Dulce Et Decorum Est By Kurt Vonnegut

The TV blasts about defending democracy, while bomb blasts shake homes and break bones. Those who come back can’t be heard above all the noise. In the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut details the unconventional experiences of Billy Pilgrim in World War II and his role as an unlikely survivor after the war. The poem Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen and John Kerry’s testimony before the Senate also discuss lesser-known experiences of war, describing the dissonance between firsthand experiences and other accounts. These works show how the media creates a narrative of noble and patriotic conflict to garner support for war efforts, forming misconceptions that invalidate soldiers’ experiences.

First, media portrayal of war is honorable

and patriotic to gain support for war efforts. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut includes an excerpt from Truman’s statement on Hiroshima as part of some research that Billy Pilgrim’s roommate is conducting.

Part of it reads, “...we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles”(Vonnegut 186). Here, Truman frames dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima as winning a battle in scientific discovery and innovation in order to stir patriotic sentiments. Furthermore, the statement intentionally omits descriptions of Hiroshima, minimizing the effects of bombing on Japanese people. Additionally, Truman discusses “[German] hopes to enslave the world”(Vonnegut 186) in his statement, using nationalist hatred to gather support for the bombing. Although the attack on Hiroshima was immensely devastating, Truman focuses on building patriotism to get the political support that he needs. Next, in the last lines of Dulce et Decorum est, Owen explicitly states that dying for a country is an “old lie” (Owen). Owen believes war can never actually be honorable, and is only believed to be so due to the lies of people

who support the war but do not have to fight in it. Owen’s poem may be targeted at individuals such as Truman, who has framed a war as a patriotic competition between nations- but is not on active duty. Similarly, John Kerry references his experience with pro-Vietnam War propaganda, citing “the mystical war against communism”(Kerry) as a rallying point for the war. However, in Vietnam, “most people didn’t know the difference between communism and democracy”(Kerry). Justification for the war depended increasingly upon the exaggerated differences between different ideologies, and so media outlets had to dramatize events. Thus, people create noble ideas about war for the sole purpose of gaining support.
Second, these false stories cause misconception of soldiers’ experiences by creating unrealistic expectations. Billy’s wife in Slaughterhouse-Five, Valencia, thinks of Billy’s post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a masculine and mysterious trait. The book states that, “It was a simple-minded thing for a female Earthling to do, to associate sex and glamor with the war” (Vonnegut 121) when Valencia attempts to ask Billy about WWII. Valencia isn’t shown to be particularly thoughtful or intelligent in Slaughterhouse-Five, and she’s a representation of the many citizens who misconceived what the war was like. Since her only stories of war come from dramatic media, Valencia can only use those when looking at her husband as a soldier. Thus, she mistakenly believes Billy is a brave and war-torn man when he’s really just the latter. In the same way, John Kerry describes the fake narratives perpetuated by American media during the Vietnam War. Kerry uses the example of President Agnew, who said, “some glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most of those misfits abuse” (Kerry). However, these statements cover the reality of the Vietnam War. The massacres of the Vietnam War weren’t necessary, nor were they representative of America’s “best men”. Kerry’s experiences don’t reflect the idea of the “good American soldier” because the concept was never based in reality, created only to gain support for the Vietnam War. Thus, soldiers could never achieve the goals and behaviors of a man that was unrealistically noble.
Third, these misconceptions cause people to invalidate soldiers’ experiences.

In Dulce et Decorum est, Owen offers a counter-narrative to the glorious tale of war offered by his country. His description of “...under a green sea, I saw him drowning / in all my dreams” (Owen) tells of a soldier dying from poison gas and seeing “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin”(Owen). In WWI, it was common for soldiers to come back having seen many grotesque deaths. Here, Owen addresses the potential trauma WWI soldiers experienced when seeing morbid things. Owen’s inability to suppress the images of the soldier’s death is literal and affects his mental health. However, the last lines of his poem also discuss“The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori”(Owen). While gore and death exist and impact the mental health of soldiers, they’re unaddressed in Owen’s society and ignored to create their own ideas of a “glorious” war. This purposeful refusal to address soldiers’ trauma and gory nature of WWI warfare marginalizes those soldiers affected by traumatic experiences and undiagnosed PTSD. While large-scale, explicit refusal to address trauma causes invalidation, individuals influenced by misconceptions can also discredit soldiers’ experiences. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim’s daughter Barbara doesn’t believe her father is traumatized by the war and writes off his Tralfamadorian ramblings as pure madness. Barbara, “thought her father was senile... because of damage to

his brain in the airplane crash”(Vonnegut 28). When she reads Billy’s letter about Tralfamadore, she states, “It’s all just crazy. None of it’s true!”(Vonnegut 29). Although she knows he father is a veteran, she doesn’t consider his ideas as resulting from trauma, but from the plane crash. Her preconceived notion of WWII as a patriotic fight against Nazism allows her to dismiss Billy’s experiences and make his stories seem like senile ramblings.
Representations of war in media affect ideas of soldier experience, causing them to both create misconceptions and dismiss actual veterans’ narratives. Patriotic symbols and dismissive attitudes still overshadow the harsh and bloody realities of war. Today, it’s easy to listen to the loudest media voices and stop there. However, finding the truth is key to prevent generalization, and then the stories of the front lines will match those of the headlines.