Comparison of Wilfred Owen's Anthem for Doomed Youth and Rupert's Brooke's The Soldier

Wilfred Owen served on the front lines during the World War I and expressed his disdain for the war through his poetry that he wrote in the hospital after being wounded. Rupert Brooke also served during the war, but never saw active combat. In contrast to Owen, Brooke’s poems are idealistic, patriotic, and exalt the war.

Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth begins with the jarring image of men dying in battle, “who die as cattle.” This analogy conveys Owen’s contempt for the indignity of war by insinuating that the men have no more significance than cattle being slaughtered. The sounds of the “monstrous anger of the guns” are the soldiers’ only “passing-bells” and “the stuttering rifles rapid rattle” are their only prayers. Their only choir is the “shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells.” By using words such as “monstrous,” “shrill,” and “demented,” Owen emphasizes the horrors of the war and he suggests that the weapons are presiding over the deaths. The last line of the octave switches from the battlefield to the home front with “bugles calling for them from sad shires.”

Away from the noisy chaos of the battlefield, the sestet summons a mood of sadness and the solitude of a funeral where, instead of alter boys’ candles, there will be glimmering tears of good-byes. The pale faces of girls will be the palls on the coffins. The loved ones who patiently awaited the soldiers’ return from battle will take the place of flowers during the “drawing-down of blinds” as night falls.

The sonnet begins with the violence of war which Owen describes using a repetition of sounds, like “rifles’ rapid rattle” and “stuttering”, “rattle”, and “patter” which almost sound like the ratta-tat-tat of machine guns. The poem ends quietly with images of grieving and mourning. “And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds,” the last line of the poem, represents the finality of death, and the recognition that this scene will be recreated over and over.

In Brooke’s sonnet, The Soldier, a gallant soldier expresses his unconditional love for his country. The poem begins with the soldier saying that the foreign soil on which he died will forever be a part of England. The 5th line shifts the focus from the foreign land back to England where the soldier was shaped and nurtured. He touts his homeland and personifies England speaking of “her flowers to love, her ways to roam / Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day.” He gives his life in gratitude to his country that has given so much to him, so that England may endure and her people may find peace and comfort. The tone is blissful throughout the poem.