An Interpretation of “Dulce et Decorum Est”

What would it feel like to be in the middle of the bloodiest war in history? Surrounded by death on all sides it seems impossible that anybody would write poetry about this very subject. Thanks to the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Wilfred Owen gives the reader a small window into the horrors that he witnessed firsthand in the carnage of battle. Faced with death at every turn, Owen takes the time to chronicle these terrible events that happened shortly before his own death. Owen uses rhythm, rhyme, and imagery to convey the message that people should be careful glorifying war because it is a very traumatic event that takes many innocent lives.

When a reader tries to understand the rhythm of “Dulce et Decorum Est” it becomes a bit tricky to find any type of rhythm. When reading shortly into the poem, one notices that there does seem to be a heartbeat to the poem when it states in line 3: “Till on the haunting flares we turned our back”. Owen uses iambic pentameter to achieve this pattern as almost all of the lines which have a rising meter and 5 feet. Having this underlying heartbeat to the poem speaks to the humanity and allows the reader to personalize with what is being said. Owen then contrasts the use of iambic pentameter in several lines including line 23 when he says, “Bitter as the cud”, as if to make that really stand out to the reader. Owen then further chops up the rhythm to make it seem as if he were telling a story to the reader. This is evident when an individual starts to encounter the heavy use of punctuation in when it says, “But limped on, blood-shood. All went lame, all blind” (6). It also makes the poem more vivid throughout and makes the reader really stop and think about what is happening in the line. Owen a...

... middle of paper ...

... that “someone was yelling out” (11), and that there was “blood” (22) “gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” ( 23). With rich imagery being used throughout the poem, it becomes clear that Owen intended to use imagery to help the reader feel as if they were present in the situation along side of him. This allows the reader to personalize this situation and gain a better understanding of the message that is being sent.

Through the use of rhythm, rhyme, and imagery Owen forces the reader to ponder about the thought that war isn’t an event that should be taken lightly. Many kind and brave soldiers have lost their lives over the history of humanity and that loss of life, while honorable, is extremely tragic. Thanks to Owen’s poetry people are able to look back at this time in history and hopefully learn valuable lessons about the value of human life.