Over a year before he wrote of hypothermic soldiers in ‘Exposure’, Owen had written home about being “marooned on a frozen desert” and about frost-bitten casualties, marvelling at the fact that “only one of party actually froze to death” (Hibberd 1973, 64). The poem ‘The Sentry’ recounts a tragedy Owen had witnessed at close-hand in January 1917. Not surprisingly, there is often a correlation between events recounted by Owen in his correspondence and those which provide subject-matter for the poems. There is one title I prize, one clear call audible, one Sphere where I may influence for Truth, one workshop where I may send forth Beauty, one mode of living entirely congenial to me.”(Hibberd 1973, 53). This time to his mother, he wrote in March 1915: “A boy, I guessed that the fullest, largest liveable life was that of a Poet. ![]() Another letter written before he had experienced war shows that it was precisely a Keatsian ambition to convey beauty and truth that made Owen aspire to be a poet. It is in fact difficult to dissociate Owen’s desire to convey truth and his desire to be a poet. The letter included diagrams of injuries and the justification: “I deliberately tell you all this to educate you to the actualities of the war” (Stallworthy 1974, 110). In September 1914, it was clearly with a didactic aim that he wrote to his brother of the macabre goings-on there. Prior to enlisting, Owen had observed surgical operations in a military hospital near Bordeaux. It can be traced in his earliest correspondence. The desire to report back to those whose understanding of events depended on him was to shape Owen’s life. Acutely aware that he was making public a truth that belonged to a generation, Owen was tormented by an inner conflict which can be traced in his poems.Ģ Owen was driven as a soldier and as a poet by a deep desire to bear witness to the tragic events unfolding on the Front. Recording the reality of the front as he himself had experienced it, while remaining loyal to the men with whom he had shared it, Owen defines the inner conflict his poetic enterprise engendered in a letter to his mother, asking “And am I not myself a conscientious objector with a very seared conscience?” (Letter to Susan Owen. Owen’s most widely studied war poems, written between the spring of 1917 and October 1918, show that the poet was committed to re-creating the battlefield for those who would never experience it. He was shot as he was helping his men to cross the Sambre Canal. (Hibberd 1973, 86)ġ Wilfred Owen, one of the best-known poets of the First World War, was killed in northern France on 4 th Nov 1918 just one week before the Armistice. And to describe it, I think I must go back and be with them. It will never be painted, and no actor will ever seize it. It was not despair, or terror, for it was a blindfold look, and without expression, like a dead rabbit’s. Owen conveys to the reader that war is not positive, but that war is a terrible thing and that it is not as honorable and glorious as many believe it to be.But chiefly I thought of the very strange look on all faces in that camp an incomprehensible look, which a man will never see in England, though wars should be in England nor can it be seen in any battle. His bias altars his point of view drastically from the glory he previously associated with war. After experiencing the gas bombings and watching a fellow soldier, as a result from the gassing, drown in his own blood, Owen has developed a bias against war. Owen was once one of the young people that believed in the old saying, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori that war is good and that it is a heroic and honorable thing for one to serve and die for their country. ![]() ![]() He recalls of a fellow soldier that was infected by the gas, “the blood gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” (Owen 22-23), and his “white eyes writhing in his face” (Owen 19). In Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen, the writer, tells of some disturbing and awakening events he has experienced during battle that have changed his view on war drastically and led him to have a bias against war. Many authors have a bias, which is a form of prejudice against a person or idea, mainly due to past experiences that sway the point of view of the author to be somewhat different than others that have not had similar experiences. In Dulce et Decorum Est, the point of view comes from a former soldier of WWI, Wilfred Owen. The point of view of an author is the idea or message being conveyed.
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