Dulce Et Decorum Est

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Question: Outline the important ideas in Owen and Sassoon's poetry and how those ideas are conveyed to the responder. In your response make detailed reference to at least two of the poems set for study. Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, both famous war poets of their time and today have recounted the reality and the aftermaths of war through the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Owen and Sassoon, one an officer and the other a soldier of World War I has expressed, protested and revealed the untold reality of war. Their use of poetic techniques such as free verse and solid imagery has helped society in understanding the harsh veracity of conflicts, as well as the mood and opinions of the men caught up in the war. In Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen he explains how the press and the public reassured themselves with the fact that all young men dying in the war were dying noble, heroic deaths. Owen wanted to express and illustrate the reality of the war to the reader to show how unpleasant and cruel war really is. He accounts how people will reassure you to fight for your country, but in reality, fighting for your country is simply ruling yourself to a pointless death. The title of the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est means "How sweet and Fitting it is," and in the end Owen states the title as being a lie by writing” The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est. / Pro patria mori." The poet conveys his message through a variety of themes, characters and ideas. The agony and torture of the war is one of the characters portrayed in Owen's poem. He uses metaphoric techniques to engage and attract the reader's attention. “He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning,"(section three, second verse) in this stanza Owen uses this technique to create a vivid, sickening image of one of his soldiers nearing death after they had been attacked. The

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