The Send off - Wilfred Owen
War is the main theme in all of Wilfred Owen's poems and in "The send-off" it focuses on the response of the people at home to it's events. The title itself is ironic for a send-off is usually a happy occasion of farewell and the send-off to war is more often than not a celebrated event. But Owen's poem deals with harsh realism and argues that there is nothing to celebrate for the facts are these men will either be killed or return home as broken men. In the poem the troops are being sent off most likely to their death and yet the people fail to understand the full implication of the event, which adds bitterness to Owen's criticism.At the beginning of the poem we are presented with the image of a typical rural scene, with soldiers merrily singing through the streets to their farewell. The excitement in the words of 'they sang their way' is compensated by the notion of the fatefulness of the occasion. Down the 'close darkening lanes', creates a image and sense of claustrophobia that the lanes are fatefully closing in on them, implying that it is a point of no return. Their send-off march is clouded in the oncoming darkness as they bid farewell, but it is this darkness, which is a metaphor of the dark destiny that
"The Send-off" deals with the ideas of war itself, the effects of war on those who experience it first hand and ordinary peoples naive understandings of war. These ideas are conveyed through different means, such as language devices, sound devices, sentence structure and the overall structure. By using these techniques Owen has beautifully expresses his criticism of the slaughter of young men in the First World War. 'Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp Winked to the guard.' The verbs come into play for the lifeless signals, essentially unmoved in terms of emotion physically nods. "A lamp winked to the guard', through the use of personification it suggests the lamps knowing wink implies that it is all too familiar with such a situation, it knows the destiny of these men, where as they themselves don't. Stanza six examines how the troops views might change after being exposed to war 'Nor there if they yet mock women mean Who gave them flowers.' the motives of the women who urged them to fight and decorated them, with flowers, in advance, might be perceived differently. awaits the soldiers. In the oxymoron, 'grimly gay,' the men's expressions as seen in the train windows emphasises the uncertainty of their departure and the beginning of recognition of the implications of their destiny. The last stanza, even though it is composed of two lines bares the brunt of the emotion in the poem. For it shows that even though war might be over in the physical
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Approximate Word count = 990
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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