Wilfred Owen

Poets employ language techniques to influence and manipulate the emotions of their readers. Wilfred Owen creatively and successfully paints a picture for his audience about the battling lives of young soldiers who were lured into joining World War One. His poems deliver the fears, the courage and the manipulation of World War One experiences through themes such as loss of identity, brutality of war, repo cautions of war, reality of war, sense of sacrifice and dehumanisation. Wilfred Owen employs rhetorical questions to engage the reader to stop and think. He successfully uses alliteration and tone to create a hopeless sense of emotion. He personifies the weapons to create an emphasis and draw his audience to the real life events experienced at war and the after war. Thus this essay will discuss the ways Wilfred Owen employs language devices in the poems “Anthem for the doomed youth” , “disabled” and “Dulce Et Decorum Est” to influence and manipulate his readers emotions.
Anthem for the doomed youth signifies the death of the soldiers on the battlefield and how the soldiers fail to get a proper funeral service with their loved ones. This is seen in the rhetorical questions in line one of stanza one “what passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” and also in stanza two “what candles may be held to speed them all?” The first rhetorical question that Owen asks is a simile to emphasise the large number of soldiers who sacrificed their lives to serve for their country. The second rhetorical question Wilfred Owen asks implies that these soldiers do not get a proper burial “no candles” to light up and pray for their souls to be sent to heaven. The effect f the rhetorical question forces the readers to stop and think deeply for the lost lives of soldiers who fought bravely for their countries, and yet they were never thanked and respected the way they truly should have been.
Wilfred Owen depicts in his poem “disabled” that war is a home for the death of young soldiers.