Research Paper on:
'Arms and the Boy' by Wilfred Owen

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to France in 1917, the worst winter of the war (Anonymous, 2002). Four months later, with only five weeks on the front line, Owen was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital  near Edinburgh, with a traumatized condition known as "shell shock" (Anonymous, 2002). However, after meeting another WWI poet, Siegfried Sassoon at the hospital, Owen returned to France and was  killed in one of the last battles of the war, just seven days before the armistice called an end to the butchery. Owens early work was merely conventional, but  after he met Sassoon, it became more mature and genuine. While the first of his new work was imitative of Sassoon, he soon found his own style and approach to  the war. His mature work was created n a very short space between August 1971 and September 1918 (Anonymous, 2002). Characteristics of his poetry include pararhyme, alliteration and assonance  (Anonymous, 2002). Owens poetry remains popular today because it so perfect captures the horror of war (Anonymous, 2002). The follow discussion of Owens technique and style of poetry focuses  on his poem "Arms and the Boy." According to Hibberd (1986), "Arms and the Boy" may have been suggested to Owen by the irony of seeing children playing soldiers.  "Since a boy is not armed by nature, society must provide him with man-made weapons" (Hibberd, 1986, p. 143). Furthermore, according to Hibberd, this is Owens "1918 voice," no loner  that of Georgian realism, although still carrying a note of irony toward the older generation (Hibberd, 1986). It contains the prevalent theme in Owens poetry that "wars greatest cruelty  is seen to be its destruction of youth and beauty" (Hibberd, 1986, p. 143). His poetry consists emphasizes the waste of young life that is an inherent part of war.