18 pages 36 minutes read

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1920

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Summary and Study Guide

Overview

“Anthem for Doomed Youth” is a sonnet written by English poet Wilfred Owen. It is an elegy or lament for the many thousands of young soldiers killed in World War I. Owen served in the British Army and was killed in action at the age of 25, just one week before the war ended in November 1918. The poem was completed in September 1917 and published in Poems in 1920—two years after Owen’s death.

Owen is often regarded as the finest of the English World War I poets. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is typical of his work, which brought the cruel reality—as well as the folly of the war—into clear focus through technically skilled and innovative poetry. Owen’s mission was to write about what he called “the pity of war”—especially modern war waged with the kind of deadly weaponry that the world had not before experienced. Other well-known works of Owen include "Greater Love" (1918), and "Dulce et Decorum Est" (1920).

Poet Biography

Wilfred Owen was born on March 18, 1893, in the county of Shropshire, England, near the Welsh border. He was the oldest of four children born to Thomas Owen, a railway station master, and Susan Owen.

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