Commentary on “Anthem For Doomed Youth”
The poem “Anthem For Doomed Youth” spoke about war and the youths that were forced to become adult soldiers. It appealed to the readers right from the title. A hymn for those whose fates were set, “doomed”. Even more, it weren’t adults or those coming to the end of the journey they call life who were referred to, but youths. It was these young people who have a long road ahead to travel. Right from the start, it could be predicted that the poem will bear a dark tone.
The first stanza of the poem started with a rhetorical question. “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”. “These” is a general word, referring to something general, someone faceless, distant. The deaths of “these” were compared to that of a cattle, lowly and peasant-like. This use of simile makes the deaths of these people seem undignified and meaningless, as though they were just simply slaughtered like an animal. The question asks what “passing-bells”, what bells are rung, what funerals are to be held for these people, as though nothing could be done. The word “Only” was repeated at the start of the next two lines. Guns were personified to bear “monstrous anger”. They appear as monsters; furious and terrifying, even more alive than those who have went to rest on the battle ground. On the next line, rifles were specifically referred to. At this point, it was clear that the poem was about war. Alliteration was used in the phrase “rifle’s rapid rattle”
They show that skin color isn’t what is important and that they should be recognized for what they do instead of how they look. This road to their achievement might not have been smooth, but all that matters is that they succeeded in the end. Through imagery, the author of the poem, Sara Holbrook, portrays a deep meaning about how an individual can cope with tribulations. She writes about new opportunities and the risks that come with taking them. It starts off by saying, “Safely standing on the bank of what-I-know, Unfamiliar water passing in a rush.”
Lament to the Spirit of War Quiz One Response In Lament to the Spirt of War, the idea of war is a frightening and quite scary place to be. Although reading this story is not like the reality of war, a person has a sense of what it feels like to be caught in the war itself. The story gives details that explains what a soldier feels like when he or she is in battle. Like a “raging storm” or a “fiery monster.”
“Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for”-Tennessee Williams. The Anthem, by Ayn Rand is a novel about the control and power the collective government has upon it’s citizens. In The Hunger Games by Suzzane Collins, the same idea is explored, they both draw strong parallels about the idea of how much control and power the authority has. The impotence of the collective results in the unwillingness of the government to come to a conclusion and take action on behalf of the society it governs, through the means of limiting freedoms, enforcing laws with harmful punishment and propaganda. Ultimately, the amount of control the authority has upon it’s citizens plays a tremendous role in both, The Anthem and The Hunger Games.
He writes to depict a theme that war never truly ends, and people who have experienced it generally do not know how to end it, thus an unseen minority turn to drugs and alcohol for salvation. Inevitably they end up in a loop of substance abuse, as it seems to be a pattern through history, as he writes in each stanza. “Rome’s Legions stemmed avalanches” (line 1), “flogged peasant boys faced front” (line 4). Each stanza interoperates a new period of time where war was a predominant piece of that era, starting back with the Roman Empire and gradually moving forward through time. However, the parallel to these stories is the progression in illicit substances and how that effects a soldier’s lifestyle with these movements throughout history.
Through the poem’s tone, metaphors used, and symbols expressed the poem portrays that fear can make life seem charred or obsolete, but in reality life propels through all seasons and obstacles it faces. The poem begins with a tone of conversation, but as it progresses the tone changes to a form of fear and secretiveness. The beginning and ending line “we tell
The narrator’s changing understanding of the inevitability of death across the two sections of the poem illustrates the dynamic and contrasting nature of the human
During ‘At Mornington’, the narrator references an ambiguous memory of them as a child, “believing … [they] could walk on water” (AM.1.10). This belief is dramatically altered as the narrator ages. They learn of death and further learn to accept its entirety; “The peace of this day will shine like light on the face of the waters that bear me away forever” (AM.5.10). This theme is also reflected throughout ‘The Violets’. At the beginning of the second stanza, the narrator awakes “from [a] … half-sleep” (TV.2.1) commence their day/life.
Theodor Storm (1817-1888) was a German lawyer and writer who is perhaps best known for his novellas, most notably his last completed work “Der Schimmelreiter”. His writing developed from the lyrical depiction of love and nature, via artful fairy tales inspired by E.T.A Hoffmann and Hans Christian Andersen to realist prose. “Die Nachtigall” appears in the fairy tale Hinzelmeier, but this context is immaterial to the poem’s interpretation. It elaborates on a young girl’s transition to adulthood from the point of view of an outside observer and captivates the reader with its melodiousness and simplicity. It consists of two stanzas of five verses each.
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine is a hybrid and communal text constructed out of varying poetic form accompanied by contrasting imagery, and historical events. Rankine, although the author of this text is not necessarily its narrator. She plays with prospective, switching the fundamental meaning of “you” and pulls from the personal experiences of her friends, colleagues, and surrounding community. Rankine is able to incorporate “an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in [her] writing”, blur the line between various genres, and “[reject] … elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist design”, which are the pillars of postmodern works (Klages). She utilizes historical and modern events such as the Jim Crow laws, affirmative
It gives off the a tone to the reader that there is war or that there once was war. Levine’s word usage is what gives the poem its unfortunate tone right from the start. Rather than choosing softer language, he starts his poem with words a phrases like “acids of rage” (Levine 3) and
In Richard Lovelace’s To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars, although the poem is written to say farewell to the mistress because the speaker is going to sacrifice himself and is going to war, it is playful and romantic. This poem mainly focuses on how romantic it is for someone to go fight in a war. In Alfred Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade, the one is set to be serious and respectful. The poem is about how soldiers who went into battle should be honored for their doing, and that war places soldiers under extreme stress and pressure.
“A Memory of Youth”: Yeats and Erotic Experience A cloud blown from the cut-throat north Suddenly hid Love’s moon away. The “cloud”—amorphous and obstructing—cuts into the scene, as well as the poem, with a sudden violence, in order to block the image of “Love’s moon”. The cloud itself cannot have definite dimensions, as it exists to only hide the moon, casting the speaker of the poem, his love and the cloud itself in a continuous darkness. It is in this darkness that the speaker of the poem finds his own perception and experiences clouded, indicating his blind submission to erotic love in lieu of a more illuminating, comprehensive “Love”.
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,
A heroic couplet structure within the poem provides a degree of clarity while still asserting the chaos and cruelness of war. Once again, it can be inferred that Owen himself serves as the speaker. However, this time his audience is more focused on young soldiers and families rather than plainly the public in general. In contrast to the previous work, this poem is set primarily in a World War I training camp, signifying the process young soldiers go through prior to deployment to the front line. The tone of this poem is more foreboding and condemnatory, not only describing the training soldiers but outright degrading their forced involvement as morally wrong.
Though the poet tries to create a happy mood at the beginning through her use of rhyme: “fell through the fields” and “the turn of the wheels” as well as reference to the “mother singing”, all is not happy. The word "fell" in the gives a sense of something sad and uncomfortable happening. This sense of sadness is heightened by one of the brothers “bawling Home, Home” and another crying. There is the use of personification in describing the journey: “the miles rushed back to the city” which expresses poet's own desire to go back, and the clever use of a list which takes us back to the place she has just left: “the city, the street, the house, the vacant rooms where we didn’t live