What view of the First World War do Owens poems show?

Owen was an English poet whose work was characterised by his anger
at the cruelty and waste of the First World War, which he experienced during
service on the Western Front. His poems about the horrors of the war show a
sharp contrast between the public perception of war at that time and the reality
experienced by those who had taken part in it. In order to prove this, I am going
to analyse the poems Anthem for doomed youth, The last laugh and
Strange meeting.
In Anthem for doomed youth, Owen demystifies the conventional
glorification of war, by exposing the meanness and absurdity of dying in the
battle. The poem begins with a bitter tone as the writer asks rhetorically what
"passing-bells" of mourning will sound for those soldiers who die like cattle in an
undignified mass. They are not granted the rituals and rites of good Christian
civilians back home. They do not get real prayers, only rifle fire. Their only
"choirs" are of shells. This first set of imagery is violent, featuring weapons and
harsh noises of war. It is set in contrast to images of the church; Owen is
suggesting that organised religion cannot offer much consolation to those dying
on the front.
In the second stanza the poem slows down and becomes more painful. The
poet thinks that the young men will not have candles. The only light they will get
will be the reflections in their fellow soldiers' eyes. They must have substitutions
for their coffin covers ("palls"), their flowers, and their "slow dusk". The pale
faces of the girls will be what cover their coffins, patient minds will act as
flowers, and the "slow dusk" will be the dying of day. The poem has a note of
finality, of lingering sadness and an inability to avoid the reality of death and
grief.
As regards The last laugh, Owen presents the reality of war and the
destruction of youth by mocking weapons. The phrase that Owen used to title
this poem is the idiom the man who has the last laugh. It symbolizes the
ultimate victory of the unnamed man over his rival, usually someone who
deserves the ridicule. However, Owen takes this positive idiom and turns it into
the frame of war context, thus showing that there is no man alive in World War I

who has the last laugh. It is, instead, the guns that can claim a victory. In this
war, there are no survivors.
By personalizing the guns and their laughter, Owen actually gives them a much
stronger character than the soldiers who are dying. The dead soldier is not even
given a name. However, the Bullets chirped, the Machine-guns chuckled, and
the Big Gun guffawed. Each of the weapons is given its own personality. Owen
has them all mocking the dead with their human voices and humours. Thus, it is
the guns that have won this war. It is the guns, therefore, that have had the last
laugh. The use of joyful sounds words such as chirped, chuckled, guffawed
seem cruel. The guns enjoyment disagrees with the horrors of the dead soldier.
However, the reader gets the opposite view of the war; that of pure, senseless,
and violent destruction.
Finally, in Strange meeting, the message that Owen tries to convey is
that of the futility of the war. The poem tells a dramatic meeting between two
dead soldiers who had fought on opposing sides. No longer enemies, they find
it possible to see beyond the conflict and hatred in a shared awareness of "the
truth untold" and the need for the poet to proclaim that truth in the face of a
world set to "trek from progress". The dead man talks about the horror of war
and the inability for anyone but those involved to understand the essential truth
of the experience. The soldiers in Strange Meeting have experienced the
horrors of battle up close and personally. They have felt the horror of killing
another man, and the fear of imminent death. Unfortunately, when death does
come, it does not seem to be giving them any break from horror. They are to be
stuck permanently in a state of fear. Even though there is no sign of gunshots or
bombs, the war plays in their minds like a terrifying broken record that they have
no way of ever turning off.
These dead soldiers, though enemies on the battlefield, realise now that they
were all just humans in the same place. And now that they are doomed to suffer
for eternity, they might as well forgive each other during their "strange meeting.
Wilfred Owens main objective when writing his poetry was to shed light
on the gruesome and horrific reality of being a soldier, which counters the
nationalistic propaganda that depict soldiers as honorable, proud, and heroic.
He wanted to make very clear to the world the reality of war. He did not want to

paint it as a glorious and heroic commitment. Instead, he wanted to show that it

was terrible and senseless. He wanted to reveal the human side of the fighting,
not just talk ambiguously about "casualties". He wanted to humanise the
soldiers and understand their situation. Many soldiers came home mentally and
physically disabled, which is the exact opposite of what people expected. He did
not want to apologise for revealing the pity of war. It was important to him to be
authentic and ruthless in his imagery, tone, and message.