Comprehensive in-depth analysis and commentary of "The Sentry" by Wilfred Owen. Besides textual analysis, includes background and literary device effects analysis. Notes were prepared by an IB 45/45 Pointer for IB Individual Oral Commentary (IOC).
Apologia Pro Poemate Meo(Wilfred Owen) Poem Analysis
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Owen War Poems
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The Sentry
CONTEXTUALISE
Drafted in Craiglockhart in late 1917, continued at Scarborough in May 1918, completed in
France in September 1918. Based on a real-life incident in 16 January 1917 in France where a
sentry in his platoon was blown down and blinded. Despite the time gap, Owen recalls and pens
down the incident with agonizing details showing the intensity of his experience.
SUMMARIZE
A whizz-bang hit them as they were hiding at an old Boche dugout, and the sentry was blinded.
Realism is employed, link to preface “true poets must be truthful”, and strong imagery “subject is
war and the pity of war”.
TITLE
Soldier that keeps watch. Draws on real life experience.
CONTENT (1)
“We’d found an old Boche dug-out and he knew”
Explain its an old german dug-out
He knew tension, he is germans.
“And gave us hell; for shell on frantic shell”
“Hell”, “shell”, internal rhyme and assonance experience as horrific, like in hell
repetition of “shell”; personification of shell as “frantic” intensity of the bombardment
which the soldiers face
“Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime”
Harsh guttural sounds (aural imagery of water flowing down to dug-out)
disrupts the iambic pentameter at this juncture with a spondee, with the two stressed
syllables of "rain" and "guttering", which draws the reader's attention to it and emphasize
the torrentuous rain.
The word "guttering" is also a part of a series of assonating words across the poem,
including "buffeting", "snuffing", "muck", "mud" and "ruck" that highlight poor conditions
and trauma soldiers face.
Juxtaposition of “waterfall” with connotations of natural beauty and reference to water as
“slime”. Kinaesthetic and tactile imagery (high viscosity)
Unnatural nature of war
“Kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour”
“hour by hour” urgency
Soldiers trapped (bombardment outside, filling dug-out inside)
Sibilance (slush, slime) slowly being dragged under by the "waterfalls of slime"
“And choked the steps too thick with clay to climb”
“Chocked”, “thick”, hard to pronounce, emphasizes clogging
“What murk of air remained stank old, and sour
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