In reference to the “tired outstripped five nines that dropped behind,” line. In order to clear up any confusion about my “problem” with this line, or rather with the word “tired” here I’ll post this comment then insert it in the notes. 5.9 inches was the size of the artillery shell, hence the name, but both the rocket launcher and the shells were called five nines. Do you see the five nines mentioned here as the rockets themselves or as the rocket launcher? I see the five nines as the bombs themselves because the bombs “drop behind” the soldiers, which the rocket launchers obviously couldn’t do. Plainly the rocket launchers aren’t crashing to earth just behind the very relieved soldiers. Also the “hoots” would be the sound of the bombs in the air, rather than the boom of the rocket launcher being fired. Fair enough? So, the five nines mentioned here as “tired” are the bombs not the thing that fires the bombs. The rockets, not the rocket launchers. Owen is of course personifying the bombs as "tired" because the have been being fired all day. But here is the problem with “tired”, that once pointed out, (obviously more clearly than I have previously done), may stick with you. Bombs and rockets DON’T FIRE. They ARE FIRED. The device that fires the bombs or rockets, the rocket launcher, can be accurately personified as tired because it has been firing all day. But not the bombs themselves. The bombs themselves can begin to be tired only after they have been fired because before this they are not doing anything. The rocker-launcher can be tired, but the rockets themselves can’t be. See the difference? (Of course this may not bother you, and the last thing I would wish is for it to eclipse the other far more interesting and countless successes of the poem, but the line, or rather that word jarred for me once someone pointed it out to me). To clarify. If you like, think of a gun. A gun can be accurately personified as tired. But can a bullet? Like a rocket, we can imagine a bullet or bomb as tired if it has travelled a long way and has had an arduous journey, but we cannot say that it has been firing all day because each bomb or bullet is only fired once. The next step is to acknowledge that the soldier sees the bombs as tired, so what are we to make of that? if we don’t want to leave the line on the accurate but rather niggling ‘Well, bombs can’t literally be tired,’ (though rocket launchers can be tired), as I just have. I can make three suggestions. 1 One is that the soldier is so tired himself that he projects his tiredness onto everything else in his environment. That seems a highly realistic thing for someone in that situation to do, and would be similar to Thomas Hardy writing “And every spirit upon earth / Seemed fervourless as I,” in The Darkling Thrush. The point is that though the rockets can’t really be personified accurately as tired the soldier sees them as tired and that’s indicative of his state of mind due to his physical exhaustion. 2 Another possibility I quite like, and here I am quoting from the comments page of this video and hope the person who wrote this won’t mind, is that: “the abject brutality of the war has turned the soldiers into animals who look like men, probably fighting more to survive than to kill the enemy. Like animals they run to escape the hunting bombs that are after them to prey upon them. I suppose anyone in this circumstance is reduced to its most basic instincts: run for your life, run from what kills you. If your predator doesn’t reach you it is because you ran faster and he got tired. The fading sound of the bombs is because they didn’t catch you, the beast got tired. I presume hoots is also the sound of the owl, itself a presage of death,” Maria Carvalho. 3 This third one is my favorite and may seem like over-analysis to some but I post it anyway as an interesting way of reading the line if you want to take it this way. Firstly, my other problem with the word “tired” is that it makes us feel sorry for the bombs. We tend to feel sorry whatever is described as tired, do we not? ‘Tired after a hard days work she . . .’ We may hear “tired” here and think, ‘Oh, those poor bombs!’ “Bored, outstripped five nines that dropped behind,” would not have elicited the same sympathy for the bombs that “tired” does. And this sympathy for the thing trying to kill you seems similar to what we now call Stockholm Syndrome. Here a victim, usually a kidnapped victim, begins to feel sympathy for the those who have kidnapped them. Due to constant contact, and a desire for that other not to hurt you, the oppressed feel sympathy for the oppressor. It seems to me that Stockholm Syndrome could accurately illuminate what is happening in this line. The soldier, kidnapped by warfare, feels sympathy for the “tired” weapons trying to kill him. Once again the line is indicative of the soldier’s state of mind. That may seem like over analysis but I like it. And of course I have no way of proving or even knowing if this was Owen’s “poetic intention” or not, or indeed whether or not it was indicative of Owen’s own state of mind, but I do however find it a highly plausible explanation of what may happen to a soldier undergoing what Owen is showing us in this poem. I hope that clears up my problem with the word “tired” and if you wish to see the five nines as the rocket launchers rather than the rockets themselves, then “tired five nines” makes perfect sense, but you’d need to get around “that dropped behind” bit, which you could perhaps do by imagining the rockets and rocket launcher as one thing. I hope that helps, and apologize if I hadn’t explained it clearly before. Andrew Barker
Ishrat Arora Transferred Epithet. Good question. Well let’s see. As I understand it a transferred epithet is when an adjective grammatically qualifies a noun rather than the person or thing it is actually describing. OK. So “the soldier smoked a tired cigarette” would be an example. Plainly a cigarette cannot be tired but what the sentence would mean to suggest is that the soldier was smoking a cigarette in a tired way or that the soldier himself was tired as he smoked the cigarette. (I’d have to point out here that I am not much of a fan of the transferred epithet, except in comic writing, and have to ask what would have been wrong with the tired soldier smoked a cigarette, or the soldier smoked a cigarette? P G Woodhouse uses the transferred epithet well to make Bertie sound comically pompous, but does it work as well when the writing needs to convey something serious and stark?) Anyway, is this an example of it? If I paraphrase “Deaf even to the hoots of tired, outstripped 5.9s that dropped behind” as “we could not hear the tired bombs” does that qualify as transferred epithet? Perhaps “we listened to the bombs in a tired way,” would be the simple translation, but then we all know that’s what Owen means here anyway, I think. “The tired soldiers could not hear the bombs,” would be another way of translating it. As I said before the soldier is so tired himself that he projects his tiredness onto everything else in his environment, and by reading tired 5.9s as a transferred epithet this is what comes across. Personally, for what it’s worth, I’d say it could be read as a transferred epithet, though at a bit of a convoluted stretch that gets in the way of what’s being described, for me, rather than illuminates. (Possibly why I tend not to like transferred epithets in general is that they can often draw more attention to themselves than they do to the thing they are describing, but that might be a personal peeve). And, as I say in the lecture it’s literal meaning risks the line coming across as comic though. And the comic potential of the line is surely out of place. On the other hand “fitting the clumsy helmets just in time” works for me much better. “Clumsy helmets” being the transferred epithet to mean “we put on the helmets in a clumsy way.” But the accusation, by the soldier, that it is the helmets being clumsy, not the exhausted soldiers themselves adds to the desperation of the scene. As Mark Forsyth puts in The Elements of Eloquence, “Our clumsiness springs from fingers onto the recalcitrant helmets.” I see it as more than that. I see the exhausted, terrified soldiers accusing the helmets of being clumsy at the point. Great example of a transferred epithet doing a lot of poetic work for us there. Remember, just because a line can be read with reference to a piece of grammatical terminology means neither that it is a good line, nor that it is a successful example of that grammatical terminology. You can have a successful transferred epithet and an unsuccessful one, a good one or a bad one. For me, “clumsy helmets” works well, “tired 5.9s” doesn’t. Hope that helps. Andrew Barker PS. For what its worth, as extra problem in seeing “tired” as a transferred epithet, that’s just been pointed out to me, is that the bombs are not just “tired” but “outstripped,” and “outstripped” is not a transferred epithet. This is asking us in the same sentence to imagine the bomb’s tiredness as representing the soldier’s tiredness, while at the same time imagining that the bombs have not been fast enough to catch the soldiers in a race. The Stockholm Syndrome explanation of “tired” remains my favourite.
mycroftlectures I agree that if interpreted as a transferred epithet, the line won't be as dour as it needs to be. Thank you, sir! That helped a lot :)
"tired five nines" An artillery piece, or indeed and large gun, now including tanks etc, have a life of "X" EFC. ? A prescribed number of equivalent full charges. Not all ammunition propelled through the barrel of a gun is a "full charge" but all rounds fired are totalled against the register for EFC. As a barrel wears, it becomes worn and oval, making it less accurate in delivering its destruction. Hence, perhaps the term of endearment used against the artillery Corps by infantry and sappers, "drop shorts". As a barrel eats into its life it is more inclined to drop short. The gun is said to be "tired" and more likely to kill its own soldiers, the Yanks would now call this "collatteral damage." Hence "tired five nines" is a most appropriate phrase for an almost worn out army and its artillery, this most and more likely to kill its own soldiers than the enemy, but the generals in their ignorance and incompetence continue to use unserviceable guns. They still go bang!? Owen, as ever, accurate in terms of both war and its inhumanity...
+James Whyard I completely agreed, I thought also the phrase "tired five nines" could symbolize that the whole war was tired and worn out and not just necessarily the guns.
These lectures are an absolute boon to students who may be struggling with the language for and themes of the selected poems, which are all classic works. Dr Barker's exposition is illuminating, informative and passionately, but precisely and clearly delivered. His lectures encourage empathy with the poet's subject matter and offer great insight into the feeling as well as the human situations that lie behind the poems. His commentary on Dulce et Decorum Est is a model of lucidity and his close analysis makes you think about every word and phrase and appreciate better than just reading the poem on the page the mood and attitude contained in the work. His commentary also makes us realise what a masterpiece this poem is and how its sentiments are still powerful today, when certain politicians are trying to glorify Britain's engagement in the war and using the centenary for shallow political advantage. Dr Barker's lecture is so interesting because he gives his own insights according to his own sensibilities as a published poet and lecturer and doesn't hesitate to explain images and metaphors in the light of contemporary life experience. When he describes being slumped against the bar at the end of the evening to clarify the kind of drunkenness he is alluding to, one can well imagine he is talking from personal life experience. The subtitles are also extremely helpful to the listener-reader and are the icing on the cake since they make the lecture so accessible to the 2nd language learner student. I particularly like the way he invites students to think about the effectiveness of images by interjecting comments like 'and I really like this line, because....terrific line!' This type of lecture makes reading and listening to poetry a pleasure, even though the subject-matter is sombre. A wonderful introduction to Owen's work and to the other poets he lectures on in this excellent online resource. Unmissable for literature students in my opinion. Mike Ingham, English Literature Professor
Spoon feeding, doesn't just diminish it destroys any puzzlement any wonder any impact.His oration is mediocre at best,what has happened to education English Literature Professor?
To add to the thoughts on "tired" I'd like to give you the perspective I've held to since studying this as a 14 year old. To me tired ties in with the casual, hum drum regularity of death. Opposed to a keen targeted and purposefully seeker of death, its a shell that's bored and impartial, poorly aimed and indifferent as seen through a lens of personification. I hear outstripped as a reference to the drive band on the shell. This is a band of softer metal around the shell designed to engage with the rifling on the gun's barrel. The gun is worn and tired, the spin on the shell is worn and tired and the shell flies less precisely because of it, hence the whoop. I've heard that soldiers became well accustomed to listening to shells to judge if they might land closel by. The soldiers were too tired to discern this. The gun too stripped of rifling to be discerning in their target, the shell too noisy in the air to be a surprise to attentive troops and the troops too tired to realise. A picture of a tired and wearisome war of casual violence emerges. Gas shells did not explode like other shells but landed more softly then seeped gas. This too seems like a tired shell, unable to explode so violently but also giving quieter warning. Incidentally, the green gas seems to refer to chlorine. This was the first gas used in the war. I don't know how long it was used for as mustard and other gasses were later introduced. A flounder is a fish and we are effectively asked to compare a flounder out of water with a man under water. Chlorine reacts with the moisture in the lungs to produce hydrochloric acid which causes the lungs to fill with fluid so that a sufferer actually drowns in their own fluids. The guttering is the drowning spasms of a mans life leaving him as he fights to survive against the fluids smothering him. This poem speaks about the very depths of horrific suffering for individuals and the witnesses of that suffering in a way that lies slightly hidden to those that are not familiar to these references. It is layered in this way rather like the poems appeal to not simplify the truth to the young, but also spare them the real agony of war still. No person should truly know this experience.
Regarding Owen's use of 'tired', I believe he means to suggest metal fatigue. A 19th C lecturer at the military school of Metz, in France, notably described the process of repeated deformation as 'tiring' the metal; so it likely would have been in common parlance among the soldiers of the First World War. Of course, Owen also means to suffuse the bombs with the exaustion that the soldiers feel, but this literal basis of metal fatigue lends the metaphor more credance. Thanks for another great lecture.
Dr Barker helps the reader - and, more importantly, the listener - inhabit the experience of the poem. As Barker says, Owen wants his audience 'to understand the reality of what's going on there' and Owen's direct experience of that reality is powerfully conveyed both in the poem itself and in Dr Barker's delivery of the poem and his commentary on it. 'Dulce et decorum est' has extraordinary acoustic qualities, making the experience come to life in the sound of the poem; and that sound conveys far more than the merely visual. There's a power in Barker's reading and re-reading of sections of the poem, and the viewer's intimacy with the poem intensifies through the aural intensity of the poem's terrifying music. A student might begin to watch this with the expectation of a mechanical explanation of the poem, a sort of vocabulary tour or puzzle key. There is that, of course, but far more than that. Barker illuminates for the viewer the universal context that brings together Horace, Owen's particular experience and the truths that speak from the poem to us today. After this poem, it's impossible to see the idealistic glory of war untarnished by its grim realities, and Barker makes this inescapably clear.
Sir, As a non english native speaker with obvious limitations to access the understanding of the poems in the original and a poetry lover, your lectures provide me an inestimable tool and pleasure. My only regret is their exiguity, only 13 lectures is too frugal for my famine. I’ll be watchful for new ones. My impulse to write drift from what suggests to me the “hoots of tired, outstripped Five-nines that dropped behind”. When a bomb is shot it is released with a certain Kinetic energie that allows it to reach a given ascendent distance before it starts to fall. If you imagine the sound of it, it rises to that point and then starts to fade till it hits the ground and explodes. These men are out of the range of the Five-nines, so the sound they would be earing it would might have been the fading of descendant tragectory bombs. As you pointed, the abject brutality of the war had turned them to animals who look like men, probably fighting more to survive than to kill the enemy. Like animals they run to excape the hunting bombs that are after them to prey them. I suppose anyone in this circuntance is reduced to its most basic instincts: run for your life, run from what kills you. If your predator doesn’t reach you is because you runned faster and he got tired. The fading sound of the bombs that didnt catch you, the beast got tired. It seems to me it might be refarable the word “hoots” as the hiss of the bombs. I presume it is also the sound of the owl, itself a presage of death. I apologize for any mistakes i might have done. Thank you very much for reading this and for your wonderful lectures.
Excellent lecture, thank you. I would argue that 'guttering' is a very apt word to use. As a candle burns down to the base, a pool of melted wax forms which will eventually extinguish the flame. I think Owen was comparing the candle flame 'drowning' in this way to his comrade's drowning. I hope you will rethink your view on the use of 'guttering'. :)
Those that knew him said Owen had a "deep, rich and velvety voice" so I always try to imagine that when I read this astounding poem. I wish to God he had written more! Thanks.
Great explanation. The reason why the five nines are tired out, is that they are loaded with gas and not explosives. This makes them fall slower than otherwise and therefore they fittingly can be described as tired out.
Thank You Dr Barker! That was an extraordinary lecture that is surely going to help me remember the poem very well.The concepts that were not clear earlier have also been cleared by the comments.So Thank You everyone
I think the description of the lazy bomb is actually fine. When I was reading it, I was thinking like the soldiers were feeling so tired and they were glad that the five-nines bomb was lazy that they were out of its target. The poet describes the bomb with a human character, by saying that this trench war was only not making the soldiers feeling tired, even the weapons were feeling tired and they did not to be used. That's why the bomb was being so lazy because it wanted to stop the war.
I really like this poem as it fully captured the scenery and the feelings of a soldier being in the First World War. The use of scenery is incredible. By showing exactly how the soldiers walked and how they looked, the first stanza actually dragged the readers into the frontlines with the soldiers. We are like being inside of a soldier and see through his eyes. The poet also used similies to compare the soldiers with the beggars and ugly ladies which generated desperated feelings for us to read. My 2 favourite lines in the whole poem are "As under a green sea, I saw him drowning" and "like a devil's sick of sin". The first line gave such a great impression that the soldier was surrounded by the toxic gas and suffocated to death. It made the poet's nightmare so vivid and we could understand what he was seeing. And the second line showed that horrors of the war that even the devil was sick of that war. Moreover, I also like the simple English that the poet used. It is very easy to understand as I believe that he was trying to make it as simple as possible to provide the news to warn the people who were so eager to join the war after being persuaded by the government propaganda. Unlike Rupert Brooke in "The Soldier", he did not play with words. He was just trying to show the reality of being in a war. This poem was quite different from Jessie Pope's "Who's for the game?". In Jessie Pope's poem, it was like being shouted through a microphone to arouse the people to join the war and she even considered the war to a game. This was definitely a propaganda to recurit the people to join the war like "The Soldier". I have got a question about the end. It was quite bitter and sad that people were being lied to about the horrors of the war under the patriotic line "it is sweet and honorable to die for one's country". As for the shortern last line of the poem, it feels like that the poet had "dropped the mic" annd walked away. But I wonder if he was being convinced or showed that the poetic persona was convinced by the line "Dulce et decorum est. Pro patria mori" at first that only after being in the war he realised he was being lied to and hoped to persuade others not to join the war by showing the realites to them?
Alex. I love that "dropped the mic" image you employ here and will use it henceforth when teaching to explain how I hear that last line being delivered, because that exactly the type of anger and dismissal I hear being felt and created by Owen when he misses the completion of the iambic perimeter. Well done. In answer to your final question that "only after being in the war did he realize he was being lied to and hoped to persuade others not to join the war by showing the realites to them". Yes, I think that's exactly what is going on.
Thank you for this fantastic lesson. I found it clear, involving and detailed .As a teacher I am really interested in your lessons and I will continue to follow you .It’s excellent!
The image of that dying soldier is one that can never leave the narrator. As readers learn in the two lines set off from the rest of the text, the sight of that dying comrade haunts the narrator’s dreams, as the soldier “plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”.That memory prompts the narrator to offer in the final verse paragraph some bitter advice to readers about the nature of warfare and the outcome of blind patriotism.
Great lecture and many thanks. English and German soldiers didnt "charge" across No Mans Land. They walked at a marching pace, with the officer keeping them in line and at a walking pace. Running, or charging, was seen as cowardly behavior as was ducking from shell hole to shell hole. There was a reported incident where a unit of Canadians actually charged a position at a run, and despite the fact they took the position with relatively few casualties as a result were censured for cowardly behavior in the face of the enemy. It was only relatively late in the war when csharging and running from shell hole to shell hole became common, and the German storm-troopers (specialists in crossing no mans land through the wire and taking trenches and positions) were the first to formally be trained in the new and improved tactics. When Owen talks about being bent double and trudging through mud he is describing a unit pulling back from the front line trenches through the relief trenches towards rest stations in the rear trenches, probably after their allotted duty time on the front line was over. The relief trenches were not as deep, and so stray shot and shrapnel was a risk. If artillery (the five nines) were flying then the men would instinctively bend down to avoid the chance of getting hit by stray shot.
Happy to help out mate, and again thanks for a fascinating lecture on one of my favorite war poems. First place in that category though goes to Sassoon's "At The Cenotaph". Dulce comes in a close second.
sandmanhh67 Just read At the Cenotaph, which had somehow passed me by. Sure enough, it's another great one. I wouldn't mind betting that the line break after purgatorial confuses a lot of people, don't you think? The sentence part, "Breed new belief that War is purgatorial / Proof of the pride and power of being alive" could be used is a great example of what can happen when people confuse the rhyme at end of a line for the end of the sentence. (I know this 'cos I did it the first time I read the poem).Breed new belief that War is purgatorial Proof of the pride and power of being alive. The devil figure wants people to see war as "proof of the pride and power of being alive," and the "purgatorial" bit is something relatively unimportant that we can I suppose 'tough out'. On my first reading I imagined a comma after purgatorial and thought he saw war as "purgatorial" as any sane person would. Why would a devil see war as purgatorial? Well he doesn't, he sees it as "purgatorial proof of the pride and power of being alive." I can imagine this being another one of those really unpopular poems when it was written. Thanks for bringing that one to my attention. Dulce is certainly my favorite, "the blood come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs" bit is about as powerful a piece of writing as I know. The close second would be Owen's own Futility, though. I love the desperation and pointlessness in what the soldiers are trying to do in this one. Beautifully put across. Isaac Rosenberg's "Break of Day in the Trenches" would be the other. The "cosmopolitan sympathies" of the rat. Fekin' brilliant, as yer man said.
mycroftlectures I went to a strict Catholic school on the Lancs moors so Cenotaphs "prayer" was analysed fully in the context of a "blasphemous prayer", but I see what you mean about the way Sassoon breaks the line up. We were taught though to read poems more like prose than rhyme, so it helped with poems like Dulce and Cenotaph where phrases cross over two lines with what some would read as an awkward pause or break. I loved your point about how the end of Dulce is truncated. I had never noticed it before as I was reading it as prose. Its a powerful technique. I think war poetry, especially WW1 poetry, is a powerful way of teaching kids (and adults) about war as it brings conflict down to the personal level. It puts you in the boots of the soldier in the trench. The emotions really strike home. There is a TH-cam vid of Christopher Eccleston reading Dulce which is the best I have seen so far. Full of bitterness, fear and spite, and delivered like an angry veteran at the end of the bar correcting some enthusiastic tipsy idiots misconceptions and jingoism. Thanks for the steer on Rosenberg - will make sure to check his work out. Also thanks for the lecture series, which I came across fairly recently. They are fascinating insights and great analysis IMHO. Keep up the great work and I look forward to many more.
Bent double can also be seen as a simile as too being two people one before the war n one during the war. And men marching to beggars. "Men marched asleep." People don't usually walk in their sleep, unless something is mentally wrong. The whole makes death and abnormality the norm. Well that’s my view anyway lol
Great poem. Great lecture. Why is this poem not taught to everybody the world over? These are sentiments the world has great need to know. You are right, it IS the greatest anti war poem ever written.
Thank you Dr Andrew - this poem was on my o level syllabus in the early 80s. It had a great impression on me back then and your analysis now has opened up so much more meaning for me. Thank you.
When I first read the poem, I immediately relate the image of the soldiers to Gollum from Lord of the Rings. The tired soldiers (both mentally and physically) were acting upon their subconsciousness without any clear directions. I feel like they are acting on orders throughout the first and second stanza of the poem, as in they were ordered to bend and cough by someone who has no rights to. Also the soldiers were addressed as “boys”, which makes readers empathise the young kids more. Owen has depicted the confusions during the war very well with blurred images like using the green sea to describe the gas attack. The whole scene of the war is like a scene from a movie with demonised soldiers to me. The way Owen engages our sense in this poem is impressive in demonstrating the horrors of warfare, in addition to the carefully chosen metaphors and personifications he used highly contrasted with Jesse Pope’s comparison between war and a sports game. It is also a big fight back to “The Soldiers” as rather than dying with images of heaven soldiers are likely to die with haunting dreams after warfare if not dying in the actual combat.
Very helpful lecture..this lecture has hepled me alot....and I have scored 18 out of 20 in my class in this poem....Sir can you do a lecture for "Five Ways To kill A Man".....it will be a great help.....and I have gone through the lecture of"do not go gentle into that good night".....waiting for your reply.....
Contrasting to The Soldier, this poem reflects more of the hellish reality the soldiers truly faced. Before learning Jessica Pope, I thought the addressee is the public, or more particularly, those in higher class/government who encouraged innocent young men going off to war, which is why he addressed them as "friend", as he was in the same social class. About the word "guttering", you mentioned that it is used more for its sound, but I think it is more for to the imagery. If it is for the sound, there are more words that are connotation of "choking" and "drowning", such as gagging for instance? In imagery, although it alone is serene, but after reading about a man dying as if in fire, and reading it with "choking" and "drowning": him surrounded by death, blood, fire, the image of a candle goes out is not as serene as before. We often describe a man losing his life as "the light goes out", so maybe that's the imagery Owen trying to bring out. The candle doesn't have a peaceful death, but is snuffed out by someone: short, quick, merciless. Also, it's strange that when I think about how a devil's sick of sin looks like, I think of the painting "Saturn Devouring His Son". Not that it was related.
nycartgallery.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/img_3840.jpg That one, right? Excellent observation. I hadn't seen this before. That devil certainly looks pretty sick of what he's doing. That's how I'd always imagined it too.
That was absolutely wonderful! Thank you, Dr. Barker for this analysis. I can’t read poetry and get very much out of it on my own, yet this kind of analysis gives me the chance to experience the sublime with help. Now I need to find some good analysis of The Waste Land. Care to do that one?
I much enjoyed this powerful analysis. My only thought is about the criticism of the word 'tired' in reference to the 5,9s which Dr Barker takes a referring to the 'bombs' (shells). I think Owen, when he talks of the 5,9s, is referring to the artillery guns which are firing the shells. These guns are of course 'tired' - used constantly with tired crews and worn out barrels. I this sense the use of the word 'tired' is completely appropriate, in my view.
Thank you for this lecture. This video helped me tremendously with an explication I wrote for my English class last semester. As far as the "tired out-stripped Five Nines" are concerned, I have one thought. As the shells are fired from a cannon, they are full of energy on their upward ascent. After they reach their peak, they obviously start to fall thus losing their upward energy. Perhaps Owen is referring to this loss of upward energy when he describes the Five Nines as being tired. I'm not sure how valid this claim is, and I could be wrong, but it is certainly something to think about.
this lecture was awesome the theme for the poem disavows the belief that fighting on the battlefield is the highest form of service to ones country.It highlights the horrors of war and shows that patriotism is used by some to seduce youth into becoming soldiers
THIS IS ANDREW BARKER. if you enjoyed this lecture kindly check out this poem, "DULCE ET DECORUM EST, 2020: IT'S NEVER SWEET OR FITTING." th-cam.com/video/kvzuuC0UMGQ/w-d-xo.html Wilfred Owen's masterpiece heavily underpins this sonnet from the time of COVID 19, that reconstructs the imagery as a tribute to the Healthcare Professionals of the world. Kindly let me know what you think of it in the comments. I think it's the best one I've written and was certainly the one I felt most affecting when reading.
I agree to some commenters on the use of 'tired', which to me means that the bombs are too weak to have aimed at opponents, because they fall behind the running soldiers. In the poem, I particularly like how he describes the wounded men and how he experiences the loss of his friend during the gas attack. It is very personal but impressive. You can really picture the image from your perspective, seeing a friend dies in such pain would definitely makes you suffer for a lifetime. The poem is better to be named this way than how it was named (To Jessie Pope etc.). I think what Owen tries to tell is not the hatred for Pope, and is not totally promoting his idea of anti-war because it would not be enough to urge for an end to war by just stating how horrifying it is. He just objects the idea that the idealists held towards war and how they actually encourage teens to fight in wars.
By looking up his biography, it is not surprised to find out that Wilfred Owen is not only a poet but also an experiencer of the horrors of gas warfare in WWI. Owen has a vivid use of imagery throughout the whole poem, while he tries to express his feelings as images in designated metaphors. These kind of images are just well presented through different layers of graphic languages how the narrator in this poem sees it and never gets away from it. Just like what the narrator describes his memory of a man who dies of poisoning from the gas with phrases like “the white eyes writhing in his face”(line 19), “the blood””Come Gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”(line 21-22). On the other hand, by telling what he dreams about is just another reminiscence of his experience in the warfare, apparently the most horrific moment he might have been seeing is the face of those dead soldiers, which he thinks that's just “like a devil’s sick of sin”(line 20). Doubtlessly, these images are just a series of terrific distorted renditions people can hardly imagine. Not so sure about this but speaking of the title of this poem “Dulce et decorum eat”, it reminds me of Ezra Pound’s poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, in which Pound also tries to allude his outrage of the WWi by applying the exact same line from the Horace’s Odes into the poem IV of his poetry, just as what Owen does in this poem. It is quite convincing to say that by alluding the lines Owen is trying to mock those who encourages youngsters getting to the warfare and sacrifice as a glory for himself and the kingdom, maybe not only a reply for Jessie Pope but also those who push the youngsters towards the inferno in the world. By constructing the image of the dream that Owen describes in the poem, I guess it is kind of related to Sigmund Freud's ideas of Hysteria and Dream and also the great psychoanalysis. Moreover, by applying to the idea of modernist literature, Owen, by alluding Horace’s line, is a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time. Owen overturns the idea of the glorious death for the kingdom, which often happens when we talk about heroic ideas or images to the realistic images(realism?) of the horrific warfare. I guess it is the reason why Owen and Pound both use this to express their outrage on the god damn WWI.
Brilliant analysis! Very detailed. I've analyzed 30-something poems on my channel for my own students (mainly Caribbean). This is one of the two or three poems (I believe) that we have both covered.
@@mycroftlectures I'd be honored! My poetry analyses are here: th-cam.com/play/PLShDieccSiWh0tunDbHOQXNUKu32BFuK3.html&si=QJgxJArHJJZ8tUsO I've worked hard on all of these, but I'm happier with my more recent videos. Perhaps start with Death, Be Not Proud. By the way, have you done anything on that poem? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
I find "tired" in "...tired, outstripped Five-Nines..." as a way of expressing the Five-Nines' metaphorical enthusiasm towards war. The bombs, as a collective, are tired of being overused in combat. They could also be tired of war itself, relating to Wilfred Owen's own exprerience as you suggested.
Will you explain The Call and The Blackest Lie by Jessie Pope , please. I need to write an essay and I did not find any sources whether e-books or real books
Your interpretation of the piece is quite impressive Dr. Barker. If I may suggest, in regard to the "tired out 5.9s" Wouldn't it be possible to tire out bombs by tiring the proximity of their reach? They have tired out their ability to effectively devastate their troop? Maybe.. Lol maybe not.
"tired bombs" is brilliant. It is anthropomorphism as a rhetoric device. Everyone is tired of the war, even the bombs. It is projection just like the "clumsy helmets"
Really? There's a long and full comment at the head of the comments section that might change your mind about why it doesn't really work. Check it out.
Thank you Dr. Barker, excellent analysis as always. I do want to say a point about the helmets. Owens references “a clumsy helmet" Normally a helmet cannot be clumsy”. Funny enough, British helms of that time were in fact clumsy. Not in the sense of a person putting on the helmet but in the sense that the helmet was not properly fitted and was much like that of an upside down bowl that clumsily fit your head. Couple this with having a gas mask attached to it and it makes an already more awkward helmet all the more difficult to wear. This is not to be confused with wearing the modern military helmet. Which by the way is quite comfortable. Which these were not designed to be.
In my opinion, I think the bombs that Owen explores as 'tired' in the first stanza, are not present to represent the bombs but the German soldiers, who are in the same state as the British soldiers. This allows one to achieve the understanding that all soldier were faced with these horrible conditions.
Tired because gas shells don’t really explode with the same power as other ordinance of the time; they seeped their contents too. That’s why they are tired. Trust me, Professor, Owen understood his other craft: warfare.
At the top of the comments section under "In reference to the “tired outstripped five nines that dropped behind,” line," there is a long explanation of this line that might prove helpful.
The one thing I disagree with Dr. Barker is when he explains the bombs being tired through the air. He describes the bomb as moving tiredly through the air. In my interpretation of the poem, the tiredness relates to the timing of the bomb detonating. The bomb could have struck the earth with a delayed explosion, thus being 'tired'. This is, in my opinion, what Wilfred Owen was explaining.
Great lecture. Im curious if too much attention is being paid to '5 nines ' as rocket launches. Flamethrowers and tanks were the great innovations used in the trenches. And rockets were primarily used to bring down zeppelins and observation balloons. But they were not commonly handled as they were highly volatile. I believe the 5 nines were therefore artillery shells. Rockets came into their own , and indeed surprised the Germans on the eastern front in world war 2. 'Stalins organs'.
The poet have witnessed the horror, violent, and evil side of the warfare. The events he described in the poem are certainly based on his actual experience of the WWI. Thus, the poet vividly describes the awful scenes of the wartime, presents the truth about the war, and demonstrates the actual horror reality that the soldiers have to face in the warfare. The poet attempts to illustrate as graphically as possible the blood-soaked details of the war and the soldier’s sufferings. For example, by using the phrase “like old beggar”, the poet reflects the truth that the soldiers are deprived of their dignity and health like the dispossessed, who were reduced to begging for a living. In the poem “the soldier”, it is in some sense was quite successful for recruiting young men to warfare by claiming that fighting for their own country is the most glories things to do. However, Owen has the first-hand experience of the war and witnessed the violent and evil side of the warfare. He realizes the actual pictures of the war are as not completely same as other poets depict in their poems and they have beautified the process of the fight in the warfare. As a result, Owen depicts the obscenity of the war at a level that is unequaled in other poems, which might use their poem as the propaganda and encourage the youth who really don’t know about the actual side of side to fight for the country. Added, the phrase “my friend” sounds so ironic and sarcastic, saying that those poets who have never engaged in the war should not blindly encourage their nationals to fight for their own country and promote the idea of glorious death for the kingdom. “It is sweet and meet to die for one’s country”, the poet also expostulates sarcastically, “Sweet and decorous!” since they actually don't know the what is really happening in the warfare.
There is such a great contrast between reality and imagination when comparing this poem to "The Soldier" written by Rupert Brooke. I am curious if Wilfred Owen is influenced by the war-promoting propaganda and went to the battlefield. When he was actually at the war zone, he realized the reality of warfare. The way Wilfred Owen describes the scenes of a war gives me a sarcastic feeling, as if he is trying to say to those who writes the propaganda "this is the bloody truth, you liar" when he addresses to other poet using "my friend".
Now that I have seen how Jessie Pope’s Who’s for the game encourage men to join the war makes me understand more the last line of the poem. As you suggest, the three stress shows the persona of the poem has turn his back on the old lie, I also think the three stresses may relate to the sound of bombs regularly drops on the trenches. The last line points out that there are horrific sacrifices that those warmongering poets are not known of. The ignorance disappoints and enrages the persona of the poem to turn his back on the glorify ideal to die for your country.
I can't, these videos were done with proper recording equipment years ago, but for the sonnets I do now, I use a smartlav+ that connects to an iPhone with an extension so you can stand far enough away.
I think Dr. Barker would have a winning bedside manner. I also happen to think his curtain hair is extremely sexy. But, though I admire his rendering accessible complex pieces of poetry, I do feel he could delve a little further into some of the poem's deeper signifieds. He could, for example, have highlighted the negative signified of "an ecstasy of fumbling", rather than just speaking about "adrenalin". Yes, the adrenalin rush causes the soldiers to be "beside themselves". Ecstasy is just this. Be it in pleasure or in pain. Sometimes, his glosses are way too superficial.
Forgive me if this has been said already. I saw your long comment and possible explanations of the word "tired", but skimming over them I didn't see my interpretation.
I supposed the second one, the original, “the falling splinters tittered” better keeps the rhythm with "And the Big Gun guffawed" of the first stanza, and that was somehow the one I read first, so I continue to hear it that way. I have to admit though, the change to “the splinters spat and tittered” gives us better alliteration and really rattles off the tongue in a way that sounds great but, can make you think you're engaged in an elocution lesson of the type actors do before a performance. On balance, I'd give it to the last one due to the repeated T sounds.
the artillery shells are "tired" by way of their initial velocity only allow them a certain range. Owen is beyond that range and it is likened to the projectiles being too "tired" to get to them. - Cheers!
Lastly, I really like the whole description of the soldier drowning part. In trying to portray what it’s like to watch someone die from chemical warfare, a concept that no one had experienced until now, it is very hard for you to imagine it. When you think of melting you thing of fire, such as how a candle melts as it burns. You cannot imagine that air would quite literally burn and dissolve you or melt you somehow. It is so shocking that he uses words such as fire or lime because fire alone is not enough. The notion of acids and dissolving in acids had not been properly understood by most at the time, it would be hard to imagine it unless you see it. When you do it’s quite shocking and this is why the use of lime, in an attempt to portray the kind of burning that this does to you. The scariest reference of all is of how he is dry drowning. You typically think of drowning as something that happens when you are immersed in water. That is already described by survivors as the worst pain that you will ever experience hence waterboarding as torture. He is trying to explain the horror of drowning without the ability to get out of the water our be rescued. The man is floundering, as if he was a fish and now the very air he is breathing, that is all around him and he cannot get away from it is the reason he is drowning. The idea that breathing in air drowns you is so scary and shocking that you have to imagine you are a fish out of water, helpless unable to do anything but flounder and die. Lime does not typically burn you but using it instead of lemon is to explain what he was seeing, he saw a sea of green, and now that generally harmless “lime” (green air) has suddenly become burning poison that the soldier is drowning in. The guttering I actually quite like because that is exactly what makes it scary, associating candle guttering with what they were going through shows you the horror of the seemingly serene scene of green mist with them almost deaf and having poor visibility, you would think of it as quite peaceful. The idea that the gas took them by surprise further amplifies the horrror. Just as with a candle guttering, they were in a relatively peaceful trudge back to rest, deaf to even the bombing, and then out of nowhere this happens. The candle reference is not only apt in the whole “dry drowning in fire” concept, but also to the melting concept, to me the face “hanging” is about the effect of the gas, not that it literally melted the face per say but that it posses that quality. In the description of his dream the use of smothering is not just about his fear of the nightmare, it is that the dream is so vivid that he almost shares the suffocation of his choking comrade. He not only sees him, but actually feels him. This is perhaps to me either imagined but also maybe somewhat actually happening since the poets lungs are probably not pristine themselves and he was still in the battlefield. Additionally the description of the taste of the bitter blood perhaps hints at that. How does he know it is bitter? Finally, I love how he also references certain body parts as belonging to his friend “his face” but most of the horribly disfigured and damaged ones are not. “The eyes” “the blood” and “the lungs” are all now so mangled that they don’t even belong to the soldier, perhaps due to them being unrecognizable, or being offensive. Indeed, the offensive idea is perhaps more accurate since he is trying to paint the picture from the perspective not of someone who is dead, but him. The obscenity of the blood, while seemingly harsh, especially when likened to cancer, is his perspective. If you ever think of a burn victim, especially a chemical burn, the horrible disfigurement that they go through is jarring. You really will find it obscene and wouldn’t wanna look at it. The cancer part to me, while controversial is very fitting because the notion that this horribly disfigured, useless, mangled thing growing in you is actually your own cells, coming from your body and simultaneously being disfiguring (if visible) ugly and killing you is quite obscene! In much the same way as he had to watch the obscenity unfold infront of him while carrying their comrade back even though he will certainly die and they have to live with that image. It somehow softens the idea that they flung him in the wagon. The have to watch that blood, likened to cud which is disgusting in and of its own, if you imagine that the cow will regurgitate something and then further chew it and eat it, you think eww. Well this is happening to his friend as his lungs gargle up blood into his mouth, which he subsequently cannot help but aspirate again and even swallow some as he gasp for air, it is just sickening.
Sorry but the first line trenches were not occupied solely by the English. Other British and Commonwealth soldiers served and died in the time frame you're referencing. By the way 5 9's were mortars not bombs.
The first of these is absolutely correct. It's a slip of the tongue on my part, and your point's a valid one, uncontested and worth making. A 5 9 was the name of the mortar, the artillery weapon which fires the explosive shells, AND the name of the shell, or mortar bomb. That's one of the reasons I find the line discussed at length in the comment pinned to the top so interesting, Owen has to be talking about the mortar bomb, not the mortar artillery.
@@mycroftlectures Thank you sir, as an ex career soldier and of Brit/Irish nationality I hold in high regard the sacrifice made by both my ancestors and all of their comrades regardless of creed or kin.
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In reference to the “tired outstripped five nines that dropped behind,” line. In order to clear up any confusion about my “problem” with this line, or rather with the word “tired” here I’ll post this comment then insert it in the notes. 5.9 inches was the size of the artillery shell, hence the name, but both the rocket launcher and the shells were called five nines. Do you see the five nines mentioned here as the rockets themselves or as the rocket launcher?
I see the five nines as the bombs themselves because the bombs “drop behind” the soldiers, which the rocket launchers obviously couldn’t do. Plainly the rocket launchers aren’t crashing to earth just behind the very relieved soldiers. Also the “hoots” would be the sound of the bombs in the air, rather than the boom of the rocket launcher being fired. Fair enough?
So, the five nines mentioned here as “tired” are the bombs not the thing that fires the bombs. The rockets, not the rocket launchers.
Owen is of course personifying the bombs as "tired" because the have been being fired all day. But here is the problem with “tired”, that once pointed out, (obviously more clearly than I have previously done), may stick with you. Bombs and rockets DON’T FIRE. They ARE FIRED. The device that fires the bombs or rockets, the rocket launcher, can be accurately personified as tired because it has been firing all day. But not the bombs themselves. The bombs themselves can begin to be tired only after they have been fired because before this they are not doing anything. The rocker-launcher can be tired, but the rockets themselves can’t be.
See the difference? (Of course this may not bother you, and the last thing I would wish is for it to eclipse the other far more interesting and countless successes of the poem, but the line, or rather that word jarred for me once someone pointed it out to me). To clarify. If you like, think of a gun. A gun can be accurately personified as tired. But can a bullet? Like a rocket, we can imagine a bullet or bomb as tired if it has travelled a long way and has had an arduous journey, but we cannot say that it has been firing all day because each bomb or bullet is only fired once.
The next step is to acknowledge that the soldier sees the bombs as tired, so what are we to make of that? if we don’t want to leave the line on the accurate but rather niggling ‘Well, bombs can’t literally be tired,’ (though rocket launchers can be tired), as I just have.
I can make three suggestions.
1 One is that the soldier is so tired himself that he projects his tiredness onto everything else in his environment. That seems a highly realistic thing for someone in that situation to do, and would be similar to Thomas Hardy writing “And every spirit upon earth / Seemed fervourless as I,” in The Darkling Thrush. The point is that though the rockets can’t really be personified accurately as tired the soldier sees them as tired and that’s indicative of his state of mind due to his physical exhaustion.
2 Another possibility I quite like, and here I am quoting from the comments page of this video and hope the person who wrote this won’t mind, is that: “the abject brutality of the war has turned the soldiers into animals who look like men, probably fighting more to survive than to kill the enemy. Like animals they run to escape the hunting bombs that are after them to prey upon them. I suppose anyone in this circumstance is reduced to its most basic instincts: run for your life, run from what kills you. If your predator doesn’t reach you it is because you ran faster and he got tired. The fading sound of the bombs is because they didn’t catch you, the beast got tired. I presume hoots is also the sound of the owl, itself a presage of death,” Maria Carvalho.
3 This third one is my favorite and may seem like over-analysis to some but I post it anyway as an interesting way of reading the line if you want to take it this way.
Firstly, my other problem with the word “tired” is that it makes us feel sorry for the bombs. We tend to feel sorry whatever is described as tired, do we not? ‘Tired after a hard days work she . . .’ We may hear “tired” here and think, ‘Oh, those poor bombs!’ “Bored, outstripped five nines that dropped behind,” would not have elicited the same sympathy for the bombs that “tired” does. And this sympathy for the thing trying to kill you seems similar to what we now call Stockholm Syndrome. Here a victim, usually a kidnapped victim, begins to feel sympathy for the those who have kidnapped them. Due to constant contact, and a desire for that other not to hurt you, the oppressed feel sympathy for the oppressor. It seems to me that Stockholm Syndrome could accurately illuminate what is happening in this line. The soldier, kidnapped by warfare, feels sympathy for the “tired” weapons trying to kill him. Once again the line is indicative of the soldier’s state of mind. That may seem like over analysis but I like it. And of course I have no way of proving or even knowing if this was Owen’s “poetic intention” or not, or indeed whether or not it was indicative of Owen’s own state of mind, but I do however find it a highly plausible explanation of what may happen to a soldier undergoing what Owen is showing us in this poem.
I hope that clears up my problem with the word “tired” and if you wish to see the five nines as the rocket launchers rather than the rockets themselves, then “tired five nines” makes perfect sense, but you’d need to get around “that dropped behind” bit, which you could perhaps do by imagining the rockets and rocket launcher as one thing.
I hope that helps, and apologize if I hadn’t explained it clearly before.
Andrew Barker
Sir, do you think the line "tired, outstripped Five-Nines..." can be interpreted as a transferred epithet?
Ishrat Arora Transferred Epithet. Good question. Well let’s see. As I understand it a transferred epithet is when an adjective grammatically qualifies a noun rather than the person or thing it is actually describing. OK. So “the soldier smoked a tired cigarette” would be an example. Plainly a cigarette cannot be tired but what the sentence would mean to suggest is that the soldier was smoking a cigarette in a tired way or that the soldier himself was tired as he smoked the cigarette. (I’d have to point out here that I am not much of a fan of the transferred epithet, except in comic writing, and have to ask what would have been wrong with the tired soldier smoked a cigarette, or the soldier smoked a cigarette? P G Woodhouse uses the transferred epithet well to make Bertie sound comically pompous, but does it work as well when the writing needs to convey something serious and stark?)
Anyway, is this an example of it? If I paraphrase “Deaf even to the hoots of tired, outstripped 5.9s that dropped behind” as “we could not hear the tired bombs” does that qualify as transferred epithet? Perhaps “we listened to the bombs in a tired way,” would be the simple translation, but then we all know that’s what Owen means here anyway, I think. “The tired soldiers could not hear the bombs,” would be another way of translating it. As I said before the soldier is so tired himself that he projects his tiredness onto everything else in his environment, and by reading tired 5.9s as a transferred epithet this is what comes across.
Personally, for what it’s worth, I’d say it could be read as a transferred epithet, though at a bit of a convoluted stretch that gets in the way of what’s being described, for me, rather than illuminates. (Possibly why I tend not to like transferred epithets in general is that they can often draw more attention to themselves than they do to the thing they are describing, but that might be a personal peeve). And, as I say in the lecture it’s literal meaning risks the line coming across as comic though. And the comic potential of the line is surely out of place.
On the other hand “fitting the clumsy helmets just in time” works for me much better. “Clumsy helmets” being the transferred epithet to mean “we put on the helmets in a clumsy way.” But the accusation, by the soldier, that it is the helmets being clumsy, not the exhausted soldiers themselves adds to the desperation of the scene. As Mark Forsyth puts in The Elements of Eloquence, “Our clumsiness springs from fingers onto the recalcitrant helmets.” I see it as more than that. I see the exhausted, terrified soldiers accusing the helmets of being clumsy at the point. Great example of a transferred epithet doing a lot of poetic work for us there.
Remember, just because a line can be read with reference to a piece of grammatical terminology means neither that it is a good line, nor that it is a successful example of that grammatical terminology. You can have a successful transferred epithet and an unsuccessful one, a good one or a bad one. For me, “clumsy helmets” works well, “tired 5.9s” doesn’t.
Hope that helps.
Andrew Barker
PS.
For what its worth, as extra problem in seeing “tired” as a transferred epithet, that’s just been pointed out to me, is that the bombs are not just “tired” but “outstripped,” and “outstripped” is not a transferred epithet. This is asking us in the same sentence to imagine the bomb’s tiredness as representing the soldier’s tiredness, while at the same time imagining that the bombs have not been fast enough to catch the soldiers in a race.
The Stockholm Syndrome explanation of “tired” remains my favourite.
mycroftlectures I agree that if interpreted as a transferred epithet, the line won't be as dour as it needs to be.
Thank you, sir! That helped a lot :)
"tired five nines"
An artillery piece, or indeed and large gun, now including tanks etc, have a life of "X" EFC. ?
A prescribed number of equivalent full charges. Not all ammunition propelled through the barrel of a gun is a "full charge" but all rounds fired are totalled against the register for EFC.
As a barrel wears, it becomes worn and oval, making it less accurate in delivering its destruction. Hence, perhaps the term of endearment used against the artillery Corps by infantry and sappers, "drop shorts".
As a barrel eats into its life it is more inclined to drop short. The gun is said to be "tired" and more likely to kill its own soldiers, the Yanks would now call this "collatteral damage."
Hence "tired five nines" is a most appropriate phrase for an almost worn out army and its artillery, this most and more likely to kill its own soldiers than the enemy, but the generals in their ignorance and incompetence continue to use unserviceable guns. They still go bang!?
Owen, as ever, accurate in terms of both war and its inhumanity...
+James Whyard I completely agreed, I thought also the phrase "tired five nines" could symbolize that the whole war was tired and worn out and not just necessarily the guns.
These lectures are an absolute boon to students who may be struggling with the language for and themes of the selected poems, which are all classic works. Dr Barker's exposition is illuminating, informative and passionately, but precisely and clearly delivered. His lectures encourage empathy with the poet's subject matter and offer great insight into the feeling as well as the human situations that lie behind the poems. His commentary on Dulce et Decorum Est is a model of lucidity and his close analysis makes you think about every word and phrase and appreciate better than just reading the poem on the page the mood and attitude contained in the work. His commentary also makes us realise what a masterpiece this poem is and how its sentiments are still powerful today, when certain politicians are trying to glorify Britain's engagement in the war and using the centenary for shallow political advantage. Dr Barker's lecture is so interesting because he gives his own insights according to his own sensibilities as a published poet and lecturer and doesn't hesitate to explain images and metaphors in the light of contemporary life experience. When he describes being slumped against the bar at the end of the evening to clarify the kind of drunkenness he is alluding to, one can well imagine he is talking from personal life experience. The subtitles are also extremely helpful to the listener-reader and are the icing on the cake since they make the lecture so accessible to the 2nd language learner student. I particularly like the way he invites students to think about the effectiveness of images by interjecting comments like 'and I really like this line, because....terrific line!' This type of lecture makes reading and listening to poetry a pleasure, even though the subject-matter is sombre. A wonderful introduction to Owen's work and to the other poets he lectures on in this excellent online resource. Unmissable for literature students in my opinion.
Mike Ingham, English Literature Professor
Spoon feeding, doesn't just diminish it destroys any puzzlement any wonder any impact.His oration is mediocre at best,what has happened to education English Literature Professor?
To add to the thoughts on "tired" I'd like to give you the perspective I've held to since studying this as a 14 year old.
To me tired ties in with the casual, hum drum regularity of death. Opposed to a keen targeted and purposefully seeker of death, its a shell that's bored and impartial, poorly aimed and indifferent as seen through a lens of personification.
I hear outstripped as a reference to the drive band on the shell. This is a band of softer metal around the shell designed to engage with the rifling on the gun's barrel. The gun is worn and tired, the spin on the shell is worn and tired and the shell flies less precisely because of it, hence the whoop. I've heard that soldiers became well accustomed to listening to shells to judge if they might land closel by. The soldiers were too tired to discern this. The gun too stripped of rifling to be discerning in their target, the shell too noisy in the air to be a surprise to attentive troops and the troops too tired to realise. A picture of a tired and wearisome war of casual violence emerges.
Gas shells did not explode like other shells but landed more softly then seeped gas. This too seems like a tired shell, unable to explode so violently but also giving quieter warning.
Incidentally, the green gas seems to refer to chlorine. This was the first gas used in the war. I don't know how long it was used for as mustard and other gasses were later introduced. A flounder is a fish and we are effectively asked to compare a flounder out of water with a man under water. Chlorine reacts with the moisture in the lungs to produce hydrochloric acid which causes the lungs to fill with fluid so that a sufferer actually drowns in their own fluids. The guttering is the drowning spasms of a mans life leaving him as he fights to survive against the fluids smothering him.
This poem speaks about the very depths of horrific suffering for individuals and the witnesses of that suffering in a way that lies slightly hidden to those that are not familiar to these references. It is layered in this way rather like the poems appeal to not simplify the truth to the young, but also spare them the real agony of war still. No person should truly know this experience.
great sir!! that is extremely helpful!!!! i suggest every one to just go through these lectures if they have a trouble in English poetry.
When it comes to this poem, It was like trudging through sludge till I watched this lecture!
Regarding Owen's use of 'tired', I believe he means to suggest metal fatigue. A 19th C lecturer at the military school of Metz, in France, notably described the process of repeated deformation as 'tiring' the metal; so it likely would have been in common parlance among the soldiers of the First World War. Of course, Owen also means to suffuse the bombs with the exaustion that the soldiers feel, but this literal basis of metal fatigue lends the metaphor more credance. Thanks for another great lecture.
Andrew Barker, you're a legend. Thanks for helping me know the poem inside out.
Dr Barker helps the reader - and, more importantly, the listener - inhabit the experience of the poem. As Barker says, Owen wants his audience 'to understand the reality of what's going on there' and Owen's direct experience of that reality is powerfully conveyed both in the poem itself and in Dr Barker's delivery of the poem and his commentary on it.
'Dulce et decorum est' has extraordinary acoustic qualities, making the experience come to life in the sound of the poem; and that sound conveys far more than the merely visual. There's a power in Barker's reading and re-reading of sections of the poem, and the viewer's intimacy with the poem intensifies through the aural intensity of the poem's terrifying music.
A student might begin to watch this with the expectation of a mechanical explanation of the poem, a sort of vocabulary tour or puzzle key. There is that, of course, but far more than that. Barker illuminates for the viewer the universal context that brings together Horace, Owen's particular experience and the truths that speak from the poem to us today. After this poem, it's impossible to see the idealistic glory of war untarnished by its grim realities, and Barker makes this inescapably clear.
Sir,
As a non english native speaker with obvious limitations to access the understanding of the poems in the original and a poetry lover, your lectures provide me an inestimable tool and pleasure. My only regret is their exiguity, only 13 lectures is too frugal for my famine. I’ll be watchful for new ones.
My impulse to write drift from what suggests to me the “hoots of tired, outstripped Five-nines that dropped behind”.
When a bomb is shot it is released with a certain Kinetic energie that allows it to reach a given ascendent distance before it starts to fall. If you imagine the sound of it, it rises to that point and then starts to fade till it hits the ground and explodes. These men are out of the range of the Five-nines, so the sound they would be earing it would might have been the fading of descendant tragectory bombs.
As you pointed, the abject brutality of the war had turned them to animals who look like men, probably fighting more to survive than to kill the enemy. Like animals they run to excape the hunting bombs that are after them to prey them. I suppose anyone in this circuntance is reduced to its most basic instincts: run for your life, run from what kills you. If your predator doesn’t reach you is because you runned faster and he got tired.
The fading sound of the bombs that didnt catch you, the beast got tired.
It seems to me it might be refarable the word “hoots” as the hiss of the bombs. I presume it is also the sound of the owl, itself a presage of death.
I apologize for any mistakes i might have done.
Thank you very much for reading this and for your wonderful lectures.
+Maria Carvalho I loved this explanation of yours.
Excellent lecture, thank you.
I would argue that 'guttering' is a very apt word to use. As a candle burns down to the base, a pool of melted wax forms which will eventually extinguish the flame. I think Owen was comparing the candle flame 'drowning' in this way to his comrade's drowning.
I hope you will rethink your view on the use of 'guttering'. :)
Thank you Andrew. This poem has always meant a lot to me and I have always felt I understood it, but you have given me even more insight into it.
Those that knew him said Owen had a "deep, rich and velvety voice" so I always try to imagine that when I read this astounding poem. I wish to God he had written more! Thanks.
Great explanation. The reason why the five nines are tired out, is that they are loaded with gas and not explosives. This makes them fall slower than otherwise and therefore they fittingly can be described as tired out.
Many thanks. There's an explanation at the top of the comments page here that I made some ears ago and might be useful.
Thank You Dr Barker! That was an extraordinary lecture that is surely going to help me remember the poem very well.The concepts that were not clear earlier have also been cleared by the comments.So Thank You everyone
I think the description of the lazy bomb is actually fine. When I was reading it, I was thinking like the soldiers were feeling so tired and they were glad that the five-nines bomb was lazy that they were out of its target. The poet describes the bomb with a human character, by saying that this trench war was only not making the soldiers feeling tired, even the weapons were feeling tired and they did not to be used. That's why the bomb was being so lazy because it wanted to stop the war.
Thank you so much for this video. I love the way you explain poems. I could listen to you explain and read poems all day. Thank you again!💕
I really like this poem as it fully captured the scenery and the feelings of a soldier being in the First World War. The use of scenery is incredible. By showing exactly how the soldiers walked and how they looked, the first stanza actually dragged the readers into the frontlines with the soldiers. We are like being inside of a soldier and see through his eyes. The poet also used similies to compare the soldiers with the beggars and ugly ladies which generated desperated feelings for us to read. My 2 favourite lines in the whole poem are "As under a green sea, I saw him drowning" and "like a devil's sick of sin". The first line gave such a great impression that the soldier was surrounded by the toxic gas and suffocated to death. It made the poet's nightmare so vivid and we could understand what he was seeing. And the second line showed that horrors of the war that even the devil was sick of that war. Moreover, I also like the simple English that the poet used. It is very easy to understand as I believe that he was trying to make it as simple as possible to provide the news to warn the people who were so eager to join the war after being persuaded by the government propaganda. Unlike Rupert Brooke in "The Soldier", he did not play with words. He was just trying to show the reality of being in a war.
This poem was quite different from Jessie Pope's "Who's for the game?". In Jessie Pope's poem, it was like being shouted through a microphone to arouse the people to join the war and she even considered the war to a game. This was definitely a propaganda to recurit the people to join the war like "The Soldier".
I have got a question about the end. It was quite bitter and sad that people were being lied to about the horrors of the war under the patriotic line "it is sweet and honorable to die for one's country". As for the shortern last line of the poem, it feels like that the poet had "dropped the mic" annd walked away. But I wonder if he was being convinced or showed that the poetic persona was convinced by the line "Dulce et decorum est. Pro patria mori" at first that only after being in the war he realised he was being lied to and hoped to persuade others not to join the war by showing the realites to them?
Alex. I love that "dropped the mic" image you employ here and will use it henceforth when teaching to explain how I hear that last line being delivered, because that exactly the type of anger and dismissal I hear being felt and created by Owen when he misses the completion of the iambic perimeter. Well done. In answer to your final question that "only after being in the war did he realize he was being lied to and hoped to persuade others not to join the war by showing the realites to them". Yes, I think that's exactly what is going on.
Thank you for this fantastic lesson. I found it clear, involving and detailed .As a teacher I am really interested in your lessons and I will continue to follow you .It’s excellent!
These are so helpful for my first year of teaching AP Literature :) Thank you!
The image of that dying soldier is one that can never leave the narrator. As readers learn in the two lines set off from the rest of the text, the sight of that dying comrade haunts the narrator’s dreams, as the soldier “plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”.That memory prompts the narrator to offer in the final verse paragraph some bitter advice to readers about the nature of warfare and the outcome of blind patriotism.
Nice
Thanks a lot for a great lecture! You are so good at making the tiny details visible and important! :-) :-)
Thanks. That pretty much sums up exactly what I try to do in these lectures.
Superb tutorial. I would have loved to have you as a teacher.
+RedBear535 A teacher of English. Yes. An interpreter of Latin. No !
When I first heard Dulce Et' it nearly knocked me on my rear end. Stark slap in the face writing.
Couldn't agree more.
Great lecture and many thanks.
English and German soldiers didnt "charge" across No Mans Land. They walked at a marching pace, with the officer keeping them in line and at a walking pace. Running, or charging, was seen as cowardly behavior as was ducking from shell hole to shell hole.
There was a reported incident where a unit of Canadians actually charged a position at a run, and despite the fact they took the position with relatively few casualties as a result were censured for cowardly behavior in the face of the enemy.
It was only relatively late in the war when csharging and running from shell hole to shell hole became common, and the German storm-troopers (specialists in crossing no mans land through the wire and taking trenches and positions) were the first to formally be trained in the new and improved tactics.
When Owen talks about being bent double and trudging through mud he is describing a unit pulling back from the front line trenches through the relief trenches towards rest stations in the rear trenches, probably after their allotted duty time on the front line was over. The relief trenches were not as deep, and so stray shot and shrapnel was a risk. If artillery (the five nines) were flying then the men would instinctively bend down to avoid the chance of getting hit by stray shot.
sandmanhh67 Some great and useful information there, that I was unaware of. Many thanks.
Happy to help out mate, and again thanks for a fascinating lecture on one of my favorite war poems. First place in that category though goes to Sassoon's "At The Cenotaph". Dulce comes in a close second.
sandmanhh67 Just read At the Cenotaph, which had somehow passed me by. Sure enough, it's another great one. I wouldn't mind betting that the line break after purgatorial confuses a lot of people, don't you think? The sentence part, "Breed new belief that War is purgatorial / Proof of the pride and power of being alive" could be used is a great example of what can happen when people confuse the rhyme at end of a line for the end of the sentence. (I know this 'cos I did it the first time I read the poem).Breed new belief that War is purgatorial
Proof of the pride and power of being alive.
The devil figure wants people to see war as "proof of the pride and power of being alive," and the "purgatorial" bit is something relatively unimportant that we can I suppose 'tough out'. On my first reading I imagined a comma after purgatorial and thought he saw war as "purgatorial" as any sane person would. Why would a devil see war as purgatorial? Well he doesn't, he sees it as "purgatorial proof of the pride and power of being alive."
I can imagine this being another one of those really unpopular poems when it was written.
Thanks for bringing that one to my attention.
Dulce is certainly my favorite, "the blood come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs" bit is about as powerful a piece of writing as I know. The close second would be Owen's own Futility, though. I love the desperation and pointlessness in what the soldiers are trying to do in this one. Beautifully put across.
Isaac Rosenberg's "Break of Day in the Trenches" would be the other. The "cosmopolitan sympathies" of the rat. Fekin' brilliant, as yer man said.
mycroftlectures I went to a strict Catholic school on the Lancs moors so Cenotaphs "prayer" was analysed fully in the context of a "blasphemous prayer", but I see what you mean about the way Sassoon breaks the line up. We were taught though to read poems more like prose than rhyme, so it helped with poems like Dulce and Cenotaph where phrases cross over two lines with what some would read as an awkward pause or break.
I loved your point about how the end of Dulce is truncated. I had never noticed it before as I was reading it as prose. Its a powerful technique.
I think war poetry, especially WW1 poetry, is a powerful way of teaching kids (and adults) about war as it brings conflict down to the personal level. It puts you in the boots of the soldier in the trench. The emotions really strike home. There is a TH-cam vid of Christopher Eccleston reading Dulce which is the best I have seen so far. Full of bitterness, fear and spite, and delivered like an angry veteran at the end of the bar correcting some enthusiastic tipsy idiots misconceptions and jingoism.
Thanks for the steer on Rosenberg - will make sure to check his work out.
Also thanks for the lecture series, which I came across fairly recently. They are fascinating insights and great analysis IMHO. Keep up the great work and I look forward to many more.
Bent double can also be seen as a simile as too being two people one before the war n one during the war. And men marching to beggars. "Men marched asleep." People don't usually walk in their sleep, unless something is mentally wrong. The whole makes death and abnormality the norm. Well that’s my view anyway lol
Very insightful. He made it possible even for so dim-witted an individual as I am to truly understand the poet's thoughts.
Great poem. Great lecture. Why is this poem not taught to everybody the world over? These are sentiments the world has great need to know. You are right, it IS the greatest anti war poem ever written.
Thank you Dr Andrew - this poem was on my o level syllabus in the early 80s. It had a great impression on me back then and your analysis now has opened up so much more meaning for me. Thank you.
When I first read the poem, I immediately relate the image of the soldiers to Gollum from Lord of the Rings. The tired soldiers (both mentally and physically)
were acting upon their subconsciousness without any clear directions. I feel like they are acting on orders throughout the first and second stanza of the poem, as in they were ordered to bend and cough by someone who has no rights to. Also the soldiers were addressed as “boys”, which makes readers empathise the young kids more. Owen has depicted the confusions during the war very well with blurred images like using the green sea to describe the gas attack. The whole scene of the war is like a scene from a movie with demonised soldiers to me.
The way Owen engages our sense in this poem is impressive in demonstrating the horrors of warfare, in addition to the carefully chosen metaphors and personifications he used highly contrasted with Jesse Pope’s comparison between war and a sports game. It is also a big fight back to “The Soldiers” as rather than dying with images of heaven soldiers are likely to die with haunting dreams after warfare if not dying in the actual combat.
A great lecture. I love to read this poem with The Soldier- to taste the contrast.
Indeed. That's a task I have often set to students.
Brilliant analysis. Helped very much. Thanks :-)
Very helpful lecture..this lecture has hepled me alot....and I have scored 18 out of 20 in my class in this poem....Sir can you do a lecture for "Five Ways To kill A Man".....it will be a great help.....and I have gone through the lecture of"do not go gentle into that good night".....waiting for your reply.....
i can hear you speaking forever 😍❤️
Contrasting to The Soldier, this poem reflects more of the hellish reality the soldiers truly faced. Before learning Jessica Pope, I thought the addressee is the public, or more particularly, those in higher class/government who encouraged innocent young men going off to war, which is why he addressed them as "friend", as he was in the same social class.
About the word "guttering", you mentioned that it is used more for its sound, but I think it is more for to the imagery. If it is for the sound, there are more words that are connotation of "choking" and "drowning", such as gagging for instance? In imagery, although it alone is serene, but after reading about a man dying as if in fire, and reading it with "choking" and "drowning": him surrounded by death, blood, fire, the image of a candle goes out is not as serene as before. We often describe a man losing his life as "the light goes out", so maybe that's the imagery Owen trying to bring out. The candle doesn't have a peaceful death, but is snuffed out by someone: short, quick, merciless.
Also, it's strange that when I think about how a devil's sick of sin looks like, I think of the painting "Saturn Devouring His Son". Not that it was related.
nycartgallery.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/img_3840.jpg
That one, right? Excellent observation. I hadn't seen this before. That devil certainly looks pretty sick of what he's doing. That's how I'd always imagined it too.
Simple yet complex how brilliant
That was absolutely wonderful! Thank you, Dr. Barker for this analysis. I can’t read poetry and get very much out of it on my own, yet this kind of analysis gives me the chance to experience the sublime with help. Now I need to find some good analysis of The Waste Land. Care to do that one?
Thank you for uploading this analysis, it was very informative
Watching all these again!
Brilliant!
I much enjoyed this powerful analysis. My only thought is about the criticism of the word 'tired' in reference to the 5,9s which Dr Barker takes a referring to the 'bombs' (shells). I think Owen, when he talks of the 5,9s, is referring to the artillery guns which are firing the shells. These guns are of course 'tired' - used constantly with tired crews and worn out barrels. I this sense the use of the word 'tired' is completely appropriate, in my view.
Thank you. It may be worth you checking the comment at the top of the comments section. It may be of use.
Avery moving lecture....these words sill hurt when I listen to them ,I learned hem under duress, but now I return to hem,
Thank you very much Dr. Barker for you very clear explanation of this poem.
Fantastic loved your explanation. Strongly recommend to anyone studying English literature..
Thank you for this lecture. This video helped me tremendously with an explication I wrote for my English class last semester.
As far as the "tired out-stripped Five Nines" are concerned, I have one thought. As the shells are fired from a cannon, they are full of energy on their upward ascent. After they reach their peak, they obviously start to fall thus losing their upward energy. Perhaps Owen is referring to this loss of upward energy when he describes the Five Nines as being tired. I'm not sure how valid this claim is, and I could be wrong, but it is certainly something to think about.
this lecture was awesome the theme for the poem disavows the belief that fighting on the battlefield is the highest form of service to ones country.It highlights the horrors of war and shows that patriotism is used by some to seduce youth into becoming soldiers
Brilliant Analysis of the poem, Thanks a lot sir...
this is great in helping me understand this poem for my english gcse
THIS IS ANDREW BARKER. if you enjoyed this lecture kindly check out this poem, "DULCE ET DECORUM EST, 2020: IT'S NEVER SWEET OR FITTING." th-cam.com/video/kvzuuC0UMGQ/w-d-xo.html Wilfred Owen's masterpiece heavily underpins this sonnet from the time of COVID 19, that reconstructs the imagery as a tribute to the Healthcare Professionals of the world. Kindly let me know what you think of it in the comments. I think it's the best one I've written and was certainly the one I felt most affecting when reading.
This is so well-explained. Thank you so much!
I agree to some commenters on the use of 'tired', which to me means that the bombs are too weak to have aimed at opponents, because they fall behind the running soldiers.
In the poem, I particularly like how he describes the wounded men and how he experiences the loss of his friend during the gas attack. It is very personal but impressive. You can really picture the image from your perspective, seeing a friend dies in such pain would definitely makes you suffer for a lifetime.
The poem is better to be named this way than how it was named (To Jessie Pope etc.). I think what Owen tries to tell is not the hatred for Pope, and is not totally promoting his idea of anti-war because it would not be enough to urge for an end to war by just stating how horrifying it is. He just objects the idea that the idealists held towards war and how they actually encourage teens to fight in wars.
By looking up his biography, it is not surprised to find out that Wilfred Owen is not only a poet but also an experiencer of the horrors of gas warfare in WWI. Owen has a vivid use of imagery throughout the whole poem, while he tries to express his feelings as images in designated metaphors. These kind of images are just well presented through different layers of graphic languages how the narrator in this poem sees it and never gets away from it. Just like what the narrator describes his memory of a man who dies of poisoning from the gas with phrases like “the white eyes writhing in his face”(line 19), “the blood””Come Gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”(line 21-22). On the other hand, by telling what he dreams about is just another reminiscence of his experience in the warfare, apparently the most horrific moment he might have been seeing is the face of those dead soldiers, which he thinks that's just “like a devil’s sick of sin”(line 20). Doubtlessly, these images are just a series of terrific distorted renditions people can hardly imagine.
Not so sure about this but speaking of the title of this poem “Dulce et decorum eat”, it reminds me of Ezra Pound’s poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, in which Pound also tries to allude his outrage of the WWi by applying the exact same line from the Horace’s Odes into the poem IV of his poetry, just as what Owen does in this poem. It is quite convincing to say that by alluding the lines Owen is trying to mock those who encourages youngsters getting to the warfare and sacrifice as a glory for himself and the kingdom, maybe not only a reply for Jessie Pope but also those who push the youngsters towards the inferno in the world. By constructing the image of the dream that Owen describes in the poem, I guess it is kind of related to Sigmund Freud's ideas of Hysteria and Dream and also the great psychoanalysis. Moreover, by applying to the idea of modernist literature, Owen, by alluding Horace’s line, is a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time. Owen overturns the idea of the glorious death for the kingdom, which often happens when we talk about heroic ideas or images to the realistic images(realism?) of the horrific warfare. I guess it is the reason why Owen and Pound both use this to express their outrage on the god damn WWI.
A masterpiece by the great Wilfrid Owen.
Thank you .
'Insensibility' by Wilfrid Owen is another great work.
It is. Exposure is another that stays with me too.
I'll check that one out...
Thanks Dr Barker, very interesting channel, keep up the good work .
sir I wish if I could have tutorial with you . you are awesome . every explanation is so thoughtful .
Thank you for this wonderful explanation!
Brilliant analysis! Very detailed. I've analyzed 30-something poems on my channel for my own students (mainly Caribbean). This is one of the two or three poems (I believe) that we have both covered.
Interesting. I shall check out your channel. I'm actually looking into doing some more of these soon.
@@mycroftlectures I'd be honored! My poetry analyses are here:
th-cam.com/play/PLShDieccSiWh0tunDbHOQXNUKu32BFuK3.html&si=QJgxJArHJJZ8tUsO
I've worked hard on all of these, but I'm happier with my more recent videos. Perhaps start with Death, Be Not Proud. By the way, have you done anything on that poem? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
You're the best sir ! Thank you
I find "tired" in "...tired, outstripped Five-Nines..." as a way of expressing the Five-Nines' metaphorical enthusiasm towards war. The bombs, as a collective, are tired of being overused in combat. They could also be tired of war itself, relating to Wilfred Owen's own exprerience as you suggested.
Winged Bandit Well said! I was thinking the same thing.
You have great delivery. Thanks !
Will you explain The Call and The Blackest Lie by Jessie Pope , please.
I need to write an essay and I did not find any sources whether e-books or real books
Hi Joe and Marcus.Keep up the good work I'm proud of you both.
Your interpretation of the piece is quite impressive Dr. Barker. If I may suggest, in regard to the "tired out 5.9s"
Wouldn't it be possible to tire out bombs by tiring the proximity of their reach? They have tired out their ability to effectively devastate their troop? Maybe.. Lol maybe not.
very helpful for school assignment--Thankyou
"tired bombs" is brilliant. It is anthropomorphism as a rhetoric device. Everyone is tired of the war, even the bombs. It is projection just like the "clumsy helmets"
Really? There's a long and full comment at the head of the comments section that might change your mind about why it doesn't really work. Check it out.
This is so helpful for my essay on WWI. Thank you so much!
Thank you Dr. Barker, excellent analysis as always. I do want to say a point about the helmets. Owens references “a clumsy helmet" Normally a helmet cannot be clumsy”. Funny enough, British helms of that time were in fact clumsy. Not in the sense of a person putting on the helmet but in the sense that the helmet was not properly fitted and was much like that of an upside down bowl that clumsily fit your head. Couple this with having a gas mask attached to it and it makes an already more awkward helmet all the more difficult to wear. This is not to be confused with wearing the modern military helmet. Which by the way is quite comfortable. Which these were not designed to be.
omg this make me understand the poem so well i have to write an essay on this tomorrow
Amazing poem and a very nice analysis of it.
In my opinion, I think the bombs that Owen explores as 'tired' in the first stanza, are not present to represent the bombs but the German soldiers, who are in the same state as the British soldiers. This allows one to achieve the understanding that all soldier were faced with these horrible conditions.
thank you very much for this, absolutely great help for students
but one thing, I think it was chlorine gas not mustard gas he refers to
used this in quarantine whist doing my english work
Thank you very much Dr. I have got my exam paper tomorrow and this was super helpfull:)
Utterly stunning! Thank you!
Thank you for your detailed and exhaustive analysis. It is very useful indeed
Tired because gas shells don’t really explode with the same power as other ordinance of the time; they seeped their contents too. That’s why they are tired. Trust me, Professor, Owen understood his other craft: warfare.
At the top of the comments section under "In reference to the “tired outstripped five nines that dropped behind,” line," there is a long explanation of this line that might prove helpful.
I thought the bombs were called tired because they eventually fall/strike the ground, losing momentum
thank you, sir, this was extremely helpful!!
The one thing I disagree with Dr. Barker is when he explains the bombs being tired through the air. He describes the bomb as moving tiredly through the air. In my interpretation of the poem, the tiredness relates to the timing of the bomb detonating. The bomb could have struck the earth with a delayed explosion, thus being 'tired'. This is, in my opinion, what Wilfred Owen was explaining.
Great lecture. Im curious if too much attention is being paid to '5 nines ' as rocket launches. Flamethrowers and tanks were the great innovations used in the trenches. And rockets were primarily used to bring down zeppelins and observation balloons. But they were not commonly handled as they were highly volatile. I believe the 5 nines were therefore artillery shells. Rockets came into their own , and indeed surprised the Germans on the eastern front in world war 2. 'Stalins organs'.
The poet have witnessed the horror, violent, and evil side of the warfare. The events he described in the poem are certainly based on his actual experience of the WWI. Thus, the poet vividly describes the awful scenes of the wartime, presents the truth about the war, and demonstrates the actual horror reality that the soldiers have to face in the warfare. The poet attempts to illustrate as graphically as possible the blood-soaked details of the war and the soldier’s sufferings. For example, by using the phrase “like old beggar”, the poet reflects the truth that the soldiers are deprived of their dignity and health like the dispossessed, who were reduced to begging for a living.
In the poem “the soldier”, it is in some sense was quite successful for recruiting young men to warfare by claiming that fighting for their own country is the most glories things to do. However, Owen has the first-hand experience of the war and witnessed the violent and evil side of the warfare. He realizes the actual pictures of the war are as not completely same as other poets depict in their poems and they have beautified the process of the fight in the warfare. As a result, Owen depicts the obscenity of the war at a level that is unequaled in other poems, which might use their poem as the propaganda and encourage the youth who really don’t know about the actual side of side to fight for the country.
Added, the phrase “my friend” sounds so ironic and sarcastic, saying that those poets who have never engaged in the war should not blindly encourage their nationals to fight for their own country and promote the idea of glorious death for the kingdom. “It is sweet and meet to die for one’s country”, the poet also expostulates sarcastically, “Sweet and decorous!” since they actually don't know the what is really happening in the warfare.
Love the poem and love your presentation, it helped a lot. Thanks a lot.
There is such a great contrast between reality and imagination when comparing this poem to "The Soldier" written by Rupert Brooke. I am curious if Wilfred Owen is influenced by the war-promoting propaganda and went to the battlefield. When he was actually at the war zone, he realized the reality of warfare. The way Wilfred Owen describes the scenes of a war gives me a sarcastic feeling, as if he is trying to say to those who writes the propaganda "this is the bloody truth, you liar" when he addresses to other poet using "my friend".
Now that I have seen how Jessie Pope’s Who’s for the game encourage men to join the war makes me understand more the last line of the poem. As you suggest, the three stress shows the persona of the poem has turn his back on the old lie, I also think the three stresses may relate to the sound of bombs regularly drops on the trenches. The last line points out that there are horrific sacrifices that those warmongering poets are not known of. The ignorance disappoints and enrages the persona of the poem to turn his back on the glorify ideal to die for your country.
Great lecture. Can you recall what microphone setup you used. ?
I can't, these videos were done with proper recording equipment years ago, but for the sonnets I do now, I use a smartlav+ that connects to an iPhone with an extension so you can stand far enough away.
@@mycroftlectures thanks. Great audio quality.
Makes me miss school!!
Very helpful analysis, thanks!
thxx man, helped me for my literature exams :)
I luved it!!...thank you so much for this!!
I think Dr. Barker would have a winning bedside manner. I also happen to think his curtain hair is extremely sexy. But, though I admire his rendering accessible complex pieces of poetry, I do feel he could delve a little further into some of the poem's deeper signifieds. He could, for example, have highlighted the negative signified of "an ecstasy of fumbling", rather than just speaking about "adrenalin". Yes, the adrenalin rush causes the soldiers to be "beside themselves". Ecstasy is just this. Be it in pleasure or in pain. Sometimes, his glosses are way too superficial.
Dear Barker, please do many more videos....
Forgive me if this has been said already. I saw your long comment and possible explanations of the word "tired", but skimming over them I didn't see my interpretation.
excellent lecture. thank you
what fine explanation I'm in awe
This is very inspirational and i feel very decorum est
Also, can't you called an object clumsy which is actually unwieldly?
And it wasn't mustard gas, and it wasn't phosgene. It was chlorine, that green cloud that turns the moisture in the lungs in hydrochloric acid.
I think I have to hold my hands up to this one. I'll make sure the correction is in the notes. Thanks.
The Last Laugh - “the splinters spat and tittered” or “the falling splinters tittered”? I keep hearing/reading both of these.
I supposed the second one, the original, “the falling splinters tittered” better keeps the rhythm with "And the Big Gun guffawed" of the first stanza, and that was somehow the one I read first, so I continue to hear it that way. I have to admit though, the change to “the splinters spat and tittered” gives us better alliteration and really rattles off the tongue in a way that sounds great but, can make you think you're engaged in an elocution lesson of the type actors do before a performance. On balance, I'd give it to the last one due to the repeated T sounds.
mycroftlectures Interesting. Thank you. Please do more of these lectures. They are so interesting. Big fan.
probably shouldn't have saved it to the last day to study for the exam, but we're gonna work with it.
Let me know how you did.
the artillery shells are "tired" by way of their initial velocity only allow them a certain range. Owen is beyond that range and it is likened to the projectiles being too "tired" to get to them. - Cheers!
Check the comment at the top of the page..
Thank you, I can now do my project
Lastly, I really like the whole description of the soldier drowning part. In trying to portray what it’s like to watch someone die from chemical warfare, a concept that no one had experienced until now, it is very hard for you to imagine it. When you think of melting you thing of fire, such as how a candle melts as it burns. You cannot imagine that air would quite literally burn and dissolve you or melt you somehow. It is so shocking that he uses words such as fire or lime because fire alone is not enough. The notion of acids and dissolving in acids had not been properly understood by most at the time, it would be hard to imagine it unless you see it. When you do it’s quite shocking and this is why the use of lime, in an attempt to portray the kind of burning that this does to you. The scariest reference of all is of how he is dry drowning. You typically think of drowning as something that happens when you are immersed in water. That is already described by survivors as the worst pain that you will ever experience hence waterboarding as torture. He is trying to explain the horror of drowning without the ability to get out of the water our be rescued. The man is floundering, as if he was a fish and now the very air he is breathing, that is all around him and he cannot get away from it is the reason he is drowning. The idea that breathing in air drowns you is so scary and shocking that you have to imagine you are a fish out of water, helpless unable to do anything but flounder and die. Lime does not typically burn you but using it instead of lemon is to explain what he was seeing, he saw a sea of green, and now that generally harmless “lime” (green air) has suddenly become burning poison that the soldier is drowning in. The guttering I actually quite like because that is exactly what makes it scary, associating candle guttering with what they were going through shows you the horror of the seemingly serene scene of green mist with them almost deaf and having poor visibility, you would think of it as quite peaceful. The idea that the gas took them by surprise further amplifies the horrror. Just as with a candle guttering, they were in a relatively peaceful trudge back to rest, deaf to even the bombing, and then out of nowhere this happens. The candle reference is not only apt in the whole “dry drowning in fire” concept, but also to the melting concept, to me the face “hanging” is about the effect of the gas, not that it literally melted the face per say but that it posses that quality. In the description of his dream the use of smothering is not just about his fear of the nightmare, it is that the dream is so vivid that he almost shares the suffocation of his choking comrade. He not only sees him, but actually feels him. This is perhaps to me either imagined but also maybe somewhat actually happening since the poets lungs are probably not pristine themselves and he was still in the battlefield. Additionally the description of the taste of the bitter blood perhaps hints at that. How does he know it is bitter? Finally, I love how he also references certain body parts as belonging to his friend “his face” but most of the horribly disfigured and damaged ones are not. “The eyes” “the blood” and “the lungs” are all now so mangled that they don’t even belong to the soldier, perhaps due to them being unrecognizable, or being offensive. Indeed, the offensive idea is perhaps more accurate since he is trying to paint the picture from the perspective not of someone who is dead, but him. The obscenity of the blood, while seemingly harsh, especially when likened to cancer, is his perspective. If you ever think of a burn victim, especially a chemical burn, the horrible disfigurement that they go through is jarring. You really will find it obscene and wouldn’t wanna look at it. The cancer part to me, while controversial is very fitting because the notion that this horribly disfigured, useless, mangled thing growing in you is actually your own cells, coming from your body and simultaneously being disfiguring (if visible) ugly and killing you is quite obscene! In much the same way as he had to watch the obscenity unfold infront of him while carrying their comrade back even though he will certainly die and they have to live with that image. It somehow softens the idea that they flung him in the wagon. The have to watch that blood, likened to cud which is disgusting in and of its own, if you imagine that the cow will regurgitate something and then further chew it and eat it, you think eww. Well this is happening to his friend as his lungs gargle up blood into his mouth, which he subsequently cannot help but aspirate again and even swallow some as he gasp for air, it is just sickening.
Sir, could You please provide me with a lecture on the poem 'Spring Offensive' by Wilfred Owen?
Sorry but the first line trenches were not occupied solely by the English. Other British and Commonwealth soldiers served and died in the time frame you're referencing. By the way 5 9's were mortars not bombs.
The first of these is absolutely correct. It's a slip of the tongue on my part, and your point's a valid one, uncontested and worth making. A 5 9 was the name of the mortar, the artillery weapon which fires the explosive shells, AND the name of the shell, or mortar bomb. That's one of the reasons I find the line discussed at length in the comment pinned to the top so interesting, Owen has to be talking about the mortar bomb, not the mortar artillery.
@@mycroftlectures Thank you sir, as an ex career soldier and of Brit/Irish nationality I hold in high regard the sacrifice made by both my ancestors and all of their comrades regardless of creed or kin.