ANZAC Day Analysis

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, it’s a great pleasure and even more of an honour for me to be invited to address one of Australia’s most significant national occasions “ ANZAC Day”. I am Claudia Elfar; a year 12 student from Bethlehem College representing the school’s English club, studying poems of war experiences and the effects of those experiences on the soldiers. ANZAC day marks an influential event that makes us think , question and remember the conditions, effects and nature of war. It is the day perceived for the remembrance of bravery and endurance of those who fought and faced danger.

As a student studying war through a variety of war poems; we reflect on the way in which War poems were usually written to glorify

“Insensibility “ and “Strange meeting” offers Owen’s personal experience of the grim realities of battle and a deep emotional response to allow for a true understanding of war. Owen explained how they experience lack of imagination and how even if they imagine it would be filled with horror, blood and death. Owen had very strong religious references which was shown in the poem; by using the beatitudes structure at the beginning of most of the stanzas. “Happy are men who yet before they are killed”. In these lines, he used the religious allusion of beatitudes as in “Happy are” whereas he turned this positive connotation and joyful tone , when he ended the same line by “ before they are killed” using negative language, satiric tone representing the not patriotism and dull image of war. In addition, showing how even when there is happiness, blessings it will always end in a tragic end. Owen employed the repetition technique several times throughout the poem. As “Happy are these who lose imagination” and “happy the soldiers home, with not a notion” expressing the life past and the qualities that each soldier will lose due to the horrors of war; and how every positive sense and emotion will be faded by the war effects. Also, the end of the fourth stanza tautology were used “From larger

What do you feel listening the word cruelty ? What if it was human cruelty ? The men in the warfronts face death every minute , every single minute of their lives. The only way to counter the trauma and stress is by suspending all feelings to cope with the effects of war. The title insensibility is indeed significant. It points to the soldiers who have accustomed themselves to the insensibility of this all and who have rendered themselves immune to experience. This poem reflected the lack of feelings or human cruelty and the major emotional nature of soldiers who were scarfing themselves in war. Insensibility was powerful as a name f a poem as it refer to the desensitise and non emotional sympathy of those who faith in the warfront. Owen uses near rhyme rather than full-rhyme in order to make the poem sound less artificial, more natural and thus more realistic to demonstrate his graphic description of the emotionless and cruelty in the war. The front line breaks in WWI and soldiers were fading troops if one dies, another fills his place; since things happen just in repeat that was conveyed in insensibility’s first stanza, “Men, gaps for filling” symbolising the dehumanise of humanity at the war and “But they are troops who fade, not flowers” exploring the human nature of the soldiers that was being messed with like