“Dulce et Decorum Est”, which translates from the Latin Poet Horace, “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”. The Title is Ironic because Wilfred Owen portrays the exact opposite in this poem. I believe this poem demonstrates the traumatic occurrence when people die for one’s country and to die for ones country in this poem projects anything but something fitting and sweet. This poem is about men dying from gas shells. Ones who died from these toxic gases were in a painful and miserable death.
The poet is saying that people should not talk about war as enthusiastically as it gives the impression that war is glorious. Furthermore, he says that the idea that ’it is sweet and right’ to die for your country is entirely untrue. Through this, we are able to form the opinion that war is not okay because it is a serious thing that carries many negative consequences. In Wilfred Owen’s poem Dolce et Decorum est, the use of similes conveys the harsh reality of war on soldiers as it changes them dramatically and kills the majority of them. 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.
‘Dulce et Decorum est’ by Wifred Owen Katriona Downie Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a magnificent, and horrific, description of a gas attack suffered by a group of soldiers in France in World War 1. One of his friends in his group is unable to get his helmet on in time and suffers horribly that Owen had to witness. This was an image he found extremely difficult to get out his head and kept coming back to him in his reoccurring nightmares. He writes this poem from the trenches while serving in war. Through his rhythms, dramatic description, and raw images, Owen seeks to convince that the horror of war far outweighs the patriotic clichés of those who glamorize war and increases my understanding of war and the horrors that come with it.
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.
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. Owen uses irony with the title Dulce et decorum est because it translates to it is a “Sweet and right thing”. This is irony because the poem is trying to say that war is bad and not a sweet and right thing. Owen also uses these words to hit out to Jessie Pope, who was a propaganda poet and Owen disliked her. Pope thinks that war was good and it was Ok to die during it but Owen strongly disagreed with that.
Owen also seeks to expose the betrayal of the authorities throughout poems such as ‘Disabled’ and ‘The parable of the old man and the young.’ He expresses how they acted with a disregard for the lives of their countries young men. Religion and its betrayal during the war is also emphasized by Wilfred Owen in ‘Anthem for doomed youth.’ He shows how the belief in religion did nothing to dampen the grim realities of war and he even begins to question his own beliefs. Another way Owen feels he has been betrayed is through the way society treated those soldiers who had suffered both mental and physical injuries. They were labelled as cowards and looked down upon. This is best shown in the poem ‘Disabled.’ Owen was ultimately driven by the betrayal of the authorities, religion and society and he used his horrifying experiences of the war to exemplify this betrayal.
Owen then goes on to describe how the mental trauma becomes worse. “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” This tells us the soldiers mind is haunted by the sight of his fellow soldier dying from the horrible gas. He is dramatizing this scene some time after it occurred, and his dreams are still filled with this unforgettable sight, which becomes a regular nightmare for the soldier. Wilfred Owen wrote this to shock the reader, and to make the reader think about what
Owen wants his reader to feel exactly what he felt about the war, persuade his reader to believe the terror, pain and torture of the war, how devastating can a war effect a human being. He uses imagery and innovative metaphors through the poem. In the first two lines, ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge’, Owen is using figurative language combined with simile and alliteration literary devises to reveal the reality of the war. Soldiers are
Suicide in the Trenches – A hidden massage of a personal abhorrence How is war like? Siegfried Sassoon’s poem “Suicide in the Trenches” answers this question effectively through communication of his personal abhorrence of accruing bloodshed in war. He presents his hidden massage by contrasting images of a desperate young soldier and the conceited crowds to reveal his resentment of war. Sassoon uses the two main components to presents extreme abomination are language and content. Sassoon uses blameful language to describe the ruthless of government in order to reveal the ugly hidden massage as settling the situation.
Anthem for doomed youth In Wilfrid Owen’s poem “anthem for doomed youth” a strong anti-war message is conveyed through the strong views, harsh imagery and sarcastic irony. Looking at the title alone of the poem: anthem for doomed youth the bluntest aspect for me was the spiteful use of sarcasm and irony in the title. The use of the word ‘anthem’ evokes a sense of national pride and strength however the feeling is distorted by Owen when he implies that the youth of Britain are being lead blindly into certain death, tricked into fighting the inhumane war by their own countries. In the very first line of the poem Owen questions the morality of the generals and politicians sending the young men to their inevitable deaths, asking the generals and politicians how much these brave young men are worth. Are they people, sons of mothers waiting back home anxiously for their return, or just another statistic in the folder on the desk of their cushy offices well away from the hell on earth that was the first world war in the quote: “What passing bells for those who die as cattle?” Owen asks: who cares when these valiant young men who march forward unto their deaths, what passing bells?