Wilfred Owen: Poems

ANTHEM FIR DOOMED YOUTH

Do you think this poem is a criticism of organise religious ritual ,or just specifically those that deal with death ? to take the same question a little further:do you think our speaker is angry about the complicity of the church in war , or is this a broader critique of the way respond to (or fail to recognize) death and suffering?

Asked by
Last updated by Aslan
Answers 1
Add Yours

The critic Jon Silkin notes that, while the poem seems relatively straightforward, there is some ambiguity: "Owen seems to be caught in the very act of consolatory mourning he condemns...a consolation that permits the war's continuation by civilian assent, and is found ambiguously in the last line of the octet." Owen might be trying to make the case that his poetry is a more realistic form of the expression of grief and the rituals of mourning.