Examples Of Diction In Dulce Et Decorum Est

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Death, Destruction, piles of men dead and bloated from the poisioned by the gas, brutal gut wren hing trench warfare that claimed aproximately 20 million lives, this is the scene Wilfred Owen recalls in his Poem "Dulce et Decorum est". Wilfred Owens enlisted in the British army in 1915 when he was soon deployed near the front lines, the scene of the war left a mental scar in Wilfreds brain as shortly after being deployed he suffered two concussions one from falling into a crater left by an artillery shell and a second after being struck by a morter shell. Not long after recovering from his concussions he was diagnosed with PTSD. After a brief period he was redeployed before being sent back again due to an instance of friendly fire. eventually …show more content…

A good example of diction is the word "writhing", the definition is, "to respond with great physical or emotional discomfort". The next word is "Guttering", Unlike the previous word this word is used as slang by the author to convey a person violently coughing up the frothy bile from the gas. The word "Gargling" is defined as "to wash ones mouth and throat with a liquid kept in motion by exhaling through it" this word is used in the poem to describe a soldier choking on liquid from the gas. "Floundering" is "to stragger helplessly or clumsily in water of mud" such as the man from the poem as suffered the gas. The final word is "Smothering", defined as "the act of killing someone by suffocateing them" this word once again describes the propertys of the gas as men suffocate within it. Now what do all of these words have in common? None of them are plesent, they are all inheriently negative words that you dont really have to know the definition of to understand that they are describeing something negative and uncomfortable. Diction can be used to enhance sentences and convey intense emotions in order to create …show more content…

An example of imagery is the line "bitter as cud", its pretty obvious that this line appeals to your sense of taste dur to the word "bitter". "floundering like a man in fire or lime" is a phrase that appeals to your sense of sight as im sure you can picture what someone staggering as if on fie would look like. The next sentence "watch the white eyes writhing in his face" this line also appeals to our sense of sight, as we are told to watch what is most likely nothing but a corpse. The last line "if you could hear at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs" envokes or sense of hearing as the author describes the scene and tells us of the vile "gargling" sound the soldier made as he died. Because Imagery is made to appeal to the five senses ist allows us to relate to the story or poem as we imagine the feelings and emotions of the

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