Examples Of Dehumanization In Dulce Et Decorum Est

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Wilfred Owen's, ‘dulce et decorum est’ allows readers to see what actually happened during warfare, challenging the government's way of recruiting young soldiers (like Owen's at the time) via propaganda and the ideas of war. Owen's challenges these ideas through his poetry by creating sensory imagery through the dehumanization of the soldiers, and by creating irony through juxtaposition and the title.

The dehumanization of the soldier is framed by depicting the reality of warfare to the audience by projecting sensory imagery throughout the poem. The government represented war to be for handsome, young, honourable men but Owen's is giving the readers imagery that contradicts those ideas. Owen's frames the soldiers dehumanization throughout the poem by using depicting sensory imagery like in the first stanza, “beggars under sacks”, sacks being uniforms and “Coughing like hags”, giving the reader the illustration of old ugly …show more content…

The first two stanzas of the poem,“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge” is used to display the reality of warfare. This stanza is not written in iambic pentameter but instead, Owen's uses trochaic pentameter to portray the real idea of warfare. The motions your mouth goes through whilst reading the poem out loud is a representation of what Owen's is describing in the first two stanzas. Owen's uses juxtaposition in his poem to compare the ideas of warfare from different perspectives (The use of propaganda to portray the idea of war vs. the actual warfare) like; “If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs". Owen's uses the juxtaposition in the action and sensory sound of the dying soldier against the idea of ‘Dulce et decorum est’ - It is sweet to die for my

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