I would now like to move on with the analysis and talk about the themes.

The most
salient theme in this poem is the psychological effects of war. The repetitive active
verbs in line 5 “stroke on stroke of pain” .Whipping is measured in strokes, this
image of whipping is build up in a lexical field, cumulating at “rope knouts,” in
line 28. However the physical pain described is a metaphor for the mental suffering
inflicted on the soldiers. Unlike physical pain which is transient, the mental
suffering of the soldiers builds up, like a perpetual whipping damaging their
psyche. The use of caesura in line 5, “Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow
panic”, slows down the reading pace, which allows the image to further penetrate
into the reader’s mind. Owen utilized punctuation here to create empathy in the
reader as this image dehumanizes the soldiers who gave so much only to be
reduced to unceasing mental anguish. Furthermore, the oxymoron “slow panic”
further perpetuates the tenacity of mental anguish that the soldiers suffered as it
illustrates to the reader how perennial the psychological effects of war is for the
soldiers.
Additionally, the theme of…