On the first read-through of Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est it seems to just be a poem describing a soldiers experience in World War I, but there is much more to the story than that. Through the use of several literary techniques, Owen is able to vividly describe the speaker’s experiences and at the same time make them relatable to the people reading the poem. He also is able to criticize the people who he thinks are at least partly responsible for “tricking” a younger, more gullible him into the situation in the first place.
Owen uses very vivid imagery throughout the poem to describe how horrible the war was to the speaker and his fellow soldiers. He starts by describing how worn and tired he and his fellow soldiers are as they start “towards our distant rest” (Owen 695) which can be interpreted as them simply just walking back to their barracks to sleep or, in a darker sense, to their deaths. He describes how they marched asleep and how they were too tired to even hear the sounds of the gas shells dropping behind them. “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” (Owen 695) someone yells when they finally realize what it happening. All of the soldiers scramble to put on their gas masks but at least one man near the speaker can’t make it to his mask in time; “But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...” (Owen 695).
Owen then flashes forward in time describing how the death of the soldier still haunts his dreams; “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” (Owen 696). He witnessed a man die before him, there wasn’t anything he could do to help him, and it still haunts the speaker. He describes how he saw “the white eyes writhing in his face,” (...
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...r believes that no one will understand anyway. He is also able to make the point that unless you have experienced war first hand like the speaker did, one will never understand and one has no right to convince innocent men to go to war or to promote it. Owen describes war so vividly that no one would wish it on even their worst enemy. Through heavy use of irony in the lines “It is sweet and right to die for one's country.” (Poem and Notes) he is also able to make dying for one’s country in war not seem quite as honorable as the promoters of the war made it out to be.
Works Cited
Owen, Wilfred. "Dulce et Decorum Est." Literature and the Writing Process. By Elizabeth McMahan., et al. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2014. 695-96. Print.
"Poem and Notes – Dulce et Decorum Est." The War Poetry Website. Ed. David Roberts. Saxon Books, 2011. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.
Just as the poem is written in a rhyme and rhythm that makes poetry easy to follow, the vivid imagery helps one to picture more easily what is going on in the poem. Owen brilliantly chooses words and phrases that illuminate the scene, making the reader feel as if he is physically in the scene along with the characters. For example, Owen describes that the 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 (Gioia 782). A feeling of sadness and pity is felt as one hears the previous words. It is almost as if the scene of the soldiers trudging through the battlefield is being painted for the reader to actually visually ...
Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” Poetry X. Ed. Jough Dempsey. 9 Sep 2003. 10
Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” World War I British Poets. Ed. Candace Ward. Dover Publications, Inc; New York, 1997.
The poem Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen captures the reader and transports them back to a time or war and hardship, reminding them of our history and how society made the wrong decision all those years ago.
A. The "Dulce et Decorum Est." The Faber Book of War Poetry. Ed. Kenneth Baker.
A Comparison of Dulce Et Decorum Est and Exposure Traditional war poetry gives the idea of patriotic idealism of war. This style of poetry implies that war is patriotic and that people who fight for their country are honorable. But many of the poets do not portray war as it really is, by glossing over the gory details with attractive images. Many traditional war poems were written before the war to persuade and encourage young boys to become loyal soldiers.
Owen opens his poem with a strong simile that compares the soldiers to old people that may be hunch-backed. ‘Bent double, like old beggars like sacks.’ ‘like sacks’ suggests the image that the soldiers are like homeless people at the side of a street that is all dirty. This highlights that the clothes they were wearing were al...
... middle of paper ... ...is used to stress the moral horror of the war when Owen compares the victim’s face to ‘a devil sick of sin’. and when he compares the poisoned blood to the physical diseases of cancer and ‘vile incurable sores’. All these similes bring out the awfulness of dying in a gas attack, making a strong message to. contradict the vague, Latin phrase about how sweet it is to die for.
Owen then moves on to tell us how even in their weak human state, the soldiers march on, until the enemy fires 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 uses imagery constantly to convey the conditions and feelings experienced during this war.
In ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, Owen compares the solders who are men to ugly, old, sick women through the simile “coughing like hags”, highlighting that the men no longer possess strength, masculinity, exceptional physical skills and potency. As a result, the soldiers’ eradicated youth and innocence portrays the dehumanising effect that the soldier’s have faced through their experiences of the war. Additionally, Owen further explores this dehumanising effect through the exaggerated movement of the soldiers in the hyperbolic metaphor “We cursed through sludge”, illustrating the ghastly and gruesome environment made up of a mix of materials such as body parts of other fellow soldiers, blood and mud. The horrendous conditions the soldiers faced for a long period of time had a drastic impact on the soldier’s mental health which in turn lead to post-traumatic stress disorder or shell-shock disorder and lost of potency. Owen also portrays that not only did the war affect a few soldiers, but all the soldiers through the repetition of “all”. Ultimately, it is conveyed that the soldiers had to unwillingly sacrifice their human attributes and was dehumanised as a result of human conflict. Similarly, in ‘The Next War’, Owen
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” is literature in that it is literary, emotionally affective, political, and historical. The poem, written during an horrific war and published soon after, presents an alternate view to war in contrast to the general existing belief that war is patriotic. This is done through poignant imagery and an implied criticism of the hypocrisy behind decisions of war.
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.
Dulce et Decorum est is a poem written about the first world war. Its Wilfred Owens first hand account of World War I, the War that, ultimately, killed him. Wilfred Owen was an anti-war poet. He wrote of the horrible conditions encounter by the young soldier in the trenches.
He starts the poem describing his fellow soldiers and himself as beggers, knock-kneed, coughing like ugly old women, cursed through a wet and horrible earth; feeling hatred towards the earth. As they began to march towards their distant rest point. Owen states “Many had lost their boots, but limped on, blood-shod;” saying how some were missing parts of their uniforms, mainly their boots and as they marched on the blood on their cuts had clotted creating a protecting shield in substitute for their boots. As they moved on they were tired, so tired Owen describes the feeling as “…blind; drunk with fatigue”. Moved past the Five-Nine attacks they were then attacked by gas bombs. When Owen states “Gas! GAS! Quick boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;” he shows us how even when they soldiers only had enough energy to keep walking they had to dig deep and find the strength to place their gas masks on to get through the gas attack. While going through that Owen tells us how not everyone had enough strength to get their mask on and all he heard was yelling out and as he watched one soldier through his dim, misty, thick green light as he was drowning on dry land from poison; “as under a green sea, I saw him drowning”. Owen goes on to outline how this soldier plunges at him for help
Drunk with fatigue", echoes this view that the troops are wandering and stumbling around aimlessly with no sense of direction or of purpose. In the second stanza, the pace changes to one of urgency; Owen using the word "Gas" in swift repetition demonstrates this. By doing this Owen illustrates the urgency of a life and death situation, which requires the need to put on their gas masks. Owen describes a horrific scene unfolding in front of his very eyes, a scene of a man dying a horrible death because he was too slow to put on his ... ...