Referring to Dulce et Decorum est pro Patria mori and any other two poems, discuss Owen’s use of irony.

In his anthology, The War Poems, Wilfred Owen seeks to use war as a context, setting or medium to shape understanding of the human condition during the World War One period. The extent to which truth was dispelled or shirked is implied in his poetry, and it is this very implication that renders Owen’s outlook ironic, since he does not explicitly pinpoint the pain and suffering of reality in this era; instead, he leaves readers with the task of deriving the greater and holistic meaning of his poetry. Sensory imagery and figurative language then become vehicles, complementary devices or clues to provide readers with the idea that Owen’s subject is not war, but rather, “the pity of war”. By using an interchange between past and present, Owen attempts to compare and contrast the previously blissful lives of these men with the morbidity and wrath of war, where such nostalgia is essentially regression or “a trek from progress”: something he forbids of society at that time, particularly in the poem, “Strange Meeting”. Adopting a more psychological viewpoint, “S.I.W” also underscores the potency of the mind in yearning for a past period, from the perspective of a soldier. Whilst Owen’s intention is to arouse pity in readers by demonstrating the bitterness of war, as is observed through the realism evoked in “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, he does not realise that the obvious confusion evident in the verses of his poems renders him mentally incapable or lacking control, as opposed to the soldiers. His original intention – to leave readers dissatisfied and incomplete and insecure – then becomes inverted, as we are positioned to view the poet, himself, as being uncertain of what he is penning. The pity he attempts to evoke within us, as a result, lacks credibility, since the writer has identified himself as being ultimately dubious of what he is trying to achieve. The juxtaposition between the stanzas of “Insensibility” explores this notion.

Owen attempts to engulf and embroil readers within the problems during the war time period in order to arouse pity for the soldiers, such that mistakes are learned from; however, it is the extent to which we are drowned within this emotive language that makes us incapable of moving henceforth to falsify these myths about war. In other words, readers are ironically suffocated by poetic devices, such as the personification “of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind”, which identifies gas shells as being tired. The fact that an inanimate object is weary, when readers are aware that such objects are incapable of feeling, demonstrates the exhausting nature and pointlessness of war: a combat that is portrayed as lacking purpose and meaning. The soldiers are ironically, then, juxtaposed as being unreal or stripped of their humanity, through being metaphorically depicted as “[marching] asleep”, indicating that the bodies of soldiers are no longer occupied by their souls; only by the organs necessary for functioning, synonymous to the workings of a robot. This dehumanising strategy is also touched upon in “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, where soldiers are likened to “cattle” and are not given a proper Christian burial. Consequently, Owen uses these vibes to suggest that everyone and everything is pitted against the soldiers. Because of this, they should always be the ones to be pitied, according to Owen. Astute readers may draw an element of bias here, considering that Owen may only feel this way because he was a soldier? Specifically, the civilians back home and world leaders are blamed for what the soldiers have to endure. Yet, higher powers like the devil and God are not held culpable. This is observed in “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, where even Satan is depicted as being “sick of sin”. Owen blames humans for the fate of other humans. Readers are encouraged to shame themselves and are made out to be remorseless, cold-hearted and cruel, particularly through the implication that “children” are being told an “old Lie” regarding the “glory” of war. As well as being an indicator of how myths about war are spread, readers are positioned to view themselves in a negative sense, because they are supposedly lying to “innocent” children. Owen is pointing the finger at others of his own species, which is quite ironic. By blaming other humans, he is essentially castigating himself, if looked at from the broadest level.

In the allegory, “Strange Meeting”, it seems ironic that the soldier who attempts to “[escape] battle” by entering a “profound dull tunnel”, finds himself in the more dangerous setting of “Hell”, which can be extended to suggest that conscience from a prior period can never be outrun. Even though Owen acknowledges that myths about war will still be reinforced in the future, as is observed through the verse, “truths that lie too deep to taint”, he focuses on using the bitter ruminations of the “enemy” to underscore how “discontent” war is, so that war is avoided in the future. In doing so, he challenges the premature maxim that war is the gateway to peace, or that it is “glorious” – romanticised notions harboured by people during this period. In spite of him doing so, a unique meaning can be derived from the last verse in this poem, “Let us sleep now…”, which innocuously purports that the “enemy” in this poem is attempting to murder the “innocent” soldier. In other words, war is taking place in this “sullen hall”, albeit on a smaller scale, in spite of Owen contending that war is a mistake. It is also the incompleteness of the identity of this “enemy” that renders him a farcical character. For instance, he is initially dehumanised by Owen, as he exudes numbness to his environment, being too immersed within his own internal and psychological conflicts, as is evident in him being “Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred”. However, he exhibits feeling, particularly in the form of grief, by emphasising the regret and despondency involved in “The hopelessness” of war or “the pity war distilled”. This man, as a result, is not completely soulless, as Owen would like readers to assume. Probing this idea from a broader perspective would deem it to be a means of augmenting instability and uncertainty within the reader, at a subconscious level. However, from a closer reading, we can observe that this underlying meaning on Owen’s part is ironic, since the “enemy” was not actually “killed”.

One the one hand, the poem “Insensibility”, proposes that the highest ideal of war and reality is to be unfeeling and completely numb to the surrounding environment; on the other hand, he attempts to elicit pity for the soldiers using a number of poetic nuances. As a result, he balances the ambivalence he creates through his poetry with the linkages or similarities between verses and stanzas, where the positives and negatives ultimately cancel to create a neutral or unfeeling persona, which this poem adulates at face-value. For instance, the verses “The tease and doubt of shelling” and “Chance’s strange arithmetic/ Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling” both allude to the importance of destiny and fate, which attempts to neutralise the angst readers may feel for the “brothers” who are collectively suffering; the verb “cobbled” in the verse, “Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers”, reinforcing the painful and stone-like setting of war. The irony, then, lies in the fact that Owen attempts to arouse pity within readers for the soldiers through implications in his poetry, despite seemingly contending that emotion is undesired. For example, the verse, “The front line withers/ But they are troops who fade, not flowers” likens soldiers to inanimate objects, such as flora, at the disposal of world leaders; thus, readers are inclined to feel piteous of the helplessness of the situation. Then again, the soldiers whom Owen attempts to contrive compassion for “fleers”, due to their “tearful fooling”, which suggests that they are crying – a sign of weakness. Stiff, unconcerned or insensitive readers are typically spiteful of criers, and instead of being sympathetic of soldiers as is desired by this verse, they are positioned to dislike these soldiers. Hence, “Insensibility” rings with irony.

Irony is not particularly explicit in Owen’s poetry, as the multiple meanings conveyed by ironic ideas was not Owen’s main aim in his poetry. Because of this, irony then has an unintended sarcastic effect that almost degrades the seriousness and predominant meaning of the poem. Conversely, the undercurrent of irony evident in a few of the war poems makes for lighter reading; something that is much desired by readers who do not wish to fully immerse themselves in the horrors of war, due to the cleverness, craftiness and wit required to derive ironic meaning from the greater concepts in Owen’s poetry.