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CHAPTER THREE
CONCLUSION
After analysing the four poems of Wilfred Owen, I find that Owen
succeeds in giving a realistic picture of war. As a soldier fighting in World War I,
the poet knows exactly what war is like. His description of war, for instance, in
‘Another Version’, reveals to the reader that war is full of cruelty: ‘Earth’s wheels
run oiled with blood..../...their blood hath clogged the chariot wheels’. His
description of the meaninglessness of the deaths of the soldiers, like in
‘Insensibility’, provides the reader with a gloomy side of war: ‘The front line
withers,...’and ‘armies’ decimation’ demonstrate that many soldiers die
meaninglessly in war.
In the four poems, the reader can also learn that Owen is pessimistic about
war, for he clearly reveals that war has bad impacts not only on the soldiers who
are fighting in the battlefield but also on their beloved ones: their families, their
children and friends in the countryside where these soldiers are from. This is very
well illustrated in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. In ‘Disabled’, the poet gives a
very strong contrast between the soldier’s prewar condition and his postwar
condition. Youthfulness, strength, power, glory, happiness and attraction, which
the soldier has before he joins the war, are contrasted with invalidity,
helplessness, misery, grief, and ‘a queer disease’ which women avoid.
