Research paper - Psychological essence in Wilfred Owen's war poem

Name: Emisha Ravani

Affiliation: Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

University in Bhavnagar, Gujarat

Title:

Psychological essence in Wilfred Owen's war poem

 

Abstract:

When we look at bygone ages or its literature, we find that all literature has shown war literature.  Such poetries, of the English literature reader's DNA, were injected during school days like a vaccine. This paper is attempting the study of Wilfred Owen’s war poems which promotes the genre of war poems or war literature. Though Owen’s poems are having the theme of anti-war genre. World War I has influenced Many lives horrifically. Not only physically but mentally, and psychologically. The Poet of World War I, Wilfred Owen, after participating in the army during the First World War, witnessed the destructive results of the war and produced his poetry regarding the terrible outcomes of war when he was a soldier. This is the study of unconsciousness and repression of feelings in the poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est’. 

 

Key words: war, patriotism, poetry, impact on humans.

War Literature:

Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened,"-Carlos Ruiz Zafón. (Maiti and Naskar). Many poets who write about wars have also participated in them, as can be shown when we examine the war poets. We find it more intriguing and less speculative when literary characters recount their experiences from recollection. A writer who has firsthand knowledge of battle typically writes works in the genre of literature known as "war literature," which deals with themes and subjects related to conflict. Poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and memoirs are all possible formats. The physical and mental effects of war on troops and civilians, as well as the political and societal effects of war, are frequently explored in war literature. It can take the form of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and memoirs. War literature often explores the physical and emotional toll of war on soldiers and civilians, as well as the political and social issues surrounding war. Examples of war literature include works such as "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque and "The Iliad" by Homer.

World War I and World War II poetry differ in several ways. During WWI, poetry often focused on the horrors and futility of war, and the loss of innocence of soldiers. Poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon wrote about the physical and mental toll of trench warfare. In contrast, poetry during WWII often had a more patriotic and motivational tone, emphasising the importance of fighting for one's country and the defeat of fascism. Poets such as W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas wrote about the political and social implications of the war, rather than solely its physical toll on soldiers.

There are two ways that some poets had put this literature as glorified one and some had put it in the very reality of war as deaths and hopelessness. War poets were influenced by Georgian poetry. There was the idea of ‘the happy warrior’ that the person should be proud to give his life to his country. During the great war people were in euphoria to this idea. Who were the war poets from the great war? Let us see Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney, David Jones,Francis Ledwidge, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon. 

The futility and aftermath of war through the lens of Owen:

In a provisional preface, written for a collection of his verse he would never see published, he set down his belief in what poetry could do – or could not do – to appropriately remember the atrocity of war: This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.

My subject is War, and the pity of War.

Poetry is in the pity.

Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn.

Famous World War I poet Wilfred Owen wrote a great deal about the pointlessness and terrible effects of war. He was a soldier who was profoundly affected by the atrocities he saw firsthand. His poetry is distinguished by its vivid and harsh depictions of the psychological and physical toll that war takes on both troops and civilians. He discussed the futility and senselessness of war as well as the destruction it brings about for both people and society. Numerous of his poems, like "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth," are regarded as some of the most potent and moving works of anti-war literature ever produced.

In his poem "Dulce et Decorum Est," Wilfred Owen uses powerful imagery and language to convey the futility and aftermath of war. The poem is a stark depiction of the horrors of trench warfare during World War I, where soldiers were exposed to constant danger and death.

The poem begins with the soldiers trudging through mud, "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks," showing the physical and emotional toll that war has taken on them. They are described as "drunk with fatigue," and "coughing like hags" which highlights the physical exhaustion and sickness that soldiers experience.

As the poem progresses, Owen describes a gas attack that takes place, where the soldiers are caught off guard and unable to put on their gas masks in time. The graphic imagery of "As under a green sea, I saw him drowning" highlights the horror of the moment, and the fact that the soldiers are not just fighting against the enemy but also against the elements.

The aftermath of war is also depicted in the poem, as Owen describes the soldier who is suffering from the effects of the gas attack. He is described as "guttering, choking, drowning" and "white eyes writhing in his face." This imagery highlights the physical and emotional trauma that soldiers experience after a war, and the fact that the effects of war can last a lifetime.

Overall, Owen's poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" is a powerful and moving depiction of the futility and aftermath of war. Through his use of imagery and language, Owen conveys the physical and emotional toll that war takes on soldiers, and the fact that the effects of war can last a lifetime.

A study of unconsciousness and repression of feelings 

War poetry was all about patriotism, indicating nobleness of war, written mostly by civilians, who had no or little experience of war. But the poetry written by the soldiers painted a totally different picture of war. Sassoon and Owen wrote about the horrific experience they witnessed during the war. Through their writing these poets countered and argued against all the noble ideologies related to war; instead, by expressing their true emotions, they depict war as inhumane, war weapons destructive and the lives of soldiers as uncertain. 

Can we study the term ‘Repression Barrier’ in Wilfred Owen’s case? In his time the genre was getting existence as a literary genre in literature. In those days the mainly focused area was a glorification of the war. People started to look at war in this way only.

The title of the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" has a historical element in it.

The title of this poem means 'It is sweet and fitting'. The title and the Latin exhortation of the final two lines are drawn from the phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" written by the Roman poet Horace:

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:

mors et fugacem persequitur virum

nec parcit inbellis iuventae

poplitibus timidoque tergo.

—Ode |||

How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country:

Death pursues the man who flees,

spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs

Of battle-shy youths.

These words were well known and often quoted by supporters of the war near its inception and were, therefore, of particular relevance to soldiers of the era. In 1913, the line Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori was inscribed on the wall of the chapel of the Royal Military College Sandhurst In the final stanza of his poem, Owen refers to this as "The old Lie".

Owen became the trend breaker in this trend which is coming from the very ancient time of Horace. People make others forcefully believe in such events or phenomena from their own perspective. And as the result we can get is that all repressed perspectives or the thoughts must come as an outlet somehow like in written or vocal form which is based on unconsciousness of one’s own. The very idea that it is so overwhelming to die for your own country is an uncertain feeling for Owen himself.

Let us look at his life. Owen joined the Army in 1915, and first entered the trenches in January, 1917, when he was twenty three years old. He was appalled at once by the horror of stalemated warfare. In a letter of January 19th he calls No-man’s-land “an abode of madness” ; on February 4th he is calling the dead “the most execrable sights on earth,” and adds, “In poetry we call them glorious”; on April 25th he writes, “The terribly long time we stayed unrelieved . . . makes us feel bitterly towards those in England who might relieve us and will not”; and in June, as he lies wounded in a hospital in France, it dawns upon him that “Christ’s essential command was: Passivity at any price! Suffer dishonour and disgrace, but never resort to arms. Be bullied, be outraged, be killed; but do not kill.”

Having recovered from his wound, he was back in the fighting the next year, was awarded the Military Cross, and was killed in action November 4, 1918, a week before the Armistice. 

The mockery of religion in war. “These men are worth your tears,” he says of the soldiers. “You are not worth their merriment.”

By his life we can come to know that Owen, who had suffered from the physical as well as mental traumas. Mainly he wrote about shell shock and other disorders which he had seen in the soldiars who fought in the war and had experienced it by themselves. 

Conclusion: 

Poets do write war poems but when the witnessed poets write war poems it gives us the realistic and pertinent portrayal through their own eyes or perspective. Sigmund Fread has given the term of unconscious feelings and mind. In that he talks about Freudian Slips. A Freudian slip, or sometimes known as a parapraxis, is a verbal or memory mistake (a "slip of the tongue") that is considered to be linked to the unconscious mind. A combination of diverse kinds and examples of his coined "Freudian slips" in his book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life published back in 1901. 

So, basically it talks about everyday life of humans and it is common to get very often times in our routine life. When Owen got situation of war in his routine life it get into his unconscious or in memory which reflected in the description of the war through the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. 

Work cited:

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Frothingham, Mia Belle. “What's the Deal with Freudian Slips?” Freudian Slip: Meaning, Examples, Other Explanations, https://www.simplypsychology.org/freudian-slip.html.

Introduction to Sigmund Freud, Module on Repression, https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/psychoanalysis/freud3.html.

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Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est.

“Voices of the First World War: Shell Shock.” Imperial War Museums, https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/voices-of-the-first-world-war-shell-shock.

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Wim Van Mierlo, The Conversation. “How Wilfred Owen Became a Chronicler of the Futility of War through His Poems.” Scroll.in, Scroll.in, 9 Nov. 2018, https://scroll.in/article/901370/how-wilfred-owen-became-a-chronicler-of-the-futility-of-war-through-his-poems.