“Dulce et Decorum Est” By Wilfred Owen Critical essay – Callum Kaczynski “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a truly inspiring poem written by Wilfred Owen. As a former soldier, Owen’s poetic exploration conveys the shocking reality of war, and his anger towards the destruction and devastation it causes. The physical state of the soldiers after war creates a pitiful sense of despair. “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks.” This simile shows that they may be seeking desperate help, rest, peace and shelter. At one point they were young, fit men, and now they are worn and weak.
This simile is effective in helping us understand the sheer extremity of the soldiers’ exhaustion. The idea that war prematurely aged these boys is emphasized with a second simile “knock-kneed, coughing like hags”. Again we see these men in a state that they shouldn’t be in as Owen suggests they’re old, sick and on their last dregs of energy. Their limbs as well as their internal organs, unable to cope. Like beggars
This is good word choice because it shows us how the men are suffering and that they are tired. Also “coughing like hags” shows us that the soldiers look ill and as old as a hag who is an old, dirty witch, but they are really young men. In Verse one there is a good simile which also describes the soldiers: “Bent double like old beggars under sacks.” This is a good simile because it emphasises the heavy equipment they are carrying and “beggars” suggests how dirty and unhealthy the soldiers are. Secondly as well as making such comparisons, Owen’s effective word choice strengthen the impact of the poem on the reader. At the start of this poem the poet uses the word “Trudge”.
In the first two lines of the poem, Owen uses the similes “Bent double like old beggars under sacks, knocked kneed, coughing like hags” to paint a grim picture in readers minds of how the soldiers were. He compares the young and fit soldiers to old sick men. This comparison goes against society’s perception of how the soldiers were in world war one and two. In the
There were also a lot of gas attacks. Owen really tries to get the reader to understand how bad it was by using horrid imaginary by telling us how tired the soldiers were by writing ‘Men march asleep’ and ‘Drunk with fatigue’ and of his description of watching a soldier dying because he couldn’t get his gas mask on in time of a gas attack. Owen poem is so descriptive that when reading it, you can imagine it in your mind playing like a film whilst reading it. The poem begins with the simile ‘Bent double like old sacks, knock-kneed coughing like hags’ we imagine the soldiers walking slowly like the elderly due to tiredness, and bent double due to all the equipment that they carried at the time with the sounds of five-nines exploding around them. ‘Coughing like hags’ the conditions was not great in the trenches in World War 1, it was full of diseases and the weather conditions would make fighting a great deal harder.
Dulce et Decorum Est Written Explanation War is often depicted as glorious and heroic however it deceives by being a connotation of hell! In the bottom right of the poster, the image shown is comparing the soldier on the left to an old man. This comparison is shown in the opening lines of the poem as Owen states: “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks” This is a dramatic opening to the poem which through the use of power visual image shows the pain that the soldier is going throughout war and the inability to move. The soldier is not fit, healthy and glorious like the propaganda posters (on the left) showed. Owen compares soldiers fighting in war to sick old men because it shows that soldiers are like outcasts from society.
Through his poems, Owen highlights the unjust experiences of soldiers to create a protest against the bureaucracy because of how they justified the harming and killing of many for their own political gain. He does this by highlighting the actions and inactions of the bureaucracy that contribute to benefit of the administration. This can be explored in his poems ‘Parable of the Old Man and the Young’ (Parable) and the epic war poem ‘Disabled’. These two poems employ Owens message of anti-war sentiment to establish a connection with the audience through his manipulation of poetic techniques. Owen highlights such unjust experiences of the soldiers to augment his argument against the bureaucracy.
In the first line, "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”, shows us that the troops are so tired that they look like old beggars, slouching from being so drowsy. Another smile the writer demonstrates is, "His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin," which I believe suggests that his face is bleeding and covered with red blood which represents the devils color. A strong metaphor that the writer uses is in line 24, “Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,” This emphasizes that these troops will never forget the traumatic experiences they endured while being at war. Through the use of Wilfred Owens language in this poem we can get drawn to the poem and have a sense of feeling of what is happening to these troops and have empathy towards them. The imagery which is used in this poem is also used to show the tone and theme.
He was awarded a military cross and was well-known before the war. He was born in 1886 and died in 1967. The poem of his I am doing is Attack. I am going to how both poets portray the unseen horrors of the war. I am going to do this by indicating what methods and techniques they use to affect the reader and make them feel emotion towards the soldiers.
"Knock-kneed" is a condition that makes knees hit together when walking. Owen employed this in his poem to show the reader how tired the soldiers were. They could not stand up and walk straight because they had already "cursed through sludge" for many miles. He also utilized the phrase "blood shod", which is when a horseshoe gets put on too hard and the horse's hoofs start to bleed. This exhibited the physical pain that the soldiers were going through.