A. The Expression of Regrets

Analyse d'un poème | The Send-Off, Wilfred Owen

INTRODUCTION

English poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1928) is one of the most notorious WWI poets. He met with other genuine writers such as Siegfried Sassoon with whom he actually fell in love. Owen’s war poetry is completely dissimilar to the public perception of war in the early months of WWI. He rather describes the horrors and harsh conditions in trenches. The poem under study is amongst his best-known works. It is entitled “The Send-Off”, a poem in which Owen provides a powerful depiction of the emotional landscape of a send-off party. According to Merriam Webster, a ‘send-off’ is a demonstration of goodwill and enthusiasm for the beginning of a new venture (such as a trip). While a new venture is perceived quite positively for the doxa, Owen gives a grisly description of the departure of volunteer soldiers who are about to leave their loved ones. They are shipped off to war. In fact, it is at the crossroads of death, loss, memory and the uncertain return of enlisted men. Furthermore, rhyme is a key feature in the poem with an ABAAB pattern. Coupled with the various themes dealt with in the poem, the rhyme pattern nearly gives a jarring quality to the poem. 

How does Owen call into question the excessive enthusiasm enlistment is engulfed by through a send-off party whose deeper meaning unravels a rather harrowing picture of the reality of war?

Part ONE | From Life to Death

Right from the start, Owen foreshadows the misery men end up facing once on the battlefield. He draws a line between two realities: one belongs to the present, when men are rejoicing with their loved ones at the train station, another belongs to the future, with inevitable death, loss and failure. Indeed, people are singing, something considered rather joyful, but it is in strong opposition with the description of their environment. The scene is set in a foreboding atmosphere, with the “darkening lanes” that epitomise confusion and even bewilderment. It is all the more nonplussing as the plural noun “lanes” depicts the men as if they were lost in a labyrinthine environment. In parallel, the oxymoron “grimly gay” evokes an impossible cheerfulness, as though Owen guessed what enthusiastic men would feel once on the battlefield. For Owen, death is not far away from life. He blends the positivity of their departure with the gruelling vision of their future return. Owen sheds light on the men’s upcoming misery of what awaits them, to wit, an unimaginable death caused by their callous enemy. Actually, the use of the words “wreath” and “spray” is a subtle stroke of a funeral ceremony, another imagery for their forthcoming death.

Part TWO | A Scene of Heartless Protagonists

The freshly enlisted men will not be missed because they leave their kith and kin, but because the likelihood is that they won’t be coming back whatsoever. At any rate, passers-by know for a fact that they won’t survive this new venture. It is the reason why all of the protagonists mentioned in the scene are staring at them with a striking level of apathy. While everyone should be cheering them up, and applauding them for their impressive derring-do, it turns out that the public is indifferent, as if people were used to witnessing such send-off futilities on a daily basis. The indifference gives the poem another impression, marked by a climax of woe and dejection. 

Part THREE | Is War Worth It?

From the verse “So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up (...)’ onwards, the scene grows darker and darker with an odd impression of conspiracy and secrecy afoot. The phrase “wrongs hushed-up” suggests that nobody wants to reveal the uncomfortable truth, that those volunteers are oblivious to the ominous outcome of their enlistment. For passers-by, they no longer belong to humanity, as they are already similar to empty souls: “They were not ours: / We never heard to which front these were sent”. More than that, they now have a short life. Their spouses are bracing for the upcoming funerals since they are bequeathing flowers to volunteers (this imagery echoes the funeral atmosphere above).

At the end of the poem, the reader is implicitly incited to think through it, as to whether enlistment is worth it after all? The poem revolved around the aftermath of the volunteers’ involvement in the war. A slim part of them will end up coming back, too few to celebrate their return, too few to cheer them home. Only a bunch of tired battle-weary men. The last verse may be an allusion to PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, from which Owen himself suffered). They will end up being deprived of any sense of belonging. In the end, war is a huge source of loneliness and deprivation.

Analyse d'une huile sur toile | Sargent, John Singer, Gassed, 1919

No attack, no bombing, no hustle. Only an atmosphere of profound suffering. The artist portrays a line of eleven wounded soldiers plodding upon the dead bodies of their comrades. They are all blindfolded, for they may have gone through a brutal assault from their enemy, that is to say the Axis powers. The work of art is imbued with a harrowing atmosphere, with countless corpses strewn across the battlefield. Death looms over them, as though they were doomed to die in pain. All in all, they seem powerless; the painting leaves a strong impression of failure and despondency. Actually, the oil painting depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack, a chemical weapon that was intensively used during WWI. The remaining soldiers are making their way to a field hospital. At that time, it was a common outcome for enlisted men. Thousands of men died to no much avail. The artist’s main purpose must have been to pay tribute to those who lost their lives in WWI. 

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B. The Expression of Love

C. Family Bonds