Suffering
The negative attitudes and images on the war front were experienced first-hand by Owen permitting him to witness many inhuman deaths. Because of this, he had the ability to relate to all other soldiers and the hardships they suffered. Unlike in “Futility”, it is evident in the poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” that Owen wants to shock his audience with the vile scenes of the battlefield due to a gas attack. An effective technique of this poem is that of the simile where the soldiers are brought down to such a low level, “like old beggars...coughing likes hags”. The similes in the opening lines illustrate the circumstances that the soldiers are presented. The fact that the soldiers are “bent double” implies that they are physically ruined
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It is apparent here that a soldier unexpectedly witnesses the death of another comrade as he watches “his hanging face, like a devil sick of sin”. A significant simile of the poem, like “Futility” questions human existence as though a devil will be sick of sin. Readers are confronted with the pain and anguish faced by the soldier and tastes the suffering as he does, comprehending the horrors and the extent of disrespect not only faced by soldiers, but also Owen himself.The poem ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ captures the spirit of the war in its irrationality and brutality. Owen names his poem “Anthem for doomed youth” signifying the inhumanity and the entrapment of war upon the youth as there is no escape. He opens his poem with the grotesque imagery of the battlefield as he questions through the simile ‘what passing-bells for those who die as cattle?’, This emphasises how the men have been dehumanised and reduced to animals and slabs of meat to be butchered and consumed by the monstrous war machine which seems to have a ravenous appetite for human lives. Humanity is not given any worth, where the soldiers are slaughtered mercilessly. They were subject to a lack of dignity, identity and respect, hence conveying Owens way to stress the futility of individual sacrifice as nothing was gained while the slaughtering of young