The cost of loving a one’s country

The First World War of 1914-1918 was a brutal and violent war that caused death of millions of innocent soldiers and lead to various changes and revolutions around the world. It also affected the literature and poetry of the 20th century (Ağır, 2013). There were two types of war poets during that time, poets who wrote about the war, and soldiers who served in the war and were poets. Wilfred Owen was a war poet who served as a soldier in World War I. His poem, Anthem For Doomed Youth, is a Petrarchan sonnet that criticizes the church and religious representatives who sent their young boys to the battlefield in the name of patriotism. In his poem, Owen uses different poetic devices to discuss several topics such as the horrors of the war, the religious rituals that the soldiers did not receive, and the mourning of the loved ones at home.

The title of the poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth ” is ironic since the words within it contradict each other. Anthem, is a positive word, used for purposes of celebration in happy events, while doomed youth has a negative meaning which means young people who do not have a choice nor hope but to die. By putting these words together, Owen is using irony by telling that there is a celebration of the young soldiers who were doomed to die in an early age, which is a horrible thing that only can occur during war time.

One of the poetic devices that Owen uses in his poem to convey the tragic deaths of the soldiers