Friday, August 20, 2010

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was a British soldier and war poet. He was born on 18 March 1893 and died on 4 November 1918. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time. Some of his best-known works—most of which were published posthumously—include "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". He was killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre a week before the war ended. In a moment of ghastly irony, the telegram from the War Office announcing his death was delivered to his mother's home as her town's church bells were ringing in celebration of the Armistice.
Below is an analysis of the poem "Insensibility"
Insensibility

I

Happy are men who yet before they are killed

Can let their veins run cold.

Whom no compassion fleers

Or makes their feet

Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.

The front line withers,

But they are troops who fade, not flowers

For poets’ tearful fooling:

Men, gaps for filling:

Losses, who might have fought

Longer; but no one bothers.

II

And some cease feeling

Even themselves or for themselves.

Dullness best solves

The tease and doubt of shelling,

And Chance’s strange arithmetic

Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.

They keep no check on armies’ decimation.

III

Happy are these who lose imagination:

They have enough to carry with ammunition.

Their spirit drags no pack.

Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.

Having seen all things red,

Their eyes are rid

Of the hurt of the colour of blood forever.

And terror’s first constriction over,

Their hearts remain small-drawn.

Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle

Now long since ironed,

Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.

IV

Happy the soldier home, with not a notion

How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,

And many sighs are drained.

Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:

His days are worth forgetting more than not.

He sings along the march

Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,

The long, forlorn, relentless trend

From larger day to huger night.

V

We wise, who with a thought besmirch

Blood over all our soul,

How should we see our task

But through his blunt and lashless eyes?

Alive, he is not vital overmuch;

Dying, not mortal overmuch;

Nor sad, nor proud,

Nor curious at all.

He cannot tell

Old men’s placidity from his.

VI

But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,

That they should be as stones;

Wretched are they, and mean

With paucity that never was simplicity.

By choice they made themselves immune

To pity and whatever moans in man

Before the last sea and the hapless stars;

Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;

Whatever shares

The eternal reciprocity of tears.

Wilfred Owen

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The title has two meanings-the insenibility of emotions that the soldiers must achieve in order to live through the war and the insensibility of those waiting back home. However, when the poet uses repetition of 'Happy are' it becomes evident that he wants to use this ironically. 'Happy are those' who have lost their souls, their 'imagination,' and 'can let their veins run cold.' This brings out the gloomy mood and the insensitivity of the soldiers and civilians at that time.
The second stanza presents the idea that if a solider accepts death is his fate, then he is able to cope with the stress, irrational thoughts, and fear that heavy artillery, from the opposition, can bring. "The tease and doubt of shelling" suggests that death is playing with the men, teasing and provoking them.
The start of the poem was is present tense. This suggests that The starting line can be used even for the soldiers in the present.This opening line suggests that man is dehumanised by war. This also shows a loss of imagination.

4:29 AM