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.

Soldiers in a war| 

Pixabay

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. 

There is much irony in this stanza of the poem. 

"Some say God caught them even before they fell"

The striking word is 'some' It connotes that perhaps God did not catch them, and they also died, only to arrive in hell, just like those which managed to survive.

The poet tells that those that remained in the world were monstrous to their enemy, sequentially to win the war. There is a poem by Siegfried Sassoon "The Hero" where the poet sketches an image where the war takes away many lives.

There is a mother who thinks of her son as a martyr. But her son wanted to fly from the battlefield thus died.

So, a mother is watching her son received death and thinks it is a matter to feel proud as he sacrificed him for the cause of the country. 

"He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies

That she would nourish all her days, no doubt."

So, this was a lie as the son wanted to save himself from the battlefield. Here, died to be fear of the war is a shame. This is why he had to tell a lie. 

Probably this a mocker that Sassoon produces here. This is also a war poem like "Spring Offensive". But here the situation is a bit different because of nature. Here, nature has become devastated because of the war.

Thus, war is being portrayed as the destruction that has taken the lives of normal people who do not want a war. This is how the poet explains a particular situation in a verse. The style he followed contrasts with nature and violence. 

Bibliography

Lewis Clyde Herbert. Spring offensive. 1993.

Owen Wilfred, Analysis of Spring Offensive, 1918.

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