Vocabulary – I think the author of this poem has chosen words like anthem in the title “Anthem for Doomed Youth” to show the reader how the younger generations were living in a world where their main priority was to go to war. How these children were brought into a cruel world that praised fighting and the death of their enemies. This help me understand that these children were dying young, following the anthem of the past.
Another example of a compelling word the author has used is demented. “demented choirs of welling shells”. This sentence alone paints a vivid picture in the readers head of a loud out of tone screech coming down on the men fighting. It shows to me the men attempting to run and escape the shells, but the high pitch screams distracted them making them stumbling to the ground. Allowing me to understand how the men over come with sell-shock from the “demented choirs of welling shells”.
Language Techniques – A simile is used in the sentence “these who die as cattle”. Similes are used to compare two things, in this example it is used to compare the soldiers dying as how cattle die by attaching the characteristics of one thing to another. I believe the author used this example as we all know how stock cattle die. All at once, in the hundreds, tail to tail, following their leader to walk up the path to their already decided fate. The link between the soldiers and cattle is easily depicted by the reader and paints the picture I’ve described above, it sends a message to people about how these men dont need to follow in the footsteps of one another, they dont need to act as cattle do, they dont need to die.
Personification is the language techniques that allows an inanimate object to obtain a human quality. We are shown and example of this in the poem where its written “monstrous anger of the guns”. Guns are unable to be angry but the author has given them the human quality to help the reader connect to the sentence as humans can understand how it feels to be angry. Thanks to the author we as the reader are able to imagine what it’d would have been like to be the mind behind a gun. To me I think about how the gun has been portrayed as angry and how it scares the rivals, even though the man behind it is emotionless due to the things they’ve seen.
What has been included – The word “demented” alone paints a negative picture in my head as it makes me think of something broken or out of place. It shows the reader how the poet thinks about war in general, how its not right. This example has been chosen by the poet to show the reader how those people who experienced war were blinded by the glamour of the war, how they block out the crazy “demented” side just to follow orders of the men above them.
To me I see the sentence “drawing-down of blinds” as an end to a group of people, who died for the greed of mankind. The poet seems to be portraying a positive idea with this, as even though a negative aspect of the people dying is used, the sentence also shows the idea of the bringing down of an evil era in our world. It’s the end line of the poem and shows respect to those who have died, while also giving the reader a way to see light at the end of the tunnel.