The Deception in Patriotism
Wilfred Owen described himself as “a conscientious objector with a very seared conscience.” As a commander, he had seen men massacred only to be replaced by more men who would suffer the same fate. Owen had come to see the World War I for what it was, absolutely evil and senseless. No good could come from the agonies and waste it left in its path. Owen also realized that only as a combatant could his war protests have any weight. This internal conflict was the basic motive of his war poems (Owen 22-27). Wilfred Owen was born in Owestry in 1893 to a middle class family. His father was an independent, impatient man while his mother was gentle and deeply religious. It can be deduced that the incongruity of his parents' personalities helped set up in Wilfred's mind the tension between opposites which so often creates artists. When he was old enough, his parents sent him to work as an assistant to a vicar. Though Owen did not find his employer intellectually stimulating, he did benefit from their missions to the Oxfordshire slums. There he dealt, firsthand, with sickness, depravity, and destitution worse than he had ever known. At the onset of World War I, Owen's experience would serve him when he visited hospitals that were ill-prepared to deal with the masses of wounded soldiers that came through their doors. To his younger brother he wrote, “One poor devil had his shin-bone crushed...and the doctor had to twist it about and push it like a piston to get out the pus...I deliberately tell you this to educate you to the actualities of war”. Though his writing tended to shock, it was always intended to convey a message(Owen 16-20). It was June 15, 1915 when Owen first announced that he intended to join the infantry.