Analysis
'Anthem for Doomed Youth' By Wilfred Owen &
'We will Never Forget - Auschwitz' By Alexander Kimel
As poems written from personal experience and from the heart, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ by Wilfred Owen and ‘We will Never Forget – Auschwitz’ by Alexander Kimel are undoubtedly two of the most reflective and impacting poems of the 20th Century. Both similar in viewpoint but vastly different in era and poetic devices, these poems convey strong messages of war and it’s purposeless greed.
Owen sets the tone of his poem with the simple and effective use of vocabulary in the title, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. An anthem is typically associated with happiness and joy, however, in this context it is paired with ‘Doomed Youth’ resulting in a gloomy viewpoint for the whole poem to reside in. ‘Doomed Youth’ also insinuates that the youth of the age has no hope, especially those signing up for the armed forces, which is basically a death wish4. Whereas the title of Kimel’s poem, ‘We will Never Forget – Auschwitz’ is very personal to him and freely states that the holocaust was a traumatic time that cannot be erased.
While in hospital recovering from shell shock, Owen wrote his poem with the insight that all those who sign up for the army are more or less, doomed; a much bleaker outlook than when he, himself, joined the army. Anthem for Doomed Youth presents war in a negative shadow. First of all it says ‘What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?’ which already spawns the negative concept of war. After seeing the horrors of the front line, Owen realised that war is a waste of young lives and in the first line of the first stanza compares the thoughtless murder of young soldiers to cattle lining up to die at an abattoir. When he writes, ‘who die as cattle’ he dehumanizes the soldiers, focussing on the fact that they are dying in masses, which is comparable to the way cattle are killed, in masses. This is a very similar viewpoint to the one Kimel has in the first stanza. When he writes, ‘Where Black Jackals condemned millions to gas,’ it also quite bluntly states that people are dying in the masses, although, these people weren’t soldiers, but helpless civilians. In the second line he uses minimalistic vocabulary and repetition to project strong imagery, ‘Right - death, left - life, right death... death ...death.’ The imagery evoked in the reader is that of a long line of chained prisoners awaiting their death, left – death, right – death, either way they are going to die.
‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ refers completely to the death of the soldiers at war, focusing on their lack of proper burials. Throughout the poem there is a strong comparison made between the distress and rushed efforts of war and the absence of a proper funeral equipped with traditional ‘bells’ and ‘prayers’. The first line already refers to the masses of soldiers dying without the luxury of an individual funeral by saying, ‘What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?’ There are no ‘bells’, nor ‘choirs’ for those who die in multitudes, ‘Only the monstrous anger of guns; Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle’. All there is for them in war is death, an inhumane and unjustified death. By personifying the guns, ‘…monstrous anger of guns,’ Owen paints a picture of unforgiving and unmerciful killing machines. According to Rgaro Fano, in the last stanza Owen exemplifies the families’ reactions back in the homeland. ‘Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes; Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes’ represents the soldiers in spirit form, they are no longer around for their families, now just an image in their eyes rather than a figure in reality.
The solemn tone continues in ‘We will Never Forget – Auschwitz’ although there is also an underlying anger to the poem which was unseen in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. His hatred for the Nazis is embodied in the first stanza as he describes them to be ‘Black Jackels’, ‘…creating a living hell’. This dark depiction of the situation sets the tone for the whole poem, evoking, in the reader, the feeling that Auschwitz was a hell-on-earth. The next stanza is targeted at the helpless families being torn apart. He uses perfect vocabulary when referring to how the family members are all feeling, especially when he writes, ‘Fathers shaken with helpless rage’, ‘Children are torn apart from the tender embrace; Of mothers, clinging to their treasures’ and ‘Babies wailing from hunger’. This induces a sense of familial love and loyalty in the reader.
He confirms every tale of the holocaust and it’s sickening methods of carnage in stanzas three to five. A very vivid description of the disorientated rush of people desperate for food, but instead are foolishly tricked and lead to their death. The way Kimel tells of the mass murder and the reprehensible burial of the victims is very graphic and plays the recount in the readers mind. Kimel’s and Owen’s poems are very alike in the sense that they both include the lack of a proper burial, but rather that the dead are just disposed of in the easiest way possible.
The satanic references continue in his portrayal of the Nazi workers in the sixth stanza by saying ‘Six days a week the Jackals drink beer; And rejoice doing the Devil's work; Sunday is the day of rest, the day; When the Jackals ride to the Church, to praise God; And assure the salvation of their pious souls.’ This strong statement reveals the author’s true emotions towards the Nazis and perfectly explains his perspective and the perspective of many other Jewish victims. His outrage is accentuated in this stanza coupled with his intense hatred, which forms a very dark view of the whole experience.
‘Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles!’ translated is ‘Germany, Germany above all!’ which is a reference to a popular German song, but more importantly was probably said by Hitler when justifying the slavery and murder of the Jews. Kimel incorporates this in the last stanza of his poem where he appears to resign to fact that evil seems to triumph over good and the world is a cruel, unfair place.
Each of the poets had a very different part to play in the events of their coinciding war. Each from different sides of the ‘battlefield’, both Owen and Kimel express and deliver their personal views of the eras in poetic form. Although the poets were from two completely different eras, their poems both tell of the horrible experiences of war, the unjustified mass murder and the improper burials of the dead.
Owen sets the tone of his poem with the simple and effective use of vocabulary in the title, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. An anthem is typically associated with happiness and joy, however, in this context it is paired with ‘Doomed Youth’ resulting in a gloomy viewpoint for the whole poem to reside in. ‘Doomed Youth’ also insinuates that the youth of the age has no hope, especially those signing up for the armed forces, which is basically a death wish4. Whereas the title of Kimel’s poem, ‘We will Never Forget – Auschwitz’ is very personal to him and freely states that the holocaust was a traumatic time that cannot be erased.
While in hospital recovering from shell shock, Owen wrote his poem with the insight that all those who sign up for the army are more or less, doomed; a much bleaker outlook than when he, himself, joined the army. Anthem for Doomed Youth presents war in a negative shadow. First of all it says ‘What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?’ which already spawns the negative concept of war. After seeing the horrors of the front line, Owen realised that war is a waste of young lives and in the first line of the first stanza compares the thoughtless murder of young soldiers to cattle lining up to die at an abattoir. When he writes, ‘who die as cattle’ he dehumanizes the soldiers, focussing on the fact that they are dying in masses, which is comparable to the way cattle are killed, in masses. This is a very similar viewpoint to the one Kimel has in the first stanza. When he writes, ‘Where Black Jackals condemned millions to gas,’ it also quite bluntly states that people are dying in the masses, although, these people weren’t soldiers, but helpless civilians. In the second line he uses minimalistic vocabulary and repetition to project strong imagery, ‘Right - death, left - life, right death... death ...death.’ The imagery evoked in the reader is that of a long line of chained prisoners awaiting their death, left – death, right – death, either way they are going to die.
‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ refers completely to the death of the soldiers at war, focusing on their lack of proper burials. Throughout the poem there is a strong comparison made between the distress and rushed efforts of war and the absence of a proper funeral equipped with traditional ‘bells’ and ‘prayers’. The first line already refers to the masses of soldiers dying without the luxury of an individual funeral by saying, ‘What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?’ There are no ‘bells’, nor ‘choirs’ for those who die in multitudes, ‘Only the monstrous anger of guns; Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle’. All there is for them in war is death, an inhumane and unjustified death. By personifying the guns, ‘…monstrous anger of guns,’ Owen paints a picture of unforgiving and unmerciful killing machines. According to Rgaro Fano, in the last stanza Owen exemplifies the families’ reactions back in the homeland. ‘Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes; Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes’ represents the soldiers in spirit form, they are no longer around for their families, now just an image in their eyes rather than a figure in reality.
The solemn tone continues in ‘We will Never Forget – Auschwitz’ although there is also an underlying anger to the poem which was unseen in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. His hatred for the Nazis is embodied in the first stanza as he describes them to be ‘Black Jackels’, ‘…creating a living hell’. This dark depiction of the situation sets the tone for the whole poem, evoking, in the reader, the feeling that Auschwitz was a hell-on-earth. The next stanza is targeted at the helpless families being torn apart. He uses perfect vocabulary when referring to how the family members are all feeling, especially when he writes, ‘Fathers shaken with helpless rage’, ‘Children are torn apart from the tender embrace; Of mothers, clinging to their treasures’ and ‘Babies wailing from hunger’. This induces a sense of familial love and loyalty in the reader.
He confirms every tale of the holocaust and it’s sickening methods of carnage in stanzas three to five. A very vivid description of the disorientated rush of people desperate for food, but instead are foolishly tricked and lead to their death. The way Kimel tells of the mass murder and the reprehensible burial of the victims is very graphic and plays the recount in the readers mind. Kimel’s and Owen’s poems are very alike in the sense that they both include the lack of a proper burial, but rather that the dead are just disposed of in the easiest way possible.
The satanic references continue in his portrayal of the Nazi workers in the sixth stanza by saying ‘Six days a week the Jackals drink beer; And rejoice doing the Devil's work; Sunday is the day of rest, the day; When the Jackals ride to the Church, to praise God; And assure the salvation of their pious souls.’ This strong statement reveals the author’s true emotions towards the Nazis and perfectly explains his perspective and the perspective of many other Jewish victims. His outrage is accentuated in this stanza coupled with his intense hatred, which forms a very dark view of the whole experience.
‘Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles!’ translated is ‘Germany, Germany above all!’ which is a reference to a popular German song, but more importantly was probably said by Hitler when justifying the slavery and murder of the Jews. Kimel incorporates this in the last stanza of his poem where he appears to resign to fact that evil seems to triumph over good and the world is a cruel, unfair place.
Each of the poets had a very different part to play in the events of their coinciding war. Each from different sides of the ‘battlefield’, both Owen and Kimel express and deliver their personal views of the eras in poetic form. Although the poets were from two completely different eras, their poems both tell of the horrible experiences of war, the unjustified mass murder and the improper burials of the dead.