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Dulce et Decorum analysis
What is the intended audience of dulce et decorum est
Imagery of the poem dulce et decorum est
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War is the greatest flaw in mankind. For generations, war has been around. In the old days before World War One, the idea of going to battle was glorified to the young. War was made out to be like an adventure of a lifetime. In the old ages, war was truly viewed as something great. Those who refused to fight would be viewed as cowards, not wanting to join in on the greatest adventure of a lifetime. When World War One came around after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, many young men from both the Triple Entente and Central Powers joined thinking this war would be the best adventure of their lives as told by previous generations of soldiers. However, they were mistaken. What would eventually be known as the lost generation realized …show more content…
The soldiers are described as beaten up and covered in blood. That one night he was switching from his post to get rest with a fellow group of soldiers, the Germans attacked them with gas. The poem describes the chaos that was endured. The soldiers were described as moving quickly to grab their gas masks to protect them from the mustard gas. It also shows how some soldiers failed to get a mask in time and quickly started to suffer in great pain. Owen describes the way the soldier moved in the gas; spastically moving and screaming like if he was burning in flames. Owen describes the way the soldier died as drowning in a green sea. It is then shown through imagery how graphic the soldier's death was, Owen says “he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning...his hanging face like a devil’s sick of sin; if you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”. The poem is mainly about how brutal and sickening war can be. When Owen states “his hanging face like a devil’s sick of sin”, it means that even the devil himself is sick of the cruelty of the war. It shows how bad trench warfare was to the soldiers. It worse than Hell to Owens, as the image of the soldier's grotesque death was imprinted into his mind. He could not stop seeing that soldier's death in every thought, especially dreams. There is irony in the phrase Dulce Et Decorum Est, as it means “It is sweet to die for one’s country. Sweet and decorous!” Owen mocks the idea that war is an adventure as he knows the harsh truth of what war is; Hell on Earth. The poem shows the reality of the tales of warfare they have been told about. The soldiers went into the war believing the lies of adventure and glory; however, when they got to the battlefield, they quickly realized it was not true. The connotation of the poem is that the young are taken advantage of and lied to for others
The ghastly experiences on the front deeply traumatized young soldiers, many of whom already had some poetic endeavours, and as a result they began writing trench poetry. The best trench poets, like Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Siegfried Sassoon produced their best works only when they abandoned the conventional “Georgian” style of Rupert Brooke and instead wrote realistically about the war and the situation on the front (Clausson). Wilfred Owen, perhaps the most famous trench poet, criticizes the romantic ideal of sacrifice in his “gas poem” (Bloom) “Dulce et Decorum Est”, thus trying to destroy “the glamorized decency of war” (Bloom 15). In the first stanza young men are depicted as “old beggars” (Owen), who are in a trance-like state, lame, blind, drunk, and deaf, too tired to be afraid of the sound of rifle fire, of “outstripped Five-Nines” (Owen) behind them. They march towards some place where they could rest. Then, the gas attack shakes them up: “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” (Owen). Unfortunately, one man was did not manage to put h...
Dulce et Decorum Est is about the horrific situation that men went through in trench war fare, ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge’. The poem depicts the struggle to survive and the traumatic experiences of the first world war from the horrible conditions that the men had to face, to the gassing of all those around them. This is evident throughout the poem. ‘Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots, of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling’. This use of oxymoron’s allows the reader to create an image in their minds thus bring them closer to the horrific setting of the poem and allowing them to really feel as if they were there themselves.
The poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen portrays the horrors of World War I with the horrific imagery and the startling use of words he uses. He describes his experience of a gas attack where he lost a member of his squadron and the lasting impact it had on him. He describes how terrible the conditions were for the soldiers and just how bad it was. By doing this he is trying to help stop other soldiers from experiencing what happened in a shortage of time.
Wilfred Owen is a tired soldier on the front line during World War I. In the first stanza of Dulce Et Decorum Est he describes the men and the condition they are in and through his language shows that the soldiers deplore the conditions. Owen then moves on to tell us how even in their weak human state the soldiers march on, until the enemy fire gas shells at them. This sudden situation causes the soldiers to hurriedly put their gas masks on, but one soldier did not put it on in time. Owen tells us the condition the soldier is in, and how, even in the time to come he could not forget the images that it left him with. In the last stanza he tells the readers that if we had seen what he had seen then we would never encourage the next generation to fight in a war.
Owen as a young soldier held the same romantic view on war as majority of the other naive soldiers who thought that war would be an exciting adventure. The documentary extract illustrates how markedly Owen’s perspective of the war changed, as noted in a letter to his mother while he was still in the front lines: “But extra for me, there is the universal perversion of ugliness, the distortion of the dead ... that is what saps the soldierly spirit.” In ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, Owen’s change of heart is evident through the irony of the poem title and the ending line “The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est, Pro patria mori.”, an allusion to the Roman axiom made famous by Horace, which translates to “The old Lie; It is sweet and right to die for your country.”. The line depicts Owen’s realisation that the horrific nature of war through human conflict is not sweet and right at all, rather, it is appalling and “bitter as the cud” as death is always present on the battlefield. Additionally, Owen indirectly responds to Jessie Pope’s poetry, a pro-war poetess, through the reference “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest… The old lie…”, further highlighting his changed perspective towards the war which has been influenced
Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” makes the reader acutely aware of the impact of war. The speaker’s experiences with war are vivid and terrible. Through the themes of the poem, his language choices, and contrasting the pleasant title preceding the disturbing content of the poem, he brings attention to his views on war while during the midst of one himself. Owen uses symbolism in form and language to illustrate the horrors the speaker and his comrades go through; and the way he describes the soldiers, as though they are distorted and damaged, parallels how the speaker’s mind is violated and haunted by war.
Through the use of dramatic imagery in Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen is able to recreate a dramatic war scene and put the reader right on the front lines. The use of language is very effective in garnering the readers’ attention and putting the dire images of war into the mind. He emphasizes that war is upsetting and appalling at times. There is nothing sweet about it. He only strengthens his argument by the use of strong descriptive words and vivid figurative language. The utilization of these techniques gives the poem a strong meaning and provides the reader with a vivid portrayal of the events that took place during this grisly occurrence.
...za is when the speaker’s argument changes, and he begins to resent the war and the saying, “Dulce et Decorum Est”, as he is recalling the sight of the soldier dieing from the gas plunging at him. The fourth and final stanza makes the speaker’s argument very clear that it is not sweet and honorable to fight and die for the fatherland. The structure of the poem allows the speaker to relay his experience and finish by summing up his argument by saying if anyone else saw what he saw, then “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est” (25-27). The speaker blatantly establishes his argument, the saying Dulce et decorum est is simply patriotic propaganda to get young innocent men to fight for the fatherland, or in other words, a despicable lie that sends innocent youth to their graves.
Both poems expose the realities of war and how traumatic it can be. Both Turner and Owen have had first hand experiences of the horrors of warfare. They felt the pain and saw the violence, the hurt. They gave voice to the traumas they lived through; by doing this they forced people visualize what war really is and hopefully cautioned people to rethink their perspectives.
It goes through the worst parts of the war and describes them in detail. The horrors in these descriptions contradict the glorification of the war The poem consists of four stanzas, the first describes the soldiers, the second a gas attack, the third Owen’s nightmares and last an accusation to the people back home. Owen’s poems are suffused with the horror of battle, and yet finely structured and innovative. The first stanza sets the scene as it describes the conditions the men fought in and their feelings. Owen immediately shocks the readers by describing the young soldiers as ‘bent double’ emphasising their exhaustion and the way they slump along, deformed by fatigue, I think this is an effective simile because no one back home will be expecting their proud soldiers described as beggars.
The narrator concludes, “Honor the charge they made! / Honor the Light Brigade, / Noble six hundred,” which exhibits the tone of glory and moral victory in the battle. On the other hand, Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” the tone created is much grimmer, where there is no glory in war. In the first stanza, Owen presents a scene by utilizing words and phrases such as “haunting” (3), “all went lame, all blind” (6), and “drunk with fatigue” (7). These words and phrases immediately give readers an image of tired and worn-down soldier, which is a stark difference to the exclamations given in the first stanza of “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
... middle of paper ... ... Unlike other poets who glorified war and eluded people’s minds, Owen brought the reality of war and death in front of people’s eyes. War is not just fighting for your nation and gaining victory, it is looking at death and inhumanity eye to eye and experiencing agony, suffering and reality.
In conclusion, Owen only loosely bases the structure of this free-verse poem on the iambic pentameter. The comparison of the past and the present emphasizes on what the soldier has lost in war. There are several recurring themes shown throughout the poem, such as reminiscence and sexual frustration. Reminiscence is shown through the references to his life before the war, while sexual frustration is depicted through the unlikeliness of a girl ever loving him due to his disability. The message that Owen is trying to get across to his readers is the falseness of war propaganda and pacifism – what war can do to one - and he conveys his ideas using various themes, language and through the free-verse structure of this poem.
The psychological journey in his poems explores these ideas of human tragedy and loss evoking dehumanisation and pain where dramatic imagery confronts the responders with the stark reality and the horrors of war. The poems ‘Dulce et decorum est’, ‘the next war’ and ‘futility’ looks over at the grotesque nature of war and the young soldiers sacrifice in a chaotic environment, where many deaths and degradations are explored. His personal experience at the war front ultimately adds depth to one’s understanding and perspective of the war and the decayed human existence. Owen’s poems present the reader with a powerful exploration of the impact of human cruelty on individuals. How does Owen achieve this in his poetry?
This poem invites readers to question the propaganda and analyse the discrepancies between the reality of war and the fantasy depicted by the government. Owen uses emotive and strong diction and language devices to share his first hand experience of the battlefield, the destructive and damaging nature of conflict and the chaotic conditions of combat. In Dulce et Decorum est, Owen strives to depict the physical and mental struggles that took a toll on the soldiers with metaphors and graphic imagery, both detailed in all their horror. In the second verse, Owen recounts a comrade’s sudden painful death, conveying to the reader that soldiers during war didn’t die gallantly or bravely but instead without ceremony.