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  • Essay / Literary Analysis of Wilfred Owen's Poem On My Songs

    In “On My Songs,” Wilfred Owen gives us an intellectual insight into the emotion of loneliness through the eyes of a young man, newly thrown into the world out of the arms of his loving mother. Owen also tells us about his idolization of Romantic poets and the power that poetry holds to cure people of their misery. Owen presents these ideas in different ways, such as exploring diction, using sound and linguistic devices, manipulating structure, and using symbolism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In the first Shakespearean quatrain, Owen explains how these great poets are able to cure his sadness “as if they knew my woe.” By capitalizing “Poets” in line 1, he shows how highly he values ​​these men, and by using the word “invisible,” he reveals to readers that even though these poets are not there, they are still able to “relax”. Owen's desperation, as if they were almost spiritual. The word “fashioned” evokes the immense talent required to create such poems, and shows once again how much Owen idolized these poets – particularly Romantic poets such as Keats. The repetition of the word "many" in "many and many times" can be physically interpreted as the countless times Owen has read the work of these poets, so much so that they are now like a perpetual loop in his mind, a bit like a bible verse to a vicar. In the second quatrain, Owen begins to use the first person tense when he talks about how sometimes even these great works of art are not enough to ease his sorrow. By contrasting her "mute tears" with "speech soft as sobs," he creates an ironic and oxymoronic image of how her inarticulate tears are usually healed by this beautiful language. “Soft as sobs” is also an oxymoron because it contrasts something joyful with something that is generally darker. When Owen speaks of “thought treasures,” he implies that these poems are objects to be cherished and kept forever. The words “nothing for me” and the hollow, resonant sound they contain show the deep sense of loss he experiences when these works of art have no effect on him. The break between lines 6 and 7 further reiterates this idea of ​​desertion and abandonment. By repeating the word "pulsate" and personifying the poems, Owen once again demonstrates the pain he feels when these verses, which are usually so connected to his soul, are completely out of sync with the beating of his heart. The caesura and stop in line 8 further illustrates the sense of detachment and dislocation that Owen can sometimes feel. After line 8, there is a volta, and Owen begins talking about his "own strange daydreams." He speaks of the "muted chants of a motherless child in the darkness" - the "oo" sounds serving to create a strange and dark atmosphere while the "motherless child" is perhaps a manifestation of his more great fear. Owen was very close to his mother, and so the symbol of a "motherless child" implies that there would be no love or sympathy in this child's life, and indeed this child would have to "sing his frightened self to sleep.” This child serves as the object onto which Owen is able to project his feelings as he lies trapped in the “sick ward” that is Dunsden Rectory. In line 13, in “Dreading the Dark,” Owen personifies darkness as a symbol of undefined fear – as everyone experiences a different “Dark.” The following, "don't you dare light up" shows Owen using a..