I believe the main theme of “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is the horror of war, and how the young, “die like cattle”. The second poems main theme is the lose-lose situation of war, the author uses this theme to show that there really is never a win in any kind of war. The authors use different but, similar techniques, and rhetorical devices to push out the theme of each poem, those are the ones listed right here, alliteration, simile, personification, implied metaphor, and consonance to get the idea of his anti-war sentiment. Both poems are about the war, but, use theses different rhetorical devices to point out here true themes. In the poems, both are written at different times and different things but, still very similar in the devices they use to pronounce their own individual theme. In the “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, we in the first line personification where the “Cattle”, is the youth/ teens that are killed from the war and that there are many “wails” from the “Choirs” that are supposed to be the parents of the mourning from the lose of there kids from the war. In the “War works hard”, we see similarities in the two like the themes, the first poem is about the horrors of the war and the second one is the idea of there is never a winner in the war, both are about death pretty much and how no matter what there will be death that follows war. The second poem in the first line we see

“How magnificent the war is!

How eager and efficient!

early in the morning 

it wakes up the sirens

and dispatches ambulances

and to various places

swings corpses through the air 

rolls stretchers to the wounded 

summons rain from the eyes of mothers

it produces the most questions 

in the minds of children 

and urges families to emigrate” 

This whole verse is from the point of view of someone who loves war, they love the idea of it, and this is the opposite of what the author’s point of view. The authors just use this to go off what the author truly believes. The whole poem is to show that the war is an all day everyday job and that no matter what the end of the war is there will never be a winner in the idea of war.

Both poems are used to who that war is not something someone wants in there lives, both poems use there own rhetorical devices to point out that war is like a horror movie you never want to see and that it is something that you never want to be involved in because if you are then you just signed your death wish or someone else’s, because there will never be zero deaths in a war but, hundreds of deaths in a small one. Both poems are very eye-opening on the idea of what people went through back then and even with the poems time difference they are so similar in the time  they are trying to set for the idea of war and the loss and the work of it.