Wilfred Owen's Poem 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'

From the earliest records of history, accounts of war have been portrayed as valiant acts of heroism. Children and adults alike have gathered together to hear tales of war and its glory. From the stories of Alexander the Great to recent-day movies like Saving Private Ryan, war has been praised and exalted with words such as bravery, honor, and freedom. However, Wilfred Owen's poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" shows the ugly, horrible side of fighting. By use of gripping words and vivid descriptions, Owen paints incredible pictures of what World War I was really like. He tears away the glory and drama and reveals the real essence of fighting: fear, torture, and death. No

This all aims at promoting the emotion of pity, to empathize upon the suffering forced upon the soldiers that Owen wishes the audience to feel, to recognize the irony on the glorification of war.

This technique serves to emphasize the solemn and serious content. In stanza one, Owen describes the soldiers as they set off towards the army base from the front line. The simile "Bent double, like old beggars"(1) not only says that they are tired, but that they are so tired they have been brought down to the level of beggars who have not slept in a bed for weeks on end. Also, the simile "coughing like hags"(2) helps to depict the soldiers? poor health and depressed state of mind. Owen makes us picture the soldiers as ill, disturbed and utterly exhausted. He shows that this is not the government-projected stereotype of a soldier, in gleaming boots and crisp new uniform, but is the true illustration of the poor mental and physical state of the soldiers. By telling us that many of the platoon are barefoot, Owen gives us an idea of how awful the soldiers? journey already is; it then gets even worse. Owen tells us that the soldiers, although they must have been trained, still do not notice the deadly mustard gas shells being fired at them from behind; such is the extent of their exhaustion.

In the first stanza, Owen describes a regiment marching through sludge, something not unusual for soldiers at the time. In the second stanza, however, he introduces a new threat, mustard gas. The speaker exclaims: “Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!” (Owen L9). As most of the soldiers are putting on their gas masks, one fails to do so. The speaker is left watching the man struggle: “flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…guttering, choking, drowning.” (Owen L12-16). After watching his fellow soldier succumb to the hellish effects of the gas, the speaker could not erase the images from his memory. In the last stanza, he chastised the people at home who romanticize war and challenged them to think about how admirable it is to watch a man die: “the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin” (Owen L19-20).

This image is definitely not the glamorous picture of glory that, say army recruitment presents; worse, the soldiers are doing worse than civilians. As soon as the next stanza “[m]en marched asleep. Many had lost their boots” (5). They have lost their usual awareness and move mechanically; that doesn’t sound appealing! It gets worse: “[b]ut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind” (6). So now they’re limping, apparently wounded, covered in blood, and can’t even see? It worsens further, “[d]runk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind” (7-8). The soldiers are so exhausted it incapacitates them, and they can no longer hear the bullets being fired. This poem sounds like a distorted nightmare, except the speaker is living it, and even reliving the torment of the soldier’s death while he is unconscious. Owen’s wording expresses that the soldiers are merely men, deteriorating and inconceivably overwhelmed the opposite of positive war poetry containing glory and honor.

Another tool in developing the effectiveness of the poem is the use of compelling figurative language in the poem helps to reveal the reality of war. In the first line, the metaphor, ?Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,?(1) shows us that the troops are so tired that they can be compared to old beggars. Also, the simile "coughing like hags"(2) helps to depict the soldiers? poor health and depressed state of mind. Owen makes us picture the soldiers as ill, disturbed and utterly exhausted Another great use of simile, ?His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,?(20) suggests that his face is probably covered with blood which is the color symbolizing the devil. A very powerful metaphor is the comparison of painful experiences of the troops to ??vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues.?(24) This metaphor emphasizes that the troops will never forget these horrific experiences. As you can see, Owen has used figurative language so effectively that the reader gets drawn into the poem.

Owen does this again through the aural imagery, ‘the shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; and bugles calling for them from sad shires’. This shows the effects of war on the soldiers and causes an emotional connection between them in the reader which therefore enforces the harsh reality of war. Both of these aspects challenge the reader’s perspective on war as they both contradict the glorification it receives through propaganda.

War is often associated with words like honor and glory, but Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est” strips away fanciful notions that war is anything less than absolute horror through his writing style and usage of setting, rhythm, and imagery to contrast the reality of war with an idealized version. The full Latin quote that concludes Owen’s poem, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” translates to “It is sweet and right to die for one’s country.” A popular saying at the time of the First World War when Owen penned the lines, the title of the poem originates in the Roman poet Horace’s Odes. However, as Owen so painfully illustrates, there is nothing sweet or right about the bitterness of death and devastation that war brings.

Wilfred Owen through his poetry reveals the truth of war. His poem “Dulce et Decorum est,” refutes the nationalistic sense of duty instead Owen highlights the exploitation of soldiers in a torturous environment. Furthermore, the abuse and mistreatment of the soldiers is portrayed in ” Anthem for doomed youth” to demonstrate the truth of war. Owen challenges the nationalistic propaganda surrounding the duty of war by highlighting the truth that war is inhumane in his poem, “Dulce et Decorum est”.

In his poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est, Owen uses similes, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, /Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge…” to highlight the suffering and fatigue of the soldiers, and the state they have been reduced to. The young men had been reduced to the state where they could be described

Owen’s synesthesia swirling throughout the whole poem. For example, “Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots?” It explained how exhausted the soldiers were during the war. Moreover, Owen uses drunk compare to sleepy or tired to make the readers think that the fatigueness is unbearable to all the soldiers. In the end the soldiers put everything on the line, emotionally as well as physically for what? The war is not to protect the people so then what is the reason? War is a lot to put up with and there is a lot of weight put on the soldiers to be a certain idol for the people, but the truth is that war is problematic and there is no heroism in the

Owen lashes back at the men and women who sent the soldiers to their dooms whilst they are peacefully sitting within their homes unaware of the wars reality, brutality. Owen, sees again the wagon that the man’s body was thrown into. The fact that the bodies were just thrown onto the wagon with other decomposing bodies creates the sense that life was meaningless when it comes to war. If you die, you die, there’s nothing that can be done. This poor soldier who could’ve went on to getting married or have kids, is just thrown onto a wagon where other soldiers are going to be tossed on top of. To the war he meant nothing. The death of the soldier is almost being compared to a possession. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, leaving nothing but white filling his eyes. The pain is contorting the face of the victim – ‘Like devil’s sick of sin’. Owen may have used the idea of the devil to compare the soldiers experience of war to hell. The soldiers face is literally ‘hanging’ as the flesh has been burnt and corroded causing it to exfoliate from his face. His blood gurgled from his ‘froth-corrupted lungs’. They may have been cancerous leading to him coughing up his guts. The ‘vile incurable sores’ are bitter memories that will remain imprinted in the soldier’s minds in such a manner that they will never be healed and the experience will forever be unbearable. Owens disdain for the war and the horrors that the soldiers experienced become evident throughout his poetry (e.g., The Send Off and Dulce Et Decorum Est). Owen mocks the fact that ‘its sweet and right to die for your country’ – ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’. He ends the poem by trying to reach out to the reader that fighting for your country at war isn’t going to bring you glory, but

When World War 1 began, many thought it was gonna be a short, silly war and the soldiers really did not take it seriously. This quickly changed and became one of the deadliest wars in human history. This war also brought a whole new selection of deadly weapons that countries could use on each other. These weapons included machine guns, flamethrowers, tanks, and toxic gas; the latter being what is used on the soldiers in the poem. The soldiers were very fatigued and did not hear the gas shell drop, but one exclaimed that there was gas and all but one of the soldiers were able to get their masks on. Owen illustrates the death of his comrade by saying “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning”(Owen 14). The green gas suffocated and choked their victims, which led to the appearance of the person drowning. As a result of these tragedies of war, many of the soldiers began to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Owen is shown to have PTSD as he states later “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”(Owen 15-16). Owen sees his fallen comrade’s suffering every night in his dreams. The peril that many of the soldiers faced and the effect it had on them after is another way that this war was so

The Horrors of War: An Explication of Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori; it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country. Wilfred Owen is just one of many to be told this lie. Owen himself had seen the horrors of war during his time serving in World War I and explains to the readers just how horrid it truly is in his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est.” He creates the mental image of the pain and suffering he and so many other soldiers had to experience on the battlefield. His poem creates the central idea that there is no sweetness or honor in dying in war.

The poem’s beginning immediately illustrates the cruelty of war felt by the soldier long after the war and fighting in the trenches has ended. Owen writes in his opening lines “He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey, Legless, sewn short at elbow…” and the reader understands the soldier is depicted in a