The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
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"The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" is a poem by Wilfred Owen which compares the ascent of Abraham to Mount Moriah and his near-sacrifice of Isaac there with the start of The Great War.
In the poem, Abraham takes Isaac, his first-born son, with him to make an offering — the offering, though Isaac does not know this, is to be Isaac himself. "Then Abraham bound the youth with belts and straps", but when he makes to sacrifice his son, an angel calls from heaven, and tells Abraham not to harm Isaac. Instead, he must offer the "Ram of Pride". Then follow the last two lines of the poem, set apart for greater effect: "But the old man would not so, but slew his son, / and half the seed of Europe, one by one."
"The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" is written loosely in iambic pentameter. It does not use traditional rhyme; instead, the lines are bound together by assonance, consonance, and alliteration.
As the title mentions, the poem is a parable. It is generally accepted that the old man, Abraham, represents the European nations or more probably their governments. Another less common opinion is that he represents Germany or Kaiser Wilhelm II, who started the war. However, Owen does not blame any individual nation or person in any of his other poems, so there is no reason to believe that he does so in this one. Rather, he condemns all those in power, who took their countries to war.
According to the poem, the rulers of Europe believed that sacrificing their nations' (Ram of) Pride was too high a price to pay. By choosing war, the greatest of all evils, over humility, they kill Isaac the young men of Europe, effectively with their own hands.
The last two lines are the only ones that rhyme, and the image they paint is chilling: an old man methodically killing the seed of Europe. It is mainly the power of this image, set out in the poem and culminating in the last two lines, that makes it one of the best war poems ever written.
Links
- The main Wilfred Owen page
- The near-sacrifice of Isaac
- The complete text of the poem may be found at http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Parable.html
- See also the Oxford (http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/) Owen Digital Archive.