this video will provide a detailed analysis of anthem for doomed youth by wilfredon this is a poem that he wrote in 1917 while being treated in craig lockard hospital in scotland for shell shock um he wrote this poem with the assistance of another famous war poet called siegfried sassoon and you can see in the image here this is wilford owens original draft of the poem and sassoon's edits and improvements um in the margins and above the the initial words as you can see soon had a massive influence on wilfred owens writing and he was responsible for that change in the title owens original anthem for dead youth became anthem for doomed youth that sense of a kind of inevitable tragedy that these young soldiers were the victim of the context of the poem is very important because before world war one at around the age of 18 owen actually worked as an assistant to a church of england vicar in his home parish of parish of oxfordshire um he did a lot of work with the poor and the needy and quite sort of frustrated and disillusioned with the disinterestedness of the leaders of the church and this led to his eventual loss of faith and his rejection of kind of traditional christian religion and that theme perverts this sonnet that kind of frustration with religion and the sense that the promises of the church were inadequate or insufficient in light of the soldiers sacrifice the poem is structured as a petrarchan sonnet which means it is divided into an octave the first eight line stanza and a sestet the second sex line stanza so i'll just write those words on it for you so you have the octave here oct and the sestet s-e-s-t-e-t the octave focusing predominantly on the battlefield itself and the the kind of signs in particular of the battlefield the signs of the gunfire the signs of the rifles and the signs of the shales um so a real kind of vivid sensory experience being depicted there and then in the sestet we very much shift both in tone and in location so the tone becomes much more somber um much more melancholic and poignant so i'll just write down those words the tone becomes more somber more melancholic and more poignant all of those words basically meaning very sad in a kind of serious and unthoughtful way somber melancholic and poignant um and and it also involves involves a shift in location to the home front so we move away from the battlefield to the home front in the sestet and that is much more focused then on the funerals and actually the lack of funerals and the sadness and grief and mourning of boys and girls left at home who maybe hear news of um of a dead relative and can mourn in anonymity or or mourn without any sense of closure so that that's what occurs in this asset and so in that way the poem becomes a lament a lament is just a poem of grief a poem of sadness and loss so that's the context and the structure of the poem moving on then to a more detailed analysis a line-by-line analysis of the poem so it opens with a rather striking rhetorical question wilfredo opens his poem by asking what passing bells for these who die as cattle and that rhetorical question as always lends the sense that wilfred owen is directly addressing his audience he is almost demanding them directly addressing his reader and demanding them for passing bails this is the first mark of respect that owen feels the soldiers deserve the bells of a funeral church spells but he uses this really striking simile he talks about the soldiers dying as cattle that similarly dehumanizes the soldiers um of course cattle are slaughtered anonymously there's no kind of recognition or respect paid there and that's how owen fails these soldiers die and that is immediately contrasted or juxtaposed with the personification of the guns the monstrous anger of the guns that personification is jarringly or kind of uncomfortably ironic jarringly ironic because if you think about it wilfredon is saying that in war people are treated as animals and guns are treated as people so there's a kind of skewed value system here in world war one um where people are disrespected and guns are glorified so that really exposes the brutality and the inhumanity of war both the brutality and the inhumanity of war moving on uh he talks about the stuttering rifles rapid rattle that's what the men get instead of these bells so you can hear that aural imagery or that auditory imagery through the striking alliteration of the r sound rifles rapid rattle um so that alliteration and it's really unpleasant if you so if you want to add that in too unpleasant alliteration rifles rapid rattle unpleasant alliteration creates um powerful auditory or oral either is right auditory imagery all depicting these the kind of harrowing or the shocking signs of war that's what he's conveying here the signs of the guns and the rifles which replace the church bells that the soldiers were promised um so we're told only the stuttering rifles rapid wrapped by rapid rattle can patter out their hasty arsons arsons is an old-fashioned or an archaic word for prayers so instead of bells they get gunfire instead of prayers they get rifle fire so highly uncomfortable and um yeah yeah sort of glaringly obvious that the soldiers are not getting what they deserved he further reinforces that by repeating um this this word no no mockeries no prayers nor bells nor any that repetition reinforces the failure of religion because nothing that was promised has been delivered there were no mockeries no prayers no bells no voice of mourning it's filled on every front we have this this kind of list or this litany of failures uh the list of everything that they were promised so a list or a litany of inadequacies inaudible is um something that's lacking something that should be there but which is missing so all of these things are missing and he almost sort of reluctantly then points out accept or save the choirs and we think oh well at least there are choirs and then owen acknowledges actually the choirs are the shrill demented choirs of wheeling shells these are highly um highly ominous and sinister adjectives which are used to describe the um the shells the choirs of shells who shrill and demented um sinister adjectives to describe the shells is another another word for the bombs that were used shrill meaning kind of high-pitched and demented means almost kind of demon-possessed um so really conveying the malicious and evil nature of warfare and then finally he acknowledges that there are bugles and bugles were kind of a brass instrument used in war a bit like a trumpet bugles are calling for them from sad shires shires is an english word for county so you've oxford shar cambridgeshire and of course those shires are sad because they have lost soldiers so this final personification in the octave marks the beginning of that tonal shift and that location shift shift is is a literary word for a change there's a shift as we said at the beginning from the battlefield and from the kind of sensory experience of the battlefield to the home front so the cest head opens with a second rhetorical question this one quite different in tone from the first one this question asks what candles may be held to speed them all this question is essentially um it's echoing the catholic belief that when candles are lit god hears the prayers of the saints um so the candle almost kind of lighting the prayer to heaven and prompting god to listen and it suggests that because the soldiers die on the battlefield and don't receive the kind of traditional funeral that we would expect that there will not be candles or certainly not as many candles lit and so these soldiers souls may not be lit to heaven or sent to heaven so there's there's a very sinister implication or sinister suggestion that these soldiers may not reach heaven because of the lack of funeral service so this is a much more somber rhetorical question which evokes or creates some rhetorical question which evokes or creates pithos pithos is a word for immense sadness and there is a sense of real heartache here um through the sinister implication sinister implication that these soldiers may not reach heaven because of the lack of candles and this poem is all about an absence of something the absence of a funeral the absence of candles and the absence of the respect that they were promised and owen acknowledges that there will not be actual candles lit not in the hands of boys but in their eyes shall shine the holy glamours of goodbyes so the tears in the eyes of bereft boys left at home that will replace the candles that we would expect at catholic funerals and owen uses um very kind of melancholic sibilance there look at the the s signs i shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes that recurring assigned creates highly poignant sibilance which mimics the grief and morning not morning as in the daytime but morning is in sadness of these young boys and he doesn't just focus on the boys but also on the girls who lose loved ones and we're told the power of girl's bride shall be their paul um pallor is a description of a kind of blanched face a face that has lost all color perhaps because of shock or grief and we're told that that pallor that draining of color will replace the pawl or the covering or the blanket that would normally cover a dead body so here he creates a direct metaphor comparing the the absence of color the draining of color moving over the girl's face to the moving of the blanket over a dead body so that's a metaphor um yes which is again another kind of religious allusion to the paul that we would expect over um over a dead body i just thought a wee picture of a poll might be useful there i realized it was kind of describing it in an abstract way so so there's a paul uh covering over a a coffin so it's about the poem is about substitutes isn't it um the you know the uh the candles are substituted for the tears the paul is substituted for power and the flowers at a funeral are substituted for the tenderness of patient minds tenderness of patient lines that's i mean a highly evocative description evocative or emotive description both those words just mean it kind of pulls in your heartstrings um so it makes you feel something that idea of minds waiting whether they're waiting for closure or waiting for the return of a loved one it's this this tenderness this softness which comes from those who are waiting for maybe bad news and then the final line brings that closure but it's very very sad this each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds um think about why you might draw down blinds um perhaps not wanting people to look in wanting to be alone um not wanting to have to interact with others probably because of bad news and here owen repeats the signed throughout that last line um almost mimicking the thud of the blind as it closes so that harsh alliteration creates a sense of but it's it's not it's not a kind of a relief again it's a a [Music] melancholic closure the horror of knowing that a lost one um will not return so a very very sad poem um but one full of really beautiful language and that idea of substitutes and inadequacies absolutely central thank you very much