Does Wilfred Owens Use Metaphors In Dulce Et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owens was a poet in the early 1900s mainly, in the First World War. The poems that Owens wrote were ones that are full of the realistic horrors of war and the struggles faced by the soldiers risking their lives. People report that Owens was suffering from “shell shock” a type of PTSD common during the War (Williamson). Owens wrote the poem Dulce et Decorum Est while in a psychiatric hospital, and met people that inspired him the write this poem and other poems that recalled the dooms of war. The poem Dulce et Decorum Est uses many literary and poetic symbols like, metaphors, tone, and double meanings to express the gory truth of the War.

Wilfred Owens uses metaphors and similes to illustrate the horrors he experienced in the First World War.

“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks” uses the comparison of beggars and the way that beggars are crippled, old, and shriveled to expose the true qualities of the soldiers in the trenches (Owens 1). Owens uses many lines like, “coughing like hags” that compare the soldiers to different creatures that are crippled, frail, and somewhat dark to describe the state of the soldiers fighting in the war (Owens 2). “And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime” compares the men reacting to the call of poison gas to the way men act when lit on fire or in contact with lime, a substance that can burn human flesh (Owens 12). Owens also uses metaphors like, “limped on, blood-shod” (Owens 6) to create, as Kenneth Simcox says, “a dehumanising image- we think of horses shod not men” (Simcox). Owens uses similes and metaphors to describe the state that the soldiers were in during the First World War.
Tone and imagery are used in this poem to make readers understand what the soldiers were going through in the trenches.

“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots / But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind” (Owens 5-8) is used to show how empty the soldiers were, tired, lost, and confused about what is going on outside of the trenches. Owens employs imagery and a catalogue to display the PTSD, or insanity that so many acquired while fighting for their lives, “ I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning” (Owens 15-17). We see one of the speaker’s company dying from the gases through the eyes and words of the speaker, “ [The speaker] watches the man succumb to the gas, desperately groping the air between them as he drops to the ground, like someone drowning” (Parfitt). Even the speaker of the poem is part of the imagery used to portray the horrific scene of war, “The speaker is among a company of exhausted men who after a stint at the front are marching unsteadily toward the rear when they are suddenly overtaken by poison gas”

(Parfitt).
Another poetic and literary terms that Owens used were irony and double meanings. Desmond Graham mentions the use of double meaning when Owens mentioned the men losing their boots, “literally, the men had lost their boots; metaphorically, they were like beggars or hags” explaining that these men had basically lost their minds in the fight (Graham 19). The title of the poem is itself an irony, since Owens was trying to show the horrors or war, from “Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori” into “It is sweet and seemly to die for one's country” that Owens wrote in a letter on the warfront to his mother (Owens 28-29), (Merriam-Webster). a double meaning that Owens used was the idea of a beautiful scene of the violent gas-linked death, “thick green light, /As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” (Owens 13-14). Owens used double meaning and irony to show how bad the war was through the eyes of those who were fighting.
Dulce et Decorum est is one of the most famous poems by World War One poet, Wilfred Owens. Owens used literary devices, like metaphors, irony, and imagery to showcase the truth of war, not the bright faces of young soldiers, but of the dark and gas filled skies that will burn a man. The metaphors were used to describe the decrepit shape of the soldiers in the trenches, comparing them to hags and beggars. Imagery was used to describe the horrid scene, with the lime green gases filling the dank air, and also to describe the men’s PTSD episode.