In the “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” English poet Wilfred Owen stunningly evokes a WWI battlefield. Owen served on the front lines during the war and wrote “Anthem” in 1917 while recovering from a battlefield injury. The poem laments the brutality of the war and the lack of dignity and honor with which the young soldiers die. Through vivid imagery, Owen reimagines the stark sights and sounds of the battlefield as a funeral service, and he wonders where the hope for sanctity might be.

Skills: analysis, drawing inferences from text, close reading, identifying the relationship between words

About This Document

The Owl Eyes Imagery activity gives students an opportunity to practice identifying and analyzing imagery. Imagery within a text creates a sensory experience that can connect readers to a text’s setting, atmosphere, or overall aesthetic. Studying imagery will help students understand how narrators or principal characters feel. The main components of this worksheet include the following:

• A brief introduction to the text
• A handout on types of imagery with examples from classic texts
• A step-by-step guide to activity procedure
• Selected examples of imagery from the text

In completing this worksheet, students will learn to identify and analyze different kinds of imagery in order to develop close reading skills and identify the effect imagery has on their reading experience.