1Mental Cases: shadows of themselves, not alive or dead and sitting at the end of life
"Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? purgatorial shadows"
2Mental Cases: men are the living dead simile enhances sibilance and zoomorphism of previous line
"Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?"
3Mental Cases: eternal pain and oxymoron (confusion), also hard k sound consonance helps the sibilance create a sickly feel
"stroke on stroke of pain, - but what slow panic"
4Mental Cases: personification of surroundings gives them a lack of autonomy
"Misery swelters. Dead. Memory fingers"
5Mental Cases: literary allusion to Mcb and wandering aimlessly
"Multitudinous murders"
6Mental Cases: eternal suffering
"Always must they see these things and hear them"
7Mental Cases: boom and bang
"Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,"
8Mental Cases: motif of blood and this couplet of blood compound nouns shows extent they see war in everything (see it in the sun rise and at night - they have no peace from it)
"Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black"
9Mental Cases: men whose minds
These are men whose minds the dead of have ravished
10Mental Cases: rebirth imagery of dawn, simile for what they see and metaphor for the wound
"Dawn breaks open, like a wound that bleeds afresh."
11Mental Cases: directly addresses chasm between public and survivors, use of inclusive and familial language makes everyone accountable (speaks directly to reader). Collocation of two things.
"us who smote them, ... war and madness"
12Mental Cases: double h-ous
Hilarious, hideous
13Anthem: simile - compares those who are about to die to cattle - shows the soldiers are being slaughtered. It also suggests that men are being slaughtered in large numbers
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
14Anthem: Personification - emphasises the deadly power of the guns and what the soldiers hear as they are dying
monstrous anger of the guns.
15Anthem: Alliteration - emphasises the sound of the guns and shows the undignified death the soldiers suffer
stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
16Anthem: Everything they don't have
No mockeries now for them, No prayers NOR bells
17Anthem: Metaphor and connotation - the only mourning voice the soldiers hear are the sound of the shells
shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
18Anthem: girls brows
Pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall
19Anthem: Symbolic - people shutting out the realities of war that enables the suffering to continue
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
20Dulce: Simile - contrasts with glorious representations of war
old beggars under sacks..... knock-kneed, coughing like hags,
21Anthem: Transferred epithet, homefront
Bugles calling for them from sad shires
22Dulce: Metaphor - emphasises their tiredness and the effect of the war on them
Drunk with fatigue;
23Dulce: man dying in what
flound'ring like a man in fire or lime
24Dulce: Connotations of 'ecstasy' and 'fumbling' - heightens the panic and urgency
ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time
25Dulce: Imagery and metaphor - thick green light
under a green sea,
26Dulce: Listing of verbs - shows the effect of the gas on the soldier. Horrific suffering endured by soldiers.
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
27Dulce: Connotation of 'flung' - the wounded soldier is a piece of garbage tossed into the back of a wagon. There is no dignity in death
the wagon that we flung him in
28Dulce: Imagery and simile - details the horrific impact of the gas attack on his face. We can picture his face, gasping for air and his eyes rolling in his face as he struggles to breathe.Shows the horrors suffering caused by the war
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin
29Dulce: Imagery - lungs
the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
30Dulce: Simile - war is cancer
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
31Dulce: Owen is speaking to those who glorify war. Ironic tone
If you too could pace...My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory
32SM: Imagery. - emphasises the depth of the tunnel, oxymoron
Down some profound dull tunnel
33SM: Imagery - even in death, the soldiers are suffering.
encumbered sleepers groaned
34SM: blessing in hell
lifting distressful hands as if to bless
35SM: We in hell y'all
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell
36SM: Pain face
With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained"
37SM: Things lost 1 - years
The undone years, the hopelessness
38SM: Not so different hope
Whatever hope is yours was my life also
39SM: Metaphor - emphasises the potential of life and youth in searching for meaning
I went hunting wild, after the wildest beauty in the world
40SM: elancholy tone - the sadness felt by the soldier is emphasised - his potential has been left unfulfilled
For by my. glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping something had been left which must die now
41SM: repetition - emphasises the main theme of the poem. The pity of war from the soldiers experience
I mean the truth untold, the pity of war, the pity war distilled
42SM: Imagery - war is violent and has been re-occuring
men will go content or [...] discontent and boil bloody
43SM: Juxtaposition of enemy and friend - shows how enmity occurs - both men are the same, but fighting for different sides.
"I am the enemy you killed my friend"
44SM: Metaphor and ellipsis - sleep means death, the use of ellipsis suggests ending is ambiguous as it suggests that death will not be peaceful
"Let us sleep now..."
45SM: Mental pain
"foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were"
46Parable: Name change
Abram
47Parable: Soldiers innocent
the lamb for this burnt-offering
48Parable: Military restriction
"bound the youth with belts and straps, and builded parapets and trenches there"
49Parable: RAM
"Offer the Ram of Pride instead"
50Parable: Ego too big
"The old man would not so, but slew his son, and half the seed of Europe, one by one"
51Spring Offensive: peace
"at east, leaning on the nearest chest or knees"
52Spring Offensive: Uncertain, verge of chasm
"stark, blank sky beyond the ridge" "end of the world"
53Spring Offensive: Veins
Summer oozed into their viens
54Spring Offensive: Edge
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent ridge
55Spring Offensive: Blessed
"buttercups had blessed with gold their slow boots"
56Spring Offensive: Brambles
"clung to them like sorrowing arms"
57Spring Offensive: Sun enemy
"eyes that faced the sun, like a friend with whom their love is done"
58Spring Offensive: Think they know better
"mightier"
59Spring Offensive: Sky angry
"The whole sky burned with fury against them"
60Spring Offensive: Slope goes from nice to evil
"the green slope chasmed and steepened"
61Spring Offensive: Dead before they began
"God caught them even before they fell"
62Spring Offensive: Why no speak?
Why speak they not of comrades that went under
63Spring Offensive: Not glories
long famous glories, immemorial shames
64Spring Offensive: Too strong that they arent human
Superhuman inhumanities
65Greater Love: not as potent
red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead
66Greater Love: not as pure
shame to their love pure
67Greater Love: lose lure
your eyes lose lure
68Greater Love: voice
dear voice is not dear
69Greater Love: religiously weaker
paler are all which trail your cross through flame and hail
70Preface: pity
the pity of war
71Preface: not about
glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion or power
72Preface: warning
all a poet can do to-day is to warn