Anthem for doomed youth using the ACTS method.1. Audience and purpose.Audience: – Make “loved ones’ back home” aware of the brutal realities of war, make youths aware of the realities of war and destroy their disillusionment, future generation and the importance of peace.Purpose (relate to theme and audience): -Prevent war from happening in the future.- Send a message to the disillusioned youths that war is cruel and brutal.- Question the existence of god.- To show the dehumanization of humans in the war front.
(Denied the dignity of proper burial, “cattle.”)1. Context and theme: -Context: – The Christianity was greatly involved with the state during war and sometimes lit the fires of war.- In the anthem of the doomed youth, dehumanization was evident as the soldiers weren’t given proper burials like the Christian rituals and was just killed in mass like cattle.- The Christian rituals and presence of god was also mocked when the rituals were considered unnecessary and meaningless in face of war.- The contrast of the peaceful passing in church and dying brutally is ironic to show that the church is a mockery and cannot serve as comfort during war time.Theme: -Brotherhood (glimmer in the eyes of boys, anthem, “them” (collective pronoun).
– Religion: -Comparison and contrast of religious burials to brutal murders of soldiers, mockery of rituals.- Nature: -allusion to nature in that the dusk will be the end of the lives of soldiers (last line).Tone and mood.-Angry, regretful, despair, hopelessness, uncertainty, bitterness.
Style and structure.Style: -Rhetorical question.- Onomatopoeia: -It is created by the combination of alliteration of Rs together with hard As to mimic the sound of the gun- Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle to show the inhuman disregard of human life that further emphasizes the dehumanization aspect.- Personification: -“monstrous guns” to show.- Metaphor and rhetorical question:- “what passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” to compare the soldiers to cattle.- Irony: -When Owen metaphorically compares the high pitched choir in church to the wailing of shells. In addition, pathetic fallacy is also present as the shells are given human attributes.
Irony is also present throughout the poem when Owen compares the death of a soldier on a battlefield to the proper Christian burial.- Metaphor: the drawing down of blinds
