The Interaction of Various Codes

To illustrate the interaction of various codes in rendering an idea we turn to a poem by Wilfrid Owen (1893-1918). Wilfrid Owen – the poet of the First World War was killed just before Armistice, and before he was able to complete the book of poetry he had planned. The subject of this book was, as he said in the preface, “War and the pity of War”. His friend Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), another well-known English poet, published the book of his poems after Owen’s death. The theme of the sonnet below is the Pity of War, and the sonnet itself owes its expressiveness to the combined effect of many codes.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-

The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmer of good-byes.

The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds.

And each slow dusk a drawing –down of blinds.

Exhaustive analysis of this poem has been done by N.J. Diakonova in Philologica (L., 1973). Our analysis although done from a different angle does not contradict it but adds some points.

The very first code any reader has to confront for every text is the graphic code. The very first glance at the page informs him that the length and arrangement of lines are those of poetry. The number of lines, as an experienced reader will also notice, is that of the sonnet. This is a through-level effect pointing out the genre and the genre has its particular code of rules connecting form and meaning. It demands, for instance a change of tone and theme after the octave, i.e. the first eight lines. The division in our case is emphasized by questions signaled by question marks: one at the end of the first line of the octave, the other at the end of the first line of the sextet. We shall keep that in mind and return to it later.

The main elements of the graphic code are the letters. The letters of the English alphabet are changed into sounds characteristic of the English language according to orthoepic rules. Blanks show the limits of words. A further graphical segmentation is the division of punctuation. The effect of punctuation is a through-level effect, as it signals not words but syntactic structures.

Sounds are combined into elements of the next subcode, i.e. words, in these they form metrical patterns and simultaneously in some parts of the poem produce an additional effect of onomatopoeia depicting and emphasizing by sound imitation and by a change of metric stress the wailing of shells and the rattling of rifles: “Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle”.

An iambic foot has a stress on even syllables. Here the stress is shifted in the first words of each line onto the first syllable. This rhythmic violation creates a sort of deformation and tension emotionally affecting the reader. The relevance of the feeling is explicit on the lexical level in such words and phrases as “die as cattle”, “guns”, “rifles”, “shells”. Throughout the sonnet other words of the lexical field connected with death and sorrow combine with these making the war and “the pity of war” (in the poet’s own words) to be the main theme of the poem.

In decoding the message of the poem we have to do not only with linguistic and genre codes but also with the extra-linguistic semiotic code of funeral rites introduced by verbal description. Each element of this code carries its own symbol and its own wealth of sad associations. In the octave it is the sounds – the tolling of bells, the funeral prayers and requiem. In the sextet it is things perceived through the eye. The words render the predominantly visual quality of imagery. Yet it is not simple visualization – complex emotional associations are introduced by the attributes one sees at a funeral service – the candles, the pall, the flowers, and finally the sad custom of pulling down the blinds when somebody is dead.

All these things are the customary expressions of grief denied to the doomed youth. All these are said to be substituted by the terrible “monstrous” sounds of guns, the deep sorrow of people and friends and the bugles calling for more victims in the recruiting offices of the shires.

The division of the sonnet into two parts is very marked. The octave is imbued with protest and indignation at the fate of those who are doomed “to die as cattle”. The second part is more resigned – contains the denouement; it speaks of the sorrow of those left behind. The very last line is a kind of elegiac closure, describing one more extra-linguistic symbol of grief – the custom of drawing down the blinds in the house of the deceased.

The rules according to which a sonnet is formed, belong to one more subcode – that of versification. By its structural organization a sonnet stresses simultaneously both its unity and disunity. The reader sees the whole of the sonnet at once. But the rhyme scheme of a sonnet is such as to make several kinds of internal divisions corresponding to syntactic and logical structure.

The two parts of the sonnet are united by coupling (the appearance of the equivalent elements in equivalent positions). Each begins with a question and contains a forceful answer. The questions are similar in meaning, they ask about the manner of funeral rites observed and the services held when the youth dies on the battlefield. The answers form a contrast. The first answer pictures the deafening maddening din of the slaughter, the second – the silent sorrow of parting.

The bitter insulting contrast (as N.J. Dyakonova puts it) between the solemn ceremony becoming death and the appalling cynicism of war is revealed on the lexical level in the mixture of the solemn words and rude colloquialisms standing in immediate proximity. E.g. passing bells – die as a cattle, patter out – orisons.

The paradoxical nature of the whole is continued on the level of stylistic devices in the metaphorical displaced epithets:

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs

The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells

The amount of information compressed in these two lines is very great. The unthinkable absurdity of war is revealed in the octave by presenting war as the killer and the mourner at the same time. This is expressed by the metaphorical use of the word “choirs” about the roar of the guns; the epithet “demented” refers more directly to people stunned by this roar, or may be to the war on the whole; “wailing” has a double reference too: it describes the sound of the flying shells that is similar to a groan, it reminds one of the suffering a shell carries to its victims, and it also means that the shells moan and mourn for those whom they kill. The word “shrill” means sharp, piercing and marked by great intensity, disharmonious.

In the sextet the conflict is resolved albeit tragically. If in the first part the musical elements of the semiotic code of funeral rites: bells, prayers and funeral choirs were replaced by noise of cannonade and shooting, here the ritual objects: candles, the pall and flowers are substituted by human grief or reflected in the sad eyes and pale faces of the survivors.

To sum up our commentary on Anthem for Doomed Youth: the poem on the whole is encoded in several codes closely interrelating and intertwined. When interpreting it in terms of the communication scheme, we see that the reality corresponding to the source of information is that of the World War I, the encoder (transmitter) is the young soldier – poet Wilfrid Owen, the message is the sonnet – a requiem for the killed. The main codes we have to take into consideration are: the English language (including as every other language several subcodes), the extra-linguistic code of funeral rites, rendered verbally and the code of a particular poetic form – sonnet. The message is received and decoded in our case by the Russian teachers of English.