Spring Offensive as a War Poem| Wilfred Owen| Thesis Paper
Abstract.
Spring Offensive’ by Wilfred Owen, a war poem, portrays how a group of soldiers embraced the cold breast of death having no way out. Whereas, some of them managed to escape the death route.
The title of the poem, ‘Spring Offensive’ is a reference to the Kaiser’s Battle of 1918. The consecutive attacks of Germans on the Western Front during the First World War are collectively called Spring Offensive.
Here, “offensive” means a “military attack”. In this paper, I would like to talk about how the poem has become a poem of the war.
Though some critics use to call this poem an anti-war poem. Here, nature is being shown with destructive nature and kills its children for a win.
Spring Offensive as a war poem
“Spring Offensive” is one of the major poems of Wilfred Owen. He was a soldier who fought for the country and also died because of the cause of action.
The major theme in “Spring Offensive” is Owen which was clear to Owen’s heart that of the relationship between comrades with their aim.
The poet takes place in a hill area where the soldiers are waiting on the last hill and being fed. They hurriedly took their nap as if they do not know what would be done with them on the next steps.
Here the image that Owen created here is of the soldiers that are dedicating a war.
Here, Wilfred Owen writes the lines,
“Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
Marveling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins”
So, the motive of the poet is to focus on the struggles of the soldiers and how they are preparing for destruction. A harsh reality is being shown by the lines. There is another poem of Owen named “Futility” where he writes,
“Think how it wakes the seeds —
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, — still warm, — too hard to stir?”
So, these lines prefer that the people who have become the soldiers were generally the farmers who used to plant trees and let the others feed but in the war-like situation the society push them to face a war without having any sense of grabbing a sword to kill.
Spring Offensive Anti war Poem
This was probably a bit of mockery that men fallen down from their works. Thus, coming back to the main poem, we, the readers see that their veins are like filling with drugs and so much intolerable pain.
On a hand, Owen tells about nature but these are not making an echo of joy because there are the struggles of the people who do not want war. They are breathing like trees except for the glow. Thus, we can say that it the perfection of a war poem.
The poem shifted to a battle with the sky red as fire and bullets that whizzed past until the soldiers got through. “Spring Offensive” perfectly described how war is.
They saw the deaths of their comrades and some do not come back with physical wounds, but the psychological ones were devastating.
Owens revealed that soldiers have this perpetual fear of death and it can come for them at any moment. Also during this time, the Church played a big part in the war. It provided relief for the soldiers and gave them something to fight for.
“Of them who running on that last high place
Leaped to swift unseen bullets, or went up”
These lines are from the last stanza where the poet focusing on the destructive nature of the world because of the war. Poet is cleverly portrayed as the environment being the enemy, but before that, there are very few still standing and fighting…
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