfred Owen 's "Dulce et Decorum Est", the observation of the tragedies of war provokes the reader to understand the lack of glory in war. However, the most significant lesson arises from experiencing both the novel and the poem together: war brings only anguish to the soldiers who have the misfortune of fighting in them.

“The War Works Hard” by Dunya Mikhail and “Exposure” by Wilfred Owen are two antiwar poems. The poems were written in different styles, and yet they have the same approach to the polemic topic of “War”, in which both poets seeks to expose the realities of relentless wars and condemn the futility of armed conflicts. Meanwhile they all strive to enlighten the public the horrible outcomes that the wars bring casualties from both sides with brutal honesty. Although Mikhail was a civilian from a war-torn country and Owen was a British soldier in World War One, both poets have experienced war firsthand and faced similar emotional trauma. The literary devices like sound, imagery, and typography all used to shape their ideas and correspond to the

“Epitaph on a Soldier,” by Cyril Tourneur, an English soldier and diplomat during the 16th and 17th centuries, depicts the honorable death of a soldier during a time when war was glorious and fighting for one’s country was almost customary. Meanwhile, in “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” the 20th century poet Randall Jarrell illustrates a more bleak image of gunner’s blunt and harsh death during World War II, when war became less magnificent and much more brutal. The reassuring and honoring tone in “Epitaph on a Soldier” expresses that the triumphant experiences of war cause a young soldier to become mature so that his life is complete, while the bitter and disturbed tone in “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” communicates that a soldier’s grim time in war and subsequent death is, in reality, devoid of all glory and only mentally scars a soldier.

Between 1914 and 1918, over nine million people died. Entire cities were razed to the ground. Nations crumbled, only to be re-formed amidst political turmoil and enough bad blood to launch another war (World War II, to be precise) a few short decades later. American troops joined the war in 1918, bringing with them the deadliest weapon yet: influenza. More people died of flu than war injuries.

There have been many prestigious wars fought between many great forces since the dawn of man.These great battles cause violence,terrorism,and self-harm.These battles have such devastating effects that writers actually write about them in forms of protest.Writers protest war using imagery,irony, and structure.

The second stanza introduces the reader to the memories that the young men must suffer time and time, every day. Through the use of personification in “memory fingers in their hair of murders”, Owen communicates on a personal level to the reader, painting the visual image of an old man anxiously pushing his fingers through his hair. The soldiers are being tormented by their memories of the death they had witnessed and are resulting in pulling their own hair out to distract their minds from their memories. They cannot be still. They cannot be calm. It is as though their brains had been turned to mush. Owen then uses the descriptive language of “Treading blood from lungs that once loved laughter” to stir an emotional response from the reader.

In the trenches of World War One poetry many great and still appreciatively read poets were produced. Their powerful poems form the memory and shape the way in which the World War One is commemorated. “Soldiers with a literary bent turned to poetry to describe their experiences, capture their sensations,

War has constantly been apart of our history; it is still going on today. No matter the year or time, there seems to always be some sort of disagreement or complication between two different parties. Four of the greatest wars of the world are World War One, World War Two,

In the poems “Disabled” by Wilfred Owen and “The Bright Lights of Sarajevo” by Tony Harrison, both poems present the truths of war. However, both differ in terms of setting and contrast that help depicts the similarities between their theme. Disabled takes place within World War I as Owen vividly describes the subject’s amputation, but the poem is centered around the subject’s adjustment to civilian life after war. In The Bright Lights of Sarajevo although Harrison discusses the consequences of partaking in war in the town, he illustrates the way in which life goes on regardless the horrific impact. Through use of setting and contrast, both poets contribute to presenting the theme of the realities of war.

The ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is a poem written by Wilfred Owen on September 1917. Wilfred Owen was born on 18th March 1893, in Oswestry, United Kingdom, and his poems are famous through the use of descriptive words to portray the pity of the war, which is a common theme throughout all of his poems. Owen wrote most of his poems between August 1917 to September 1918 before he was killed on 4th November at Sambre-Oise canal in France. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is a poem about a soldier dying in foreign country, and no one is praying for them; at the same time, the family in home country just can pray and do nothing other than that. Owen describes the theme of this poem agony of forgotten soldiers by using several literary devices such as imagery,

Wilfred Owen was one of the main English poets of World War 1, whose work was gigantically affected by Siegfried Sassoon and the occasions that he witnesses whilst battling as a fighter. 'The Sentry ' and 'Dulce et Decorum Est ' are both stunning and reasonable war lyrics that were utilized to uncover the detestations of war from the officers on the hatreds of trenches and gas fighting, they tested and unmistakable difference a distinct difference to general society impression of war, passed on by disseminator writers, for example, Rupert Brooke.

The theme of war and its consequences were explored through many poems and novels in the past. However the poem “Disabled” talks about how the war has influenced one soldier in particular physically and mentally. It talks about the major change in his life and his points of view on the situation. This poem is an anti- war poem and it within it, Wilfred Owen wants to remind the young people of the consequences of the war and how life changing it is towards people. Each stanza serves as a brief sketch of different phases in the soldier’s life and how they develop and change over time.