INSTRUCTIONS

In your Poetry Reading Journal document, answer the following questions, giving examples/quotations from the poem to support or explain your answers. Remember that when you quote from a poem, you give the line numbers in parenthesis. If quoting two or three lines, use a slash to indicate a line break. Example: "And you laugh back nor can you ever see/The thousand little deaths my heart has died"(7-8). When quoting four lines or more, use a block quotation, in which you format the lines as they appear in the poem and put the line numbers in parenthesis at the end. For example:

They whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was nor easy. (1-4)

Create a heading with the title of the poem. Then answer the questions below.

Why, in your opinion, does Wilfred Owen begin the poem by comparing soldiers to "beggars" and "hags"? Explore the connotative meanings of these words and explain why Owen might have wanted to associate these meanings with soldiers. (You may also want to contrast these images of soldiers to society's traditional images of warriors).
When you look at all the images in this poem, how would you characterize/describe the imagery used in this poem? What is Owen trying to express in using this kind of imagery?
What is the most important image in this poem? Explain your answer.
How does the speaker feel about his experience of war? How does Owen use imagery to convey this?