Owen and the Soldier

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Right. So you put your hands like this,” I said, placing them on the bench. “And then you swing your feet over like this …” After Wilfred Owen’s death his mother attempted to present him as a more pious figure than he was. For his tombstone, she selected two lines from “The End”—”Shall life renew these bodies? Of a truth / All death will he annul, all tears assuage?”—but omitted the question mark at the close of the quotation. His grave thus memorializes a faith that he did not hold and ignores the doubt he expressed. In 1931 Blunden wrote Sassoon, with irritation, because Susan Owen had insisted that the collected edition of Owen’s poems celebrate her son as a majestic and tall heroic figure: “Mrs. Owen has had her way, with a purple binding and a photograph which makes W look like a 6 foot Major who had been in East Africa or so for several years.” (Owen was about a foot shorter than Sassoon.) Hey, wait up,” Megan said, catching up to me. “I thought we could walk to school together. I normally go down the High Street, but I thought I’d come by the park for a change.” I don’t know … what I was … thinking,” I said between gasps. “I’ve not tried to vault anything … that high … before!” There is no doubt that the stone soldier has done the town proud,” Camilla told us. “But he’s clearly seen better days and is beginning to crumble. Once we have removed the soldier, we will create a peaceful area with flowerbeds, a cross and a new bench. The plaque displaying the names of those who died in the war will remain.”

Er staat 9+, maar volgens mij kan je dit meer dan prima eerder lezen. De letters zijn lekker groot en Lisa schrijft toegankelijk en fris. Voorlezen is altijd een goed idee! I’ve got something to tell you,” I said to the soldier. I could feel a painful lump forming in my throat. “The council said they are going to do up the memorial garden. They want to make a lot of … changes.”Al snel in het verhaal blijkt dat Owens vader hem vroeger naar het park meenam en hem vertelde over oorlog, de mannen uit hun stad die moesten vechten en het symbolische standbeeld. Nu leeft zijn vader niet meer, gesneuveld tijdens een uitzending naar Syrië. Owens moeder ligt depressief op de bank met ’ogen die even uitdrukkingsloos blijven als die van de stenen soldaat’. Deze gebeurtenissen en het afhouden van hulp maken dat Owen zich eenzaam voelt. In het standbeeld vindt hij een luisterend oor.

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est. Pro patria mori.” I don’t want to,” I said. “I told Mr Jennings today and he’s fine about it. It’ll just be you and Sean.” To be scrapped, I guess,” she said. “The council are changing everything in the park. It was in the local paper weeks ago. My mum told me about it.” My mum works for the council,” she replied. “She doesn’t work in that department, but she knows all about it because she’s involved with the money and budgets and stuff.”I still have one of the first poems I wrote when I was around seven. It starts: There was a young girl called Fay Doodle,

What? I don’t understand,” I said, my heart racing. “What do you mean they are changing everything?” Mrs. Owen is a photographer who was previously overworked. However, after her husband failed to return home, she stopped working and avoiding seeing anybody. You’re wrong,” I said. “He’s fine. He just needs repairing, that’s all. You should tell your mum they’re wasting money, that’s what they’re doing! It would be cheaper to fix him than do all of that work, surely?” In several of his most effective war poems, Owen suggests that the experience of war for him was surrealistic, as when the infantrymen dream, hallucinate, begin freezing to death, continue to march after several nights without sleep, lose consciousness from loss of blood, or enter a hypnotic state from fear or excessive guilt. The resulting disconnected sensory perceptions and the speaker’s confusion about his identity suggest that not only the speaker, but the whole humanity, has lost its moorings. The horror of war, then, becomes more universal, the tragedy more overwhelming, and the pity evoked more profound, because there is no rational explanation to account for the cataclysm. He might have sat on the bench for the past fifty years, but the town’s memorial soldier has now served his time and is destined for the bin. Council member Camilla Broadly said the council have exciting plans to revamp the memorial garden:

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