hello I'm going to give a poetry reading and analysis of this poem but written by Owen she is called man it's worked I'm first of all going to give you a little bit of background behind what war we're discussing and exactly what happened then I'm gonna move into she's his own personal views upon the poem and his intentions for writing this then I'm going to talk you through step by step into what is going on in each stanza and then I'm going to draw your attention to some key moments and key words and writers techniques so the first thing to address them is understanding the background of the poem so this is talking specifically about an attack which took place in a wood my word in particular which is centered in northern France and it was in the first world war so the daily to be exact was the second of July 1916 and so this was two years into the first world war itself and this was seem to be a really brutal yet important event in the in the First World War sort of calendar of events really and in particular it was one of the most major battles which was experienced by Welsh soldiers in particular so the fight then occurred between what's known as a 38 division who were the Welsh soldiers fighting against Germans but as they were attacking and instructed to walk rather than run by their military leaders they were met with explosive gunfire machine gun firing in particular from the German soldiers so they didn't stand a chance at all and as a result the rep the remnants of their bodies still exist in this wood so she is is reflecting on this poem by considering the 3993 people that were killed and injured and in particular he makes note about just how young these soldiers were and how important it is for their memories to be to be held alive still by us and for us to respect the sacrifice that they went to so in terms of Owens's own intentions for the poem he discusses how pointless war really is a word to highlight this is futile also known as we could say futility for the futility of war and the absolute violence of war he reflects upon how war is very wasteful and is just a way to kind of mow down as many lives and you know innocent lives as possible particularly as he reflects on hell lots of young men were forced to fight and you know in some regard they they were still children and I hadn't even experienced life properly he also suggests that war is very selfish and there is a key clue to who are the winners of war and who are the one who are the losers and the losers are being anyone innocent has been forced to sacrifice their own lives but a final thought of the poem is this idea that time has a way of healing the past not in a sense of forgetting what's happened but a way that we need to move on from this but in a way that's healthy by always thinking back to what has happened and making sure that this doesn't happen again so therefore the soldiers are mentioned in a very delicate way as he really wants us to remember them so I'm now going to give a reading of the poem and just so you can read along and as I speak it so videos afterwards the plan has found them but wasted young turning up under their power blades as they attended the back into itself it should have blown the china plate of a soldier blades sorry shoulder blade the relic of a finger the blown and broken birds egg of a skull all mimics now in Flint's breaking blue and white across this field whether we're told to walk not run towards the wood and it's nesting machine guns and even now the earth stands Sentinel reaching back into itself reminders of what happened like a wound working on a foreign body to the surface of a skin this morning 20 men buried in one long grave a broken mosaic of bone linked arm-in-arm their skeletons pause mid Danse Macabre in boots that outlasted them their socketed heads tilted back at an angle and their jaws those that have them dropped open as if the notes they had sung have only now with this unearthing slipped from their absent tongues so the poem begins with farmers plowing fields and as I pound the the fields they're noticing that it's bringing up the remnants of these soldiers bodies and as the machinery is powering it the things that are coming up are as we can see listed here a chipped bone the china plate of a shoulder blade the relic of a finger and a skull which almost looks like a broken bird's egg so it's quite gruesome and dark image of of as the machinery is ploughing through these are the things that are being tossed up as it's doing that and then as we progress with the poem we begin to find out a little bit more about what the attack involved and how these men were will carry well how they were being told to carry out their duties against the nesting machine guns but despite that the poetry is suggests that the earth still remembers them the earth stands Sentinel as though it's kind of guarding these men who lost their lives and that their bodies are coming up like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin so this idea that if this office or foreign body in in the human body is surfacing then it's effectively being able to hear all so it's almost like we need to churn up the past address it take it on board if we are to move on from it and as we get to the ending of the poem we reflect on the fact that these men will always be remembered together as a collective you know they've never been left alone and therefore their memory is always going to be held by us as we address the sacrifice and understand exactly what they went through and then as we approach the clothes of the denouement of the poem we noticed that these soldiers are in sort of a dark sense they're the ones that are now speaking they're the ones that are now singing as though that they finally have a voice now that they're being noticed so things to take attention towards the farmers found them so rather than you know the farmers dark them up and noticed that all their bodies lying there he they found them so it's this idea that we're we're restoring the passes and then we have that - there which I've highlighted and you may remember that when we have interrupted lines is what is known as caesura so what that means is it's a it's a moment where the poem is stopped and it sometimes feels quite jarring or quite bright so what I want us to think about now is exactly why that - is there for me I'm considering that that - is there so that I am forced to really and now think because I'm now thinking about war well who's the farmer just found and actually a moment of my own consideration and respect to the wasted young who have lost their lives as I said before she's really makes no or the fact that so many young people these young soldiers lost their lives he never refers to the fact that they were experienced in war they were always seen to be vulnerable always seen to be unprepared as well now the imagery here is interesting so I'm noticing yep - the cheetah bone a china plate and a skull service idea that the imagery is always connected with things are very fragile things that are easily broken so it's also suggesting how delicate these soldiers are and and the memory of them is and if you think about the china plate they can also be very priceless so there's kind of any value on these plates so this idea that even the soldiers lives a priceless as well you can't put a price on the person's life you have you know despite the fact that they have been entirely wiped off I'm also interested by this word relic now the word relic often has religious connotations to it so suggesting that even their fingers are the sort of special and ungodly as well and that they also need to be remembered in this orphan sacrificial way as though they are sort of a myth in themselves you may remember so we have the alliteration here of without repeated be constant so we can refer to that as being a plosive B sound so a place of sound is anything that any consonant with associated with word P a B or a D and the reason for that is because it's almost it's almost quite aggressive the way that those those letters are spoken so it could kind of be taking us back to the battlefields and that relentless machine-gun motion where it was like firing all of these soldiers so once again showing the the awful circumstances that these that these men went through and we also have references here to to the body so and in particular the bones of the body so the very core foundations and the things that are left behind such as the skull such as the skeletons here which once again shows that whilst most of their bodies it has been worn away the very fundamental structure of the body still exists and the bones are still there so once again showing almost this haunting sense in the poem as though these these bodies are not going to go anywhere anytime soon and therefore we need to address it and remember it but also emphasizing how fragile again these men are now this is interesting as well and in my research so the instructions according to I'd be reading from some of the military leaders to the Welsh soldiers were that they were told to walk not run and actually it made them become prime targets for the German machine guns because they weren't darting in and around the forest that they were literally walking so therefore they were not in any way prepared to respond to this or to deal with it so many many numbers obviously lost their lives as I've mentioned but despite that I want one thing to notice was I noticed before that we've got this full stop here so that might be a way of kind of really emphasizing that loss of life it's finished it's done we move on to a new chapter so even now the earth stands Sentinel so the way Sentinel is suggestive of almost like soldiers standing there in guarding so the earth has been personified here as a super force as though it's this or firm this important site it's almost like is but it's very own graveyard to pay respect and tribute to these soldiers we have a simile here which I've already addressed from before so I did that the memory is resurfacing now and we're addressing it and 20 men buried in one long grave their skeletons poor so if we look at the subject here we're not talking about one individual soldier are we were talking about many so this idea that even in their death they are they're not alone they're together in that and the word macabre there actually stands for a bit a fear of the death so once again we've got these repeated imagery back to this sense of fear and haunting from this moment which kind of coincides back to she is his main belief about how pointless and how bloody and wasteful war really is now this is interesting in boots that outlasted them now everyone from any notes I've read in archives noted how the boots that soldiers were expected to wear with useless they did not stand up to to the job in hand and actually so it's ironic there that the boots which we know would have kind of been brewing so easily have outlasted them which really shows how they didn't stand any chance whatsoever against the machine guns that were aimed at them once again we're going back to the body now so the socketed heads the jaws so once again that sense of haunting that I've already mentioned with the skeletons but also the fact that there is still part of the body that that and remind us and as we come on to this final stanza where when it's mentioned that these these dead soldiers are beginning to communicate so in the sense that despite everything that they went through if they don't want to have died in vain they want their voices to be remembered and to remind us that nothing like this should ever happen again