Explanations on answers to self-test on affective levels of a poem

  1. (a) That Owen is bitter is revealed in the phrase describing the death of the soldiers on the field. They "die as cattle". Then he uses two telling phrases beginning with the word, "only". He is describing the death of men who have given their lives for their country, yet the only bells that will mark their passing will be the "monstrous anger of the guns" and the "stuttering rifles' rapid rattle". A really strong note of bitterness enters in the line: "No mockeries for them from prayers or bells". Owen seems to have lost faith in religion and its rituals. The choir that sings their requiem are the "demented choirs of wailing shells." A sad note enters into the bitterness when he acknowledges that only the young women waiting at home and now aware of their lovers' deaths will honour them with their sorrow and silence. The lives lost that once held so much promise are symbolised in the drawing of blinds at dusk and nothing more.
  2. (c) To witness the ignominy of the soldiers' deaths like cattle going to slaughter and to know that no real human awareness and comfort is available to them, being cut off in death, as they are, from all that once made sense to them - church liturgies and bells, the warmth of human comfort, makes them the most bereft of human beings.. Not even candles are able to be lit around their funeral pyre. These men have been robbed of their dignity and their heritage.
  3. (b) Men have been reduced to animals, to nothing, because they have been engaged in war for their country. Owen has not been able to produce any gains at all. It is loss, loss, loss, and nothing.

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