Analysis Of Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'

the horror of the unjust deaths of young soldiers. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is a poem about Owen’s

Throughout the ages, poetry has played--and continues to play--a significant part in the shaping of a generation. It ranges from passionate sonnets of love to the gruesome realities of life. One such example of harsh realism is Wilfred Owen 's "Dulce et Decorum Est." Owen 's piece breaks the conventions of early 20th Century modernism and idealistic war poetry, vividly depicts the traumatizing experiences of World War I, and employs various poetic devices to further his haunted tone and overall message of war 's cruel truths.

One is to think of war as one of the most honorable and noble services that a man can attend to for his country, it is seen as one of the most heroic ways to die for the best cause. The idea of this is stripped down and made a complete mockery of throughout both of Wilfred Owen’s poems “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. Through his use of quickly shifting tones, horrific descriptive and emotive language and paradoxical metaphors, Owen contradicts the use of war and amount of glamour given towards the idea of it.

Owen uses the contrast of the soldiers’ state pre-war and post-war to highlight just how much the soldier has lost through going to war. Physically, pre-war, the soldier is described as ‘younger than his youth,’ and has an ‘artist silly for his face.’ Suggesting that his beauty is worth capturing permanently in paint. The words ‘younger ‘and ‘youth’ emphasise this man’s innocence and boyishness, the tautology places emphasis on how young he is thus outlining his immaturity before the war and making his loss at war even more tragic. The contrast once he has returned where Owen

    Through vivid imagery and compelling metaphors "Dulce et Decorum Est" gives the reader the exact feeling the author wanted. The poem is an anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen and makes great use of these devices. This poem is very effective because of its excellent manipulation of the mechanical and emotional parts of poetry. Owen's use of exact diction and vivid figurative language emphasizes his point, showing that war is terrible and devastating. Furthermore, the utilization of extremely graphic imagery adds even more to his argument. Through the effective use of all three of these tools, this poem conveys a strong meaning and persuasive argument.

Wilfred Owen can be considered as one of the finest war poets of all times. His war poems, a collection of works composed between January 1917, when he was first sent to the Western Front, and November 1918, when he was killed in action, use a variety of poetic techniques to allow the reader to empathise with his world, situation, emotions and thoughts. The sonnet form, para-rhymes, ironic titles, voice, and various imagery used by Owen grasp the prominent central idea of the complete futility of war as well as explore underlying themes such as the massive waste of young lives, the horrors of war, the hopelessness of war and the loss of religion. These can be seen in the three poems, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and

Poem one, which is called “Ducle Et Decorum Est” and it’s written by Wilfred Owen. This poem is about a soldier who is vividly describing his journey as a soldier in World War I and all of the horrendous events that he recalls. The second poem is called “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” is written by Alfred Tennyson. Tennyson is writing about 600 soldiers riding into the battle of death, but he was not a soldier in World War I. Due to the authors lack of experience in dealing with war, we are going to see a lot of different opinions and views on the topics when we compare the two poems.

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.

How does Owen’s portrayal of the relationship between youth and war move us to a deeper understanding of suffering?

?Dulce Et Decorum Est? belongs to the genre of sonnets, which expresses a single theme or idea. The allusion or reference is to an historical event referred to as World War I. This particular poem's theme or idea is the horror of war and how young men are led to believe that death and honor are same. The poem addresses the falsehood, that war is glorious, that it is noble, it describes the true horror and waste that is war, this poem exhibits the gruesome imagery of World War I, it also conveys Owens strongly anti-war sentiments to the reader. He makes use of a simple, regular rhyme scheme, which makes the poem sound almost like a child's poem or nursery rhyme. Owens use of

In the First World War people wanted the young men to go to war, but

These soldiers felt a brotherly bond between each other in the midst of battle, creating a sense to do whatever it took in order to survive. Though Owen is writing in the heart of the Great War, he justifies the sympathy in those who battled by attacking those who are pro-war and those who mourn the soldiers yet do nothing else to stop the war. This letter was to have others see that, even though the soldiers deserve empathy, the people who brought on war are not worthy of a soldier’s life and are the true

who have not slept in a bed for weeks on end. In the description "his

to show how quickly they had to react to the attack and to draw our

War makes all its soldiers its victims. It strips them of their innocence; all had dreams for their future. Their future will become a lost life or a life full of memories that will continue to haunt them. The memories of killing, friends being killed, almosts, etc. War contains many horrors like these.