The Sentry by Urmi

The Sentry

Owen wrote “The Sentry” as a letter to his mother in 1917 when he was receiving hospital treatment after being injured during war. A sentry is a soldier stationed to keep guard or to control access to a place. In this poem Owen shows the life of a Sentry and shows the reader the terrible conditions the soldiers have to go through during war. It is his memory of a particularly horrifying incident in which a sentry was blinded because of the enemy bomb. He uses various poetic devices and figurative language to bring about the main theme of death and the horrid conditions that the soldiers had to go through.

Owen uses a lot of devices to show the reader a clear picture of the war. Just looking at the uneven structure and irregular rhyme scheme of the poem one can make out Owens state of mind. The war had impacted him to a great extent. In the first stanza of the poem, Owen gives vivid descriptions of the circumstances that the soldiers go through almost every day by using words like “slush waist-high”, “waterfalls of slime”, “choked”. He also uses a lot of auditory imagery in the form of onomatopoeia and a lot of smells such as “murk of air”, “stank”, “sour”, “whizz-bangs”

 to involve the reader completely in the poem. Through all these poetic devices Owen gets the reader involved in the poem with all their senses and this gives the reader a chance to feel what the sentry is going through. The use of “waterfalls of slime” is ironic because a waterfall is a symbol of purity and slime is dirt. So it is a paradox and creates a disgusting image. The poem is told in first person narrative, which helps to involve the reader and give a realistic and first hand account of the war. The mood of the first stanza is rather negative and is also a fore-shadow about what is going to happen later in the story and it has a very dull tone. Through these literary devices Owen also tells a sad and almost unbelievable story about a sentry who gets blinded in the war.

In the second stanza, Owen continues the story of The Sentry. In this stanza the devices and his style is very similar to another of his poems “Dulce et decorum est”. In this stanza, Owen also shows chaos and disturbance in the sentry’s mind. He uses a lot of death imagery such as “buffeted eyes”, “bulged like squids”, “sploshing in the flood” and “deluging muck”. There was so much chaos that Owen did not even realize whether the sentry was actually dead after the “whizz-bangs” or not. Owen also brings in the element of time in this poem by the use of commas and dashes, which shows the reader the intensity of the situation. The use of dialogues in the middle of the stanzas is also extremely interesting because it breaks the monotony of the poem but also adds to the picture of war that Owen is painting in the reader’s mind. The use of the word “floundering” and “somewhere” shows that the soldiers have no direction and are just wandering. Owen’s personification of “shrieking air” shows that even nature was sympathizing with the situations that the soldiers had to tackle. In this stanza, Owen brings about a lot of emotions empathizing with the sentry and the other soldiers, which really stands out in this poem, like all of his other poems.

In the third and final stanza of this poem, Owen concludes the story of the sentry. He also uses gruesome death images such as “bled”, “spewed” and “broken teeth”. He also wants to tell the readers that the conditions were so bad that they would “drown themselves for good” i.e. suicide. Even the use of the words “half listening” Owen emphasizes that everybody was so busy during the war that no one cared if anyone was injured of even perhaps dead. The had become heartless. The last line of the poem “ ‘I see your lights’! – but ours had long gone out” immediately catches the reader’s attention because it is so strongly conveying exactly what Owen wants to convey and that is death. In this case lights may be used as a metaphorical representation to represent life. So when he says “but ours had long gone out” shows that so many people had given their lives during the war.

In conclusion, through this poem, various literary devices and incidents, Owen very successfully conveys the message of the amount of destruction and death during the First World War. It also shows personal loss of so many people. Owen was deeply impacted by war when he wrote this poem in the span of six months and his deep emotions and strong feelings can be clearly seen in this poem.