The Next War Essay Questions

Why does the speaker predict that there will be more wars?

The speaker unmistakably believes that the war in which he fights, and war generally, are pointless and destructive—yet he confidently asserts that another war, even bigger than the current one, will arise in the future. He suggests that this will come about as a result of pro-war propaganda. These jingoistic narratives, according to the speaker, claim that war is fought "for lives," in order to defeat Death. But the truth is that war is fought against "men, for flags." Though the speaker and his peers know this, he is privy to this knowledge only through experience, and feels sure that the next generation of soldiers will enthusiastically enter a new war without these insights.

Discuss the poem's use and subversion of the traditional sonnet form.

While "The Next War" follows the traditional Italian sonnet form in many respects, it blends in specific elements of the English or Shakespearian sonnet form—particularly in its later lines. By blending these two forms, Wilfred Owen manages two include not one but two voltas (or shifts), creating what at first seems like a major shift but is later ironically revealed to have been only the precursor to a more important one. The poem uses fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, like most sonnets. Like an Italian sonnet, it is split into an octave and a sestet. Its ABBACDDC rhyme scheme in the octave is also typical of an Italian sonnet. Yet in its sestet, it takes on the EFEFGG rhyme scheme typical of English sonnets. Thus, a kind of preliminary volta takes place following the octave, leading readers to believe that the poem's climax is merely the soldier's defense of death. Another, more dramatic volta follows before the final couplet, however, marking the shift to a sharp critique of war and nationalism.