Greater Love

Greater Love by Wilfred Owen is a poem full of clever imagery of love and death. While some descriptions are bright and happy ones, they are immediately filled with an image of the the destruction that war has brought those who have fought. Owen’s feelings towards the effect f war are brought out in the poem, as contained within every stanza is a clear violent scene that Owen uses to contrast the description of loved ones. Themes that are evident within all World War One poems are also evident within Greater Love. The idea that god has abandoned those who fought in the war, and the idea of the death caused by the war was unnecessary. Owen uses the imagery and descriptions within the poem to show the reader a sense of regret and sadness.

The opening lines of the poem start with a bright image of red lips “Red lips are not so red / As the stained stones kissed by the English dead”. Owen opens the poem with an image of death. He describes how upon returning home, one that he has loved, suddenly seems not as bright and inviting as before he left for the war. The red lips of the person described only remind him of the blood stained ground on which the English troops dies. The redness of lips being nothing in comparison to the colour of the blood split during the war. All that he see’s around him draws him back to the forgotten memories of the death and violence. This continues in the next stanza, “Your slender attitude / Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed”. Once again the reader is greeted by the shocking contrast between humanity and the horrors of the experience of war. The persons attitude trembles, but is nothing compared to the trembling of limbs that were removed during the fighting. Owen is making no attempt to conceal the comparisons of life and death subtly. Instead the reader is shocked by the very descriptive nature of the poem, and is shown how the war has destroyed not only the men who died in it, but also the minds of those who returned. Those who return see only the war around them. The colour of lips, and the demeanor of others bring back horrific scenes of violence. The war has corrupted the minds of the men, and death seems to be all around them.

Owen then makes a reference to the concept of God abandoning those who fought, a recurring theme in the twentieth century war poems. “Rolling and rolling there / Where God seems not to care /till the fierce love they bear / Cramps them in deaths extreme decrepitude”. Owen now comments on the fact that the reasons men went to war was for the love of their country, the love of those who depended on them, and for glory. But this love was met with death. The prize of war was not glory or salvation, but rather the embrace of death. The war was meant to be for a noble cause, but instead those who fought we greeted by a God who seemed not to care who lived or who died. No amount of good deeds or faith could save those who died. Owen displays his clear opposition to the war he was fighting in, and makes his position clear throughout the poem.

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