English Literature - Notes on Wilfred Owen/WW1

WILFRED OWEN: Notes from A Rememberance Tale WW1 doc BBC

• Born in Oswestry, Royal Shropshire spring 1893
• Parents - Tom & Susan Owen.
• Eldest of 4
• Brothers - Harold & Colin
• Sister - Mary
• Lived in a larhe house built by grandfather
• In hard times, forced to sell it and move to Birkenhead.
• At 18, got a place at London university.
• Only part-time, job correspondence - needed the money
• Mother was intensley relgious, encouraged him when in Dunstan to take a job as Vicar's assistant
• 18-20 his afternoons were spent vsiting the poor or in a letter to his mum, 'sitting on uncomfortable chairs, talking to uncomfortable people, in uncomfortabke cottages'
• His host & employer - The Reverend, herbert Wigen.
• Left village - too much work.
• Not doing well at aged 20 - exams etc.
• Gap year in France Autumn 1913
• Taught at a language school in Bordeaux
• Started to drink win, smoked and stopped going to Church
• By 1915, Owen was getting increasingly uncomfortable as he has seen the outcome of those who had volunteered and literary herous of his like Kipling were encouraging men to join up
• He feared a German victory would mean extinguishing of English culture and language.
• Wanted to fight to save the language of Keats & Shaksepeare
• September 1915, Owen returned to England to sign up
• Following year became a 2nd left tennant in the Manchester regiment
• "the roughest set of knaves I have ever been hearded with"
• "Even now their vile language is shaking the flimsy door between the rooms"
• Owen was 5.5ft and 9 stone - restrictins for previous year due to need for soldiers on front line to cope with the hundreds of thousands of deaths.
• 500 letters between him and his mother whilst on front line
• The first poet to give these men on the front line a voice
• Owen would mimic gun stocato in his poetry - 'The Last Laugh'
• When Owen arrived, 1.5 million soldiers were involved in trench wafare
• he wrote 'The Show' looking at the devastated land
• 1917 - Owen was blown up in the air by Germans on the embankment
• When he came back down he was on the remains of a close friend & officer **** Robin
• Experience effected him and he wrote to his sister "You know it was not the bosh that work me up, nor the explosives, but it was living so long by poor old **** Robin that lay not only nearby but in various…