Wilfred Owens own words, My subject is the pity of War.

The poetry is in the pity, reflect his most important concern as a poet. Discuss.
Wilfred Owen, a poet first and then soldier, has the purpose to depict the pity of war through a vivid recount of its reality. It is through Owens hospitalisation with Siegfried Sassoon that Owen dispels the more romanticised approach to war and expresses the true, harsh nature of war where there is no propaganda and glory. Wilfred Owen believed that true poets must be truthful in order to portray war to its fullest glory and his main point is to shy away from the propaganda, taking on the responsibility of showing the truth about the soldiers used by the fate they chosen unknowingly. Owens poems employ his experiences to emphasise the bloodshed of war that the young men endure and witness which ultimately leads to their death. The horrible deaths or lifelong suffering of the young soldiers are described in a few of Owens poems as well as the pity from the lives they left behind. Owens central concern is to warn through his poetry the truth of war and the subject of war itself. The explicit descriptions that Owen captures in his poetry fully incorporate the sadness and mental anguish that the young men suffer as a result of their experiences of war. His ability to include his own memories shows the side of war that no person should ever have to go through themselves. The soldiers that live through all of this only come out emotionally and mentally scarred as seen in Mental Cases. It shows how the traumatised men become psychologically distressed, animalistic with their minds the Dead ravished, while reliving the horrible scenes, replaying them over and over again non-stop. The representation of the men in such a way with their drooping tongues and baring teeth shows how from the untruthful depiction of war as romantic cause the transformation in the young men so that they are unable to escape from their participation in the war as it was all too late. They all are made to suffer with wounds deeper than physical that will never heal. It is also through Mental Cases that its seen that Owen employs gore and carnage to describe to the readers what the soldiers see and the extent of their nightmares they live through again. The waste of the youths lives are expressed by Owen with aversion. They are wasted once theyre in the war, coming out of it disabled or staying within it doomed. These soldiers are described as cattle that were herded (in the the Sentry) to death, in Anthem for Doomed Youth, they were flung around, treated no less than animals which only drove them to become the crazed zombie-like things. Their deaths were treated much lower than what they deserved for what they did, the brutal, confronting things they witnessed. Those that lived werent the same, they could have lived a life, happier, brighter but were unable, they aged, and they were waiting for the dark. Consequences of it were that they aged, prematurely, their lives had been wasted, it couldnt be filled with pleasure and play, and they could never go back from it. All these young men, willingly and happily lied, giving their futures smiling, not realising that they had signed up for they death, reapers taking their lives. It was all wasted, and for a reason they couldnt really remember why. Owen pities the waste of the youth. In Futility their fields were half sown signifying the lives not fully lived to their potential, there was no great harvest. Owen shows his existential crisis, he questions the point of being born only to die, it was a cry of desperation, why should anyone live, it was all pointless, a waste. These young soldiers, unable to live their lives contently are what Owen uses to express his contempt at the higher influences wasting away half the seed[s] of Europe. The soldiers in the trenches are often described with brutal realism by Owen to reveal to the world the sacrifices their heroes and men made and lived with. Owen uses his war experiences to describe the harsh and unforgiving environment that the young men were forced to bear. Many of them would die at the hands of nature before reaching or even seeing their enemies. In The Sentry the dugouts had slush waist-high, rising hour by hour, their trenches were in no way a comfortable place of rest, they all had to keep on constant alert, nature was their biggest enemy. They were against the rain guttering down, the merciless iced east wings, it battered and hit them relentlessly until they were tired, it didnt let the soldiers pause. The elements were described as by Owen, stronger and scarier than that of the weapons, in Exposure, the weather was personified, it was as if it was hunting the soldiers down in their holes with mad gusts

tugging on the wire and pale flakesfeeling for our faces. The snow itself was bullets that were more terrifying than the sudden successive strikes from the enemy lines filling the silence. In this, the soldiers are paralysed, their bodies are left to waste as the frost fastens on them and they are left catatonic, snow-dazed. They were cringing in holes, vulnerable to the bigger threat of the environments. The soldiers had to remain on high alert, watching for action. These vivid descriptions by Owen create the negative view of natures role in war and the rough conditions that had to be fought against compared to luxury back home. Wilfred Owen paints an intense confronting image of war in his poems. Through his experiences, Owen exposes the true conditions of war, the sacrifices made by the youths and the lives they wasted when they signed up. From that, he conveys through his poetry, the pity of war and more importantly, the true events of war.