English Presentation

By Harri Blankenstein

The way forward...

• The poet and his life

• Poems and their explanation of the war

• Interpretations of the poems

• My ideas

• The end

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

• Born – 18th march 1893 in Oswestry• Died – 4th novermber Ors, France• Born to supposedly wealthy family• Parents Susan and Thomas• 2 years later the family was nearly bankrupt after

Wilfred’s Grandfarther died• Finished school in 1911 and passed the test to

University of London but could not attend due to unreceived scholarship

• Prior to out-break of war worked in Bordeaux as a private tutor for English and French

Owen Continued....

• Joins training for the war in 1915• December 30th 1916 travelled to france joining

the 2nd Manchesters on January 12th 1917.• Experienced many horrors

– Artillery bombing– Frost bite– Concussion– Explosion

• Diagnosed with Shell-Shock and sent back to England in may

• Got killed on november 4th 1918.

PrefaceThis 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, dominion or power,

except War.Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.The Poetry is in the pity.Yet these elegies are not to this generation,This is in no sense consolatory.They may be to the next.All the poet can do to-day is to warn.That is why the true Poets must be truthful.If I thought the letter of this book would last,I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia, -- my

ambition and those names will be content; for they will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.

The Show

• And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques.

• Round myriad warts that might be little hills.• I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and

straighten,I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten.

• And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.

Dulce et Decorum Est• Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, • Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs 

And towards our distant rest began to trudge. • Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling, 

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;  But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,  And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .  Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,  As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.  In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,  He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. 

• Behind the wagon that we flung him in,  And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,  His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;  If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood  Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,   

• The old lieDulce et Decorum est  Pro patria mori.

S.I.W

• Father would sooner him dead than in disgrace,

• "Death sooner than dishonour, that's the style!"So Father said.

• With him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed,And truthfully wrote the Mother "Tim died smiling."

With All regrets

• My arms have mutinied against me -- brutes!My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.I can't read. There: it's no use. Take your book.

Strange meeting

• Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

• none will break ranks

What the poems tell about

• The Show – No-mans land

• Dulce et Decorum est – The Charge

• S.I.W – The Pressure on joining the army

• With All Regrets – Trench Life

• Strange meeting – Trench Life

My ideas

• He exclaimed the horrors of war using personification and metaphors/similies

• All of his poems have a specific topic he talks about

• In his writings it comes apparent how he felt and throught that how the soldiers on the front felt.

• Most memorable comment: ’The old lie, Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori’

•Wilfred Owen was truely the ”leading poet of WW1”

Questions???

If not then... The END