Owen War Poetry Anthem for Doomed Youth Starter

Owen War Poetry Anthem for Doomed Youth

Starter activities 1. What anthem (representative song) should there be for today’s teenagers? Eg choose a suitable pop/hip-hop song? Why choose it? 2. How would you describe teenagers today? Lost? Happy? Worried? Anxious? What adjective would you choose? 3. What songs are suitable for funerals? 4. What songs/noises/things would you definitely think wouldn’t be good?

Learning Intentions • To learn about how and why a poet uses extended metaphors in his poems. • To learn about the contexts of Wilfred Owen’s poetry. • To learn how a poet creates a atmosphere of horror and pity

The Context of the poem • This was the “break-through” poem for Wilfred Owen. • At the beginning of the war, Owen dreamed of being a Romantic poet. He was teaching in France and returned to enlist in 1915. • After training in Romford in 1916, he was sent out to the front in the new year. • He was only a few months on the front but it shook him to the core: he captured a German dug-out, saw men die horribly and one go blind from gas (see The Sentry and Dulce Et Decorum)

Meeting Sassoon • Owen was put in a mental hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland called Craiglockhart. It was an enlightened place. • There he met Siegfried Sassoon, a famous poet who’d been put in the mental hospital for protesting against the war. • Sassoon and Owen’s psychiatrist encouraged him to start writing poetry again. • Until then Owen’s poetry had mainly been very “romantic”, all about nature…

Owen’s obsessions • Religion. His mother, who he was devoted to, was very religious, but Owen rejected religion after a bad experience as an assistant to a Vicar in Oxford before the war. A double funeral of a mother and her four-year-old daughter shook him to the core. • Death. • Nature. • Young men. Owen was almost certainly gay as was Sassoon. • Poetry. The music and texture of words…

Mental Hospital

What words from the poem do you think are most significant? What do you think the content of the poem will be?

Wilfred Owen • One of his most famous poems is called Anthem for doomed youth Task - in pairs: • What do these words mean? • What do you think the poem is going to be about? • Ext: Why do you think he chose them?

NE TO TH / C I P TO ME/ E • Read the first stanza (paragraph) in your groups and try to work out what you think the poem is about. • How would you summarise the message?

Difficult vocabulary • Notes for students • Anthem: 1. A rousing or uplifting song identified with a particular group, body, or cause. • 2. A song officially adopted by a country as an expression of national identity. • Passing-bells: a bell rung to announce a death or funeral. • Hasty: quick, hurried • Orisons: prayers • Choirs: note the connection to Keats’ To Autumn, l. 27: ‘Then in wailful choice the small gnats mourn…”

Difficult vocabulary • Mockeries: Owen had been religious but now felt religion was a “mockery” of life and felt the ceremonies of religious (prayers, bells, choirs) were mockeries of life. • Demented = completely mad • Bugles = wind instruments played at funerals or solemn occasions • Shires = country districts. Millions of young men from the country died in the 1 st WW.

Difficult Vocabulary • “Speed them all” = “Help them go quickly to heaven. ” • Pallor: Pale colour • Pall: A cloth spread over a coffin, hearse, or tomb. • Line 14 Binyon’s ‘For The Fallen’ is important here: “At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them. ” The drawing of blinds in a house was common when there had been a death…

Sounds 1. Before we look in detail at this difficult poem, underline all the sounds in it! 2. Can you guess what it’s about? Try your hardest! – BIG POINT: the poem makes a long comparison between WHAT should be the song for our young people, and WHAT is. The poem is as much about what is NOT happening as what IS happening. What is not happening?

Key things to know about a poem… • What it is about…you must understand it fully… • What techniques a poet uses to achieve certain effects… • The possible contexts of a poem…

An Elegy • This poem is a lament for the dead… • Why is the youth “doomed”? Doomed to die; doomed to madness; doomed to unhappiness…

Structure and Form • This poem takes the “form” of a sonnet – usually love poems or with a religious focus. What parts of the poem focus upon religious issues and what parts suggest love? What is the main topic of the poem? • Sonnets often have the structure of having eight lines (the octet) where the main point is set out, and then six lines which conclude the poem (the sestet). Is this the case here?

Context • This poem was written in a ‘mental hospital’ for shell-shock victims, Craiglockhart, Edinburgh, in Sept-Oct 1917. Siegfried Sassoon helped a lot with the composition of the poem. • What clues are there in the poem that it’s written by someone very “disillusioned” by the war? • Is this poem “patriotic”? Where do the poet’s sympathies lie?

The Pity of war • Owen’s great theme was the “pity of war”. What images suggest the “pity of war” in this poem and why?

Tasks • Read the annotated poem • Highlight the techniques and key points • Add notes about any details you think have not been picked out in annotated poems: e. g. what the poem is about; the different techniques the poet uses and WHY he uses them; speculate about WHY he might have written the poem; note down your PERSONAL responses, your thoughts and feelings.

Questions about meaning and poetic effects 1. Think of three questions to ask about the poem yourself… 2. Line 1: what is the effect of the simile that says the soldiers “die as cattle”? 3. Write out line 1 in your own words, explaining it clearly. 4. The rest of the “octet” (first eight lines of the sonnet) is a reply to the question in line one. Explain these lines in THREE sentences. 5. What do the soldiers NOT have as their funeral song?

Questions About meaning and Poetic effects 6. Line 9. Another question. What does this question mean? 7. The rest of the sestet (six lines that conclude a sonnet) are a reply. What do these lines mean? Explain them in your own words, using selected quotation. 8. The octet is full of noise whereas the sestet has images connected with silence. Why is this do you think?

Reviewing the whole poem 9. Why is it important to understand the contexts of this poem? 10. What do you think of the poem overall? What makes it interesting and dramatic? 11. Owen’s great theme was the “pity of war”…In what ways does this poem explore this theme? (Classic essay question!)

An Elegy • This poem is a lament for the dead… • Why is the youth “doomed”? Doomed to die; doomed to madness; doomed to unhappiness…

Structure and Form • This poem takes the “form” of a sonnet – usually love poems or with a religious focus. What parts of the poem focus upon religious issues and what parts suggest love? What is the main topic of the poem? • Sonnets often have the structure of having eight lines (the octet) where the main point is set out, and then six lines which conclude the poem (the sestet). Is this the case here?

Context • This poem was written in a ‘mental hospital’ for shell-shock victims, Craiglockhart, Edinburgh, in Sept-Oct 1917. Siegfried Sassoon helped a lot with the composition of the poem. • What clues are there in the poem that it’s written by someone very “disillusioned” by the war? • Is this poem “patriotic”? Where do the poet’s sympathies lie?

The Pity of war • Owen’s great theme was the “pity of war”. What images suggest the “pity of war” in this poem and why?

Tasks • Annotate the poem, making sure you note: what the poem is about; the different techniques the poet uses and WHY he uses them; speculate about WHY he might have written the poem; note down your PERSONAL responses, your thoughts and feelings. EXTENSION ACTIVITIES: • Write your own creative response – an anthem for today’s youth: a poem, a story, a picture, an article, music, a slide-show of related images.

Links with other poems • Other poems powerfully descriptive poems about the horror of war are relevant: Futility • Strange Meeting also discusses the young men who go to war. • Spring Offensive and The Sentry illustrate the slaughter

STR RE U T UC Structure and Form How would you describe the layout of this poem? Is it bouncy and snappy? How many…. 1. Stanzas does the poem have? 2. Lines does the poem have? 3. Syllables does each line have? 4. What is the rhyme scheme?

STR RE U T UC 1 stanza 15 lines 10 syllables per line abab, cdcd, effe, gg

STR RE U T UC Sonnet A sonnet is a very traditional poem form Shakespearean sonnet It is very regular and serious – even the syllables have to be exactly right The change of rhyme makes the last two lines stand out more This means it favours serious or thoughtful subject matter

Re-drafting the poem www. englishteaching. co. uk

Re-drafting the poem www. englishteaching. co. uk

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Why did Wilfred Owen choose this simile to describe the men? Wilfred Owen uses a simile to describe the soldiers dying in battle. He writes that the soldiers “die as cattle”. This simile is effective because it shows that Owen feels that the men were dying without dignity and that the amount of men dying was like the number of cattle being slaughtered. www. englishteaching. co. uk

The poem contains many images related to funerals, death and mourning. ‘choirs’ ‘bugles calling’ ‘sad shires’ Complete the bubble map by adding all of Funeral / Death / the funeral images Mourning Images that you can find. ‘pall’ ‘flowers’ www. englishteaching. co. uk

‘holy glimmers of good-byes’ ‘choirs’ ‘bugles calling’ ‘bells’ ‘sad shires’ ‘orisons’ Funeral / Death / ‘prayers’ ‘pall’ Mourning Images ‘mourning’ ‘flowers’ ‘candles’ ‘drawing down of blinds’ www. englishteaching. co. uk

How does Owen use death imagery in his poem? Wilfred Owen uses many images of death, funerals and mourning in the poem ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. Choose 2 examples from the bubble map Comment on the effect of your choice of examples. Why did Owen choose to use these images? What do they make the reader think of? www. englishteaching. co. uk

Rhetorical Questions Rhetorical questions are questions that do not require an answer. They are written to make the reader think about the topic being addressed. How does Owen use rhetorical questions in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’? Owen uses rhetorical questions at the start of each of the two stanzas of the poem ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. He wrote: ‘What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? ’ and ‘What candles may be held to speed them all? ’ Your turn! Why are these two questions effective? What do they make the reader think about / evaluate? What do they tell the reader about the poet’s personal point of view? www. englishteaching. co. uk

Learning objective: To review how a poet’s life affects the composition of their writing. What does Wilfred Owen’s poetry reveal about his attitudes to war? In the poetry of Wilfred Owen he uses………. to emphasise… The technique of……. . is used to show………. Throughout [poem title] Owen uses…. . to argue that…. . The rhyme scheme allows the reader to…. . It can be argued that Owen…. .

Learning objective: To review how a poet’s life affects the composition of their writing. Peer assessment WWW – What element of their analysis is effective? EBI – How can the analysis be improved?