The Romanticism of a Fallen Soldier

Wilfred Owen’s poetry resonates with readers for depicting the dark actualities of war and its effect on soldiers and their loved ones. While his images are routinely morbid and somewhat disturbing, they are neatly juxtaposed with a sense of romanticism for the war-torn hero soldier. In an article entitled “The Poetry of Wilfred Owen and Osbert Sitwell: A contrast,” James D. Brophy addresses this innate romance and sense of admiration for soldiers. Though Owen describes dying boys and mourning girls, there is latent in the context of the poetry a sense of heroism as the soldiers’ honor is preserved and perpetuated through Owen’s poems. Brophy identifies Owen as “our most powerful anti-war poet” because of the nature of the topic of his poems, yet there is this sense of satisfaction and irony when Owen’s depictions of horrific war end up engaging the reader in pity, “the result of which,” Brophy writes, “establishes the victims as heroes” (22). While Owen consciously describes the horrors of war, he simultaneously glorifies it, because as Brophy points out “who doesn’t love a hero?” (22).  Owen offers hauntingly sad depictions of war-torn soldiers who are victims of war, yet he lends admiration to their position, making these men the ultimate heroes. “It is this reverence [and admiration], in part a disposition toward glory, that infused [Owen’s] war poetry so that he transformed his victims to heroes” (29). Brophy explains that fallen heroes prove to be the best topic for an anthem; their reality “leads us to memorialize the youth who fall in their terrible path” as they act as martyrs to represent the realities of war (23). Brophy further points out that these soldiers have our consolations, as their “lives of endured horrors” contribute to an “established worth” which “makes their loss pitiable” (24). Though he does not offer a sense of retribution for these soldiers, he elevates them to hero-status through his poetry by depicting their scenarios as poetically sad, leaving readers to not only feel disillusioned by the harrowing life of a soldier, but also a sense of respect for the men who sacrifice themselves for the grimness of gas masks and seemingly endless “holy glimmers of goodbyes” (Owen, Anthem for a Doomed Youth, 11).