Depiction Of War In Carol Ann Duffy’s “war Photographer” And Wilfred Owen’s “anthem For Doomed Youth”
Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and Carol Ann Duffy’s “War Photographer” are poems that, through the use of language and structural techniques, emphasize the suffering experienced in war and more specifically, both highlight the triviality of a soldier’s life in the context of war. This is presented in “Anthem for Doomed Youth” through focusing on the fact that no honour comes to most of those who lose their lives in combat, whereas “War Photographer” presents this through the jaded, desensitised eyes of the war photographer & general public. Owen presents fighting for one’s country as a meaningless and dehumanising experience. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is written in the structure of a sonnet which is normally used as a love song. The word “Anthem” gives an air of importance and is reinforced by the rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter (in which this poem is written) which emulates ceremonious marching. This creates a sense of irony that emphasizes that soldiers in war recieve no anthem when they sacrifice their lives for their country.
The scathing tone created by this irony turns into righteous anger in the first line of the poem, where Owen asks “What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?”. The zoomorphism in this line dehumanises the soldiers fighting in war, stripping their deaths of any meaning, and brings up the image of slaughter, an act connotative of thoughtless, uncaring killing. The plosives in ‘die’ and ‘cattle’ emphasize the anger embedded in the tone of this line. This tone is expressed further in the first stanza when Owen repeats the word ‘only’ to highlight the fact that the only sounds indicating a soldier’s death are those of the “monstrous anger of the guns” and “the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle”, in stark juxtaposition with the “passing-bells” mentioned in the previous line. The personification of the guns and rifles here show that humans are the perpetrators of the horrors of war and also scornfully emphasize that even guns become more human to a soldier than another human fighting on the other side. In the second stanza the tone is less condemning and rather melancholic as Owen transitions from describing soldiers to the civilians affected by their deaths. The first line “What candles may be held to speed them all?”, makes use of a rhetorical question to accentuate that there will be no formal funeral service for most of those who die in war. The poet uses adjectives like “pall”, “pallor” and “dusk” to call to mind the image of death. The last line, “And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds” imply that this ritual of mourning has become a routine, like drawing the blinds at dusk, this normalisation further highlights the meaninglessness of their sacrifice.
The normalisation and following desensitisation to death is further explored in “War Photographer” which depicts the horrors of war through the eyes of a person whose job it is to witness such atrocities. The poem starts with the motif of religion. The poet compares the war photographer to “a priest preparing to intone a Mass” and the room in which he is working as like a “church”. The “spools of suffering” are “set out in ordered rows” like people attending a mass and the caesura in “Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh.” resembles the reading of the names of the deceased during a funeral service. This shows that the photographer sees his job as something sacred. However, the reader’s attention is quickly drawn away from this religious imagery to a more callous representation of war photographer as he reminds himself that “He has a job to do”. He goes from seeing war photography as sacred to a normal job. This transition to callousness is further shown in this line as “solutions slop in trays”, “slop” connoting carelessness and indifference, juxtaposing against the religious motif of the first stanza. This juxtaposition is taken further in stanzas 2 and 3. The war photographer reminds himself that he is “Home again/ to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel/ to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet/ of running children in a nightmare heat.” The hellish imagery in the last line of this stanza contrasts directly with mundanity of the description of the photographer’s home in England.
In the final stanza Duffy concludes her poem by reflecting on how the general public are desensitised to the sufferings of war. The poet describes the editor picking only a few of the “hundred agonies” for “Sunday’s supplement”, implying that the editor sees no importance or meaning in the rest of the suffering captured on the photos. The sudden switch between the nightmarish imagery of a “hundred agonies” to the commonplace, ordinary lexical field in “Sunday’s supplement” create this tonal whiplash effect that serves to emphasize the intensity of the torment endured by those captured on the photographs to the apathetic indifference with which they’re received by the general public. This is developed further with the description of the “reader’s eyeballs prick/ with tears between bath and pre-lunch beers.” The use of the word “prick” insinuates that the photograph elicits a temporary, forced emotional reaction before the reader goes on with their day. The rhyme of “tears” with “beers” implies the war photographs are given as much thought and importance as the routine beers. Even the war photographer, despite the guilt he feels, is shown to be numb to his job as he “stares impassively” at the battlefield, at “where he earns his living”. The sibilance of “stares” and “impassively” emphasizes the repetitive nature of his job, and, on the larger scale, the cyclical nature of war.
Both “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “War Photographer” portray the horrors of war through apathetic, indifferent lenses and forces the reader to reflect on the ease at which we can dehumanise others, especially in wartime. Owen focuses on the false belief that sacrificing one’s life for a country is an honourable and sacred act whereas Duffy emphasizes the collective desensitisation of the general public to war. Ultimately, in war, individual sufferings are meaningless; a soldier’s life, trivial.
