I am doing a test about how Wilfred owen expresses his anger in the poems exposure, anthem for doomed youth and futility. If any one could note any points and quotes and make comparisons between the poems it would be much appreciated!
Owen begins "Anthem for Doomed Youth" with a bitter tone as he asks rhetorically what "passing-bells" of mourning will sound for those soldiers who die like cattle in an undignified mass. They are not granted the rituals and rites of good Christian civilians back home. They do not get real prayers, only rifle fire. Their only "choirs" are of shells and bugles. This first set of imagery is violent, featuring weapons and harsh noises of war. It is set in contrast to images of the church; Owen is suggesting organized religion cannot offer much consolation to those dying on the front. Kenneth Simcox writes, "These religious images...symbolize the sanctity of life – and death – while suggesting also the inadequacy, the futility, even meaninglessness, of organized religion measured against such a cataclysm as war. To 'patter out' is to intone mindlessly, an irrelevance. 'Hasty' orisons are an irreverence. Prayers, bells, mockeries only."
Exposure has a lot to do with the futility of war, and what Owen sees as the absence of God. He can't understand who so many soldiers are dying because of the elements..... why they're not dying in combat but on the sidelines. Owen believed that death from the cold had no honor.... and that this type of death was dehumanizing.
Exposure
