Arms And The Boy Analysis

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

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I think 'Arms and the Boy' is a juxtapose- specifically chosen because they contrast- would it be right seeing a young boy with a weapon?! Or maybe that arms make men (soldiers) feel like boys; they just want to go home and hide- not fight and suffer.

| Posted on 2008-09-24 | by a guest

.: :.

I think 'Arms and the Boy' is a juxtapose- specifically chosen because they contrast- would it be right seeing a young boy with a weapon?! Or maybe that arms make men (soldiers) feel like boys; they just want to go home and hide- not fight and suffer.

| Posted on 2008-09-24 | by a guest

.: :.

or perhaps arms mean weapons so in the tittle "arms and the boy" wilfred owen is stating the two major issues in his peom, the weapons and their addictive evil and the coruption of the innocent "boy"

| Posted on 2008-04-06 | by a guest

.: :.

You can see Wilfred Owen and many other great poets moving and reading their own poems in my virtual movies at my poetrylad Dailymotion channel ..Heres the x Regards
Jim Clark aka poetrylad at Dailymotion

| Posted on 2008-03-17 | by a guest

.: Arms and the Boy :.

This poem's underlying message is really quite simple. Owen, being a soldier, has contemplated the meaninglessness of war, but this particular poem seems to tackle the issue of humans having possession of weapons we have created. It appears that Owen doesn't believe that humans should not have weapons that god did not provide for us. The last quatrain solidifies this stating,"his teeth seem for laughing" and "there lurk no claws behind his fingers, and GOD will grow no talons at his heels or antlers through the thickness of his curls". The title alone makes a statement. "Arms and the boy", the "boy" is an alliteration to mankind's youth as a species. Why would Owen use the word "arms" not "weapons"? Perhaps word association of "arms" ties in to man's intimacy with weapons as expressed in the second quatrain. Overall Owen seems to be asking one very important question: Is man responsible enough to handle the weapons we have created? The fact that this poem was written before the "Atomic Age" shows Owen's surprising insight into events that were unfolding at the time and even more amazingly, to events that have yet to happen.

| Posted on 2007-04-04 | by a guest