Wilfred Owen’s Petrarchan sonnet, “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” features two questions regarding the deaths of soldiers dying in war: In the octave, the speaker asks, what is the point of tolling death knells for people who “die as cattle”? His question dehumanizes the heroes who give their lives in service to their country.
In the sestet, the speaker asks, “What candles may be held to speed them all?” This question further demonstrates the skewed attitude of one who has not been able to reconcile the spiritual with the material, especially regarding the deaths of soldiers.
First Quatrain: “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”
The speaker poses his first question, “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” Then he haughtily asserts his own answer. The answer is none; or at least, according to this speaker, these poor dehumanized beings do not deserve the solemnity of the ringing of church bells for their deaths.
Of course, this speaker has been blinded by the horrors of war and remains unable to see that all of life has its horrors, and war in only one part of the totality of horrific acts that humankind perpetrates upon humankind. It is doubtful that this speaker would claim that those who die at hands of murderers and thieves be denied a spiritual ceremony in tribute to their lives.
Yet he suggests that the brave soldier has only the “monstrous anger of the guns,” “stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle” to “patter out their hasty orisons.”
Second Quatrain: “No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells”
The speaker atheistically declares that religious ceremonies held for those “who die as cattle” are mere “mockeries,” and that they die without “prayer nor bells.” He laments that soldiers dying in battle have no spiritual succor, only the rough, rude paraphernalia of battle, “The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; / And bugles calling for them from sad shires.”
Such a diminishment of the soul of a dying hero is beyond crass; the speaker is asserting a lie that has crawled out the belly of Satan. The apparent injustice that is done the soldier who dies in battle is accomplished in fact by this kind of art that seeks to startle while belittling those who deserve respect, honor, and admiration.
First Sestet: “What candles may be held to speed them all?”
The speaker shifts somewhat in the sestet. After having debased the fallen soldiers in the octave, the speaker affords a pittance of ceremony in the sestet. After the soldier has died on the battle field, unidentified and alone, back home the funeral without a body will be a formality: young boys will not hold candles for the soldier, “but in their eyes / Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.”
The speaker, who has quashed any belief in solemn ceremony, now mocks the tears of younger brothers by calling them “holy glimmers of good-byes.” The speaker has made it quite clear that the sestet will be spoken with deep, bitter irony.
Second Sestet: “The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall”
Thus, the younger sisters will look pale and offer “flowers of the tenderness of patient minds.” Again, the notion that these girls will have “patient minds” leaps out from the irony that the speaker he guaranteed.
If the reader has missed the intention that the speaker means to disparage what he holds to be futile deaths, the final line assures that the missing piece will not remain ungrasped: the custom of lowering the window-shades in the room where the deceased’s body rests is replaced with the “slow dusk” which substitutes for “a drawing-down of blinds.” Only the dusk draws the blind—representing a neutral, natural phenomenon, not the people—representing a deliberate, humble act of respect.
Other Owen Article on “Dulce et Decorum Est”
 |
