The Next War Literary Elements

The speaker is a soldier in an unidentified war in an unidentified time and place. However, he speaks through the perspective of the collective “we” and thus situates himself more as speaking for soldiers writ large.

The poem blends elements of a Shakespearean and Italian sonnet, with fourteen lines of iambic pentameter and a mixture of the two types' rhyme schemes.

The “green thick odor of [death's] breath” is a metaphor for chemical warfare used in World War I.

In speaking of Death’s presence on the battlefield, the soldier alliteratively remarks, “We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe," contrasting the melodiousness of the whistling and the alliteration with the violence of death.

The repeated, assonant "L" sounds in "We laughed at him, we leagued with him," create a sense of harmony and predictability, stressing the soldiers' harmonious relationship with death.

The phrase "Death was never enemy of ours" uses assonant short "E" sounds, emphasizing the vowels of the line's central words "never enemy."

The poem as a whole works its way toward the ironic subversion of the ending, in which the speaker admits that that Death is not the enemy of the soldier on the battlefield, though he is commonly purported to be. Rather, the soldier argues—subverting common narratives about warfare—the soldier's enemies are other people, both his countrymen and enemies, whose deaths are caused by the war.

Sonnet, anti-war poetry

Though not explicitly identified, Owen suggests that the soldier is fighting in World War I, or at least in an early-twentieth century European conflict.

Deceptively light-hearted and comical until the subversive, acerbic turn in the poem's final lines.

Protagonist: the soldiers. Antagonist: nationalism and nationalistic forces.

The conflict is between living soldiers and the forces of war and nationalism that threaten to harm them. Indeed, the poem presents and then forcefully negates the idea that the soldier's conflict is one with death, arguing that death is in fact an ally of the soldier.

The climax arrives around line eleven, when the soldier asserts that soldiers have never been paid to go to war against death. They are sent to war to fight for and against interests in which they have no personal stake at all.

The epigraph stating that "war's a joke" is both sarcastic and understated: while war is deadly serious to the speaker, he is also aware that his war is futile and harmful, verging on comically absurd.

The poem's metaphorical nods to chemical warfare allude to the specific, infamous weapons used in the First World War. The personified figure of Death is described as holding a scythe, an allusion to the folkloric personification of death known as the Grim Reaper.

The final word of the poem, “flags,” is a metonymic representation of nationalism and nationhood.

Death is personified throughout the poem, imagined as a human soldier.

In the final lines before setting up the ironic reveal that the soldier's enemy is in fact his fellow man, the speaker ramps up the jolly tone with which he discusses death to a hyperbolic level with the line: “We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.”

The plosive consonants "spat" and "coughed" mimic the violent deaths of soldiers.