Similarities Between Dulce Et Decorum Est And Frankenstein

A stylistic and thematic comparison of ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est.’ and ‘Frankenstein and His Creature

In this piece of work I hope to compare successfully Wilfred Owens ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ with Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’. I will compare the similarities and differences between the two texts in themes, styles and linguistic features. When first reading both pieces of writing you wouldn’t assume there are many similarities between the two authors, as they were written one hundred years apart and came from completely opposite social and historical backgrounds.

Mary Shelley was a young educated aristocrat, her father being a leading anarchist thinker and her mother a strong feminist; this enabled her to have a wealthy lifestyle. She was married

to a famous poet named Percy Bysshe Shelly and they were associated with an extremely wealthy circle of friends. Their hedonistic lifestyle led them to have a cultural gap year to Greece, mainly called the ‘grand tour’ due to the drug and alcohol fuelled partying that occurred.
Mary Shelly also going through grief after having a miscarriage during this time possibly sparking interest ‘galvanism’ which was the top story of the time a scientific theory which was the use of electrical currents to bring animals back to life. During the grand tour on a stormy night in their villa Mary Shelly decided to start writing Frankenstein.
Wilfred Owen coming from the complete opposition to Mary Shelly, being an English teacher from a lower middle class background; he was considered to be a religious man and also an active humanitarian. World war one had begun and Wilfred Owen decided to enlist as a junior officer for philanthropic reasons. While on the front line Wilfred Owen had gone through personal horrors. One in particular being trapped in a bunker with a decomposing German soldier which resulted in a spell in the Craiglockhart psychiatric hospital being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. While in hospital he met Siegfried Sassoon where they soon formed a student/teacher relationship of such; however some would like to speculate something of the romantic nature. Dulce was written as a way of exposing the true nature of war and the lies of the propaganda fed to the people of Great Britain, however was not published until after the war and sadly after Wilfred Owens death.
Initially when reading both pieces we can spot obvious differences this including the large period of time between both publications, Frankenstein being written in 1819 and Dulce one hundred years later in 1919. The authors come from completely different social classes with this we could also take into consideration that Mary shelly was writing from the luxury of her private villa, while Owen had started his poem from the confinements of a psychiatric hospital during his recovery.
During the course of Dulce, Owens use of linguistic techniques creates an intense and extremely compelling visualisation of the experiences during war. A powerful imagery was created with the use of similes. We saw this when reading ‘bent double, like old beggars under sacks’, this gave the reader an impression of young soldiers turning into frail old men due their duration out in the trenches. I found the use of an oxymoron to describe the men fitting their helmets as ‘an ecstasy of fumbling’ created a desperate image of the soldiers.
The poem was written in retaliation to journalist Jesse Pope who produced propaganda for the war. Owens use of irony and sarcasm due to the lies of the war that were being fed back to England were shown when Owen said ‘my Friend you would not tell with such high zest’. This being directed to Jesse Pope ironically because they were not friends. The contradiction in the title of the poem is also ironic as it translates to ‘it is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country’ which contradicts the entirety of the poem.
The most significant differences in style are that one is poem and the other a narrative. Dulce is filled with figures of speech however; Frankenstein is an epistolary novel complete with decorative vocabulary. Knowing there are so many differences and nothing shows us why they should be similar other than us assuming Owen read Shelly’s Frankenstein. There can be clear interesting thematic similarities found.
Both pieces of writing start with elements of dark colours, Shelly starts ‘on a dreary night of November’ which set the scene in our minds and place us ‘by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light’ to indicate to the reader there was a lacking of light. Owen used similar techniques when saying ‘till on the haunting flares we turned our backs’ this was an indirect to suggest the skies were in darkness as flares would be as visible in the day. Although the use of colour is not as distinctive in Owen’s in comparison to Shelly’s descriptive language, Owen’s ability to set the scene visually allows the reader to see the darkness in both pieces of writing.
Another similarity found in both was the theme of exhaustion. Metaphors are used in Dulce to describe how ‘men marched asleep’ and were ‘drunk with fatigue’ this exposed how severely exhausted soldiers were at the time. This could be compared with Victor Frankenstein and how he is ‘unable to compose his mind to sleep’ and ‘deprived myself of rest and health’ this showing us as readers how truly exhausted Frankenstein was. Although we can note that Victor Frankenstein’s exhaustion was self-inflicted out of the desperation to complete his project, whereas the soldiers in Dulce had no option they had to stay awake as it was life or death. The soldiers in Dulce refer to a ‘distant rest’ this is meant to be taken literally as they were far from being able to rest but also may be a metaphorical death. However, Victor is shown to be attempting to have rest by saying ‘I threw myself on the bed’.
Each extract has a theme of dreams and nightmares which is also referred to. ‘In all my dreams, before my helpless sight’ Owen reflects on his experiences and how they come back to him in the form of dreams or some would see these as nightmares. Similar to this, Victor Frankenstein ‘was disturbed by the wildest dreams’ again reflecting on his creation in the form of a dream. We can also see the similarities of death in both dreams, Owen’s being the dead soldier and for Frankenstein his wife and mother.
Both characters are seen to be dehumanised, we see in Dulce uses of animal imagery throughout to show how the soldiers’ have had their humanity debased as soldiers ‘limped on blood-shod. All went lame; all blind’. The words Blood-shod and lame are often used to describe horses which created and animal imagery. Dulce shows an inhumane and dehumanised experience while at war, for example ‘behind the wagon that we flung him in’ the use of the word ‘flung’ shows how desensitised to death the soldiers had to become. Owen later on describes it as ‘bitter as cud’, cud being an animal’s way of regurgitation again dehumanising the soldiers and their emotions. Lack of humanity is less evident in Frankenstein however more than one example could be argued. The creature itself being one with its ‘watery eyes, that seemed almost the same colour as the dun white sockets which they were set’, shrivelled completion and his straight black lips’ this allowed visual imagery of the monstrous creation he had created in the mind of the reader and it was far from the human he had tried to create although Frankenstein said ‘his limbs were in proportion and I had selected his features as beautiful’ this could be an example of Victor himself becoming dehumanised and monster like by suggesting the inhumane tendencies he must have for having and creating such ideas.
The most common and final theme is the transformation of the character and this can be found in both pieces of writing.

However this transformation isn’t so evident within Dulce the poem but in fact in Wilfred Owen the man. Throughout the war he experienced a personal change; he was raised with strong religious beliefs and before the war was considering whether to become a priest. During the war his experiences made him re – consider his beliefs, he had joint for the purpose of ‘helping the boys as best as we can’ and in doing so had become a trained killer. Some would see this as being a monster and seeing the real transition in character of Wilfred Owen.

When reading Frankenstein a transformation of Victor Frankenstein is evident, we can see clear similarities between the monster he had created and Frankenstein himself. Shelley opens with ‘Convulsive motion agitated its limbs’ to describe the movements of the creature. Later on similarly she says ‘every limb became convulsed’ using this describe victors movements, showing clear links between the creature and Victor which was the sole purpose of repeating the same words to describe them both to indicate how victor was changing alongside the creation of the creature some would say he became the

monster.