Wilfred Owen essays

Wilfred Owen essays Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, born March 18, 1893, was the oldest of four children of Tom and Susan Owen. His father's work as a railway clerk was supplemented by his mother's father until his death put the family in financial difficulties. The family tried to keep their life along middle class standards, but it was a struggle. The lack of money meant that Wilfred, who had dreamed of public school and Oxford, was limited to Birkenhead Institute and the Technical School of Shrewsbury. His faith in religion was strong in his youth, a "simple evangelical faith he shared with his mother." (Hibberd, 5) This conviction failed him, though, as he got older and began to explore poetry, in which he held his version of Truth that he could not reconcile with God. In the teachings of his youth, and in his stint as a lay assistant in Dunsden, he must have built the foundation that he would both expand on when confronted with the unimaginable and fight against when immersed in the absolute horror of war. The beginning of the war found Owen in France, but as a tutor rather than as a soldier. In June of 1914, he was tutoring and vacationing with family of actor Alfred Leger in the Pyrennes. He had met Laurent Tailhade, a poet known in the French salons. His youthful aspirations to be a renowned poet had grown in his association with the social circles of upper class he longed to be a part of. Like many youthful artists, he longed for fame and felt assured of his brilliance. In his lengthy memoirs, his brother says his only concern in the beginning of the war was to "safeguard his writing and to preserve for himself the opportunity to continue with his poetry at all costs." (H. Owen, v.III, 118) He did not consider enlisting and in a letter to his mother, he states, "My Life is worth more than my death to Englishmen" (Letter 302, pp. 130). His brother translates this as "He wrote to my mother that he considered his writing was of more importance to ...