Wilfred Owen: The Powerful Emotions Of War

How does Wilfred Owen use language to communicate his powerful feelings about the war?

Junghwan Ok

Wilfred Owen, renowned for his portrayal of the war through poetry, uses a variety of language devices to communicate his powerful feelings of the horrors of war he reluctantly had to experience. From his experience of World War I, Owen exposes the true essence and hopelessness of the soldiers. The powerful feeling are portrayed in his main poems - Dulce et Decorum est Forms, Anthem for Doomed Youth and Exposure. The imagination of the soldiers enduring the life of catastrophic war conveys to the readers. Owen dramatically communicates the readers and exemplifies one man experiencing physical and psychological difficulties. Throughout his poems, the various language devices influences the dehumanization of the soldiers and represents how they were treated as not human beings. Much like his poems, Owen communicate the powerful emotions creating a true reflection of the harsh reality where the soldiers endures the war.

His poems are able to make the horrors of warfare come to life while the

The poem highlights the theme that the soldiers killed for their country are left as a dead body rather than receiving an appropriate funeral. In addition, Owen enquires “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” which creates the idea that they are considered as the animals merely, ready to be butchered without honour of a funeral. “the passing bell” tells a sign that someone has died and announce to prayers. The soldiers and the divine are replaced as the gun and rifle fire. This expression is used as personification of the weapons of war which it is lack of humanity. The use of symbolisation establishes the reader’s awareness of how unfortunate the war was by giving the sensitive language