Anthem for Doomed Youth and Them

Wilfred Owen anthem for doomed youth and Siegfried Sassoon’s They both discuss church or faith related subjects. However Owen's is more to do with mourning at a church community rather than religion is self, unlike Sassoon who specifically discusses loss of religious faith.
Sassoon’s poem commences with a bishop talking and we can immediately see the confusion created by the mix of truth and lie “they will not be the same, for they’ll have fought for a just cause.” It’s true that they will be changed, but the bishop implies that they have been improved by fighting for a cause.  He paints a heroic image of the soldiers through phrases like “challenged Death and dared him face to face” which makes it seem like they bravely stood up for their own honor and their country. The capitalization and personification of “Death” makes it seem like a deity, as one would capitalize “God.” The Bishop also refers to the enemy as “Anti Christ” which has obvious religious implications but also demonizes the enemy they didn’t even see. Despite the religious implications provoked from the bishop and his speech there is no mention of God or even the goodness of a God. He mentions the evil “Anti Christ” and deifies Death, undermining his attempt at being inspirational. In the second stanza the boys who fought, list ways they’ve been changed and they are all discussing physical injury. For example “ Bills gone stone blind” the change isn’t enlightening it’s crippling. Also unlike the first stanza when the soldiers were portrayed as very active men who “lead” and “dared” now describe themselves as if they were just objects damaged in war. “George lost his legs” and “Jims shot through the lungs” just shows the men as victims of war. They don’t mention a cause, what they were fighting for when they got hurt, because it really didn’t matter. Unlike the capitalization of “Death” and “Anti-Christ” in the first stanza in the second stanza the names of the men are capitalized, showing the more personal level that they were on, but also that with lack of a cause and lack of faith the men depended on each other a lot and developed true comradely. The bishop chips in again saying, “The ways of God are strange” in response the men’s suffering, which is a really awful excuse for what happened. Also his name is no longer capitalized showing that he’s lost his credibility at least in the eyes of the veterans. Through out the poem the veterans are referred to as “boys” signifying the way they feel emasculated after the war. Overall this a Sassoons style in this poem is satiricle commentary on religous authority trying to comfort and justify the public and returning soldiers.

Wilfred Owen's poem anthem for doomed youth also discusses the suffering of the soldiers in the war and uses church imagery to convey how the soldiers cant receive a proper funeral. Like Sassoon’s poem it shows how the soldiers have been reduced by the war, however Owen creates the idea that they have been dehumanized and subordinate to war machinery where Sassoon implies more of emasculation. Owen compares the men to “cattle” which shows how they were treated like animals up for slaughter. Other poems discuss dehumanization but they refer more to loss of moral code amongst the soldiers who survived the war, Owen is referring to those who died pretty much immediately unlike Sassoon who refers to the veterans. Owen specifically refers to the war machinery where Sassoon does not “Only the monstrous anger of the guns.” Like Sassoon personifies death Owen personifies the guns by giving them emotions. The choice to use anger to create personification is interesting.   Owen being an ex soldier during this time it wasn’t really acceptable to be angry or upset after the war, he felt like the soldiers had been deprived of this right to be angry. The guns overall seem more powerful and tyrannous over the soldiers. There is lots of church diction but more specifically funeral diction, “passing-bells,” “choirs,” “candles,” “mourning” this describes the families at home unable to mourn the soldiers and give them proper burials. Although it is church diction it is not really undermining God and the authority of religion as Sassoon does but that might be implied by “. No mockeries. No prayers” in the same line, but is mostly sympathetic to the loss of the families. They also show the families hope and eventual loss of hope for their soldiers to come home, we first see hope with the “patient minds” and then loss of hope “drawing down blinds.” The poem is straightforwardly tragic but has a few hints of bitterness and sarcasm seems in the title “anthem for doomed youth.” An anthem is supposed to inspire and galvanize and is usually associated with nationalism. The youth refers to the young people that get slaughtered in war but why not refer to all the men? The youth were specifically targeted by propaganda to join the war, they were the ones who were most suckered into the notion of being a war hero. Also a lot of nationalistic organizations have youth groups. The title overall could show bitterness for how nations took pumped their minds with dignity them let the young men go to die. Like Sassoon, Owen has a bitter tone angsty towards people trying to glorify what happened in the war, seen in the title, predominantly. But Owen paints tragedy in those that died in war not those who were crippled. So there is more of a greiving tone in this poem  than Sassoon's, as "Them", whilst tragic, conveys  bitterness and rightful anger of the war vets.