Dulce ET Decorum EST “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a powerful poem by Wilfred Owen which depicts the horrific conditions endured by young soldiers during World War One. The poem is divided into four sections: a description of the numbed, shell shocked conditions as they struggle to return from the frontline, an account of a gas attack, its haunting effects on Owen and a plea not to glorify war. Owens’s use of vivid imagery is particularly interesting in Verse one. For example the soldiers are described as “knocked kneed coughing like hags”. This is good word choice because it shows us how the men are suffering and that they are tired.
‘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.
The first stanza reflects the severe condition of the worn out soldiers which is implied by hyperbole, such as “All went lame; all blind”(line 6), expressing the vehemence of the poets feelings more than the tragedy of the soldiers. The auditory and visual images Owen conjures in this stanza, however, create a shocking contrast with Horace´s idea that dying ‘heroically’ for one´s country is glorious, , “blood-shod”. Furthermore, by using the simile “bent double, like old beggars under sacks” in the first line, the poet further conjures the image of destitute persons, exhausted from the heavy weight of their bags and
Dulce Et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen Wilfred Owen’s poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est is a tendentious poem about the harsh realities of World War I; throughout his poems he shows his hatred for the Generals and commanding officers. In this poem he describes his memories of physical horror, and how many soldiers had been mislead about the “glory” of war. It should also be noted that this poem is in first person, and Owen is recalling the event, also the event in just one moment of time. The poem is split into four different stanzas, in the first stanza he shows how weak the soldiers were due to the horrific effects of the war. In the first line he starts off by using a hyperbole to show how badly the soldiers were affected: like old beggars under sacks, this shows that even though these men were supposed to be the ‘cream of the crop’ so to speak, they were being compared to beggars under sacks.
Owen compares soldiers fighting in war to sick old men because it shows that soldiers are like outcasts from society. At the top left of the poster, the image shown represents the difficulty and the terrible physical outcomes, soldiers found travelling on ground particularly in sludges as Wilfred Owen states in the first stanza: “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge” The use of the word Knock-kneed is alliteration for emphasis, a hard, staccato sound to echo the harsh mood of these lines and soldier’s misery. It stresses echo the brutality of the soldiers’ destruction, their transformation from healthy young men into ‘beggars’ and ‘hags’. The use of the word coughing compares men to sick women, showing how they are unrecognisable; they have lost their masculinity, youth, health and therefore are now deemed to be outcast’s within the society. The word sludge is onomatopoeia to imply how heavy and difficult the ground is to cross for soldiers.
“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.
He is every young man dead and squandered in war. The economy of the poem is remarkable. It is short enough to be inscribed on a tomb, and has something of the same finality. The vocabulary is simple and homely. Nearly all the words are monosyllabic: they move with an even tread, until the second stanza, lines three to four, when this evenness is deliberately broken, to point the mounting emotional intensity.
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
Unlike other authors, Owen’s purpose was to reveal the awful truths of war and let us see past what was said to be glorious. His poems ‘Dulce et Decorum est ‘ and ‘Disabled’ tell of his personal experiences of battle and how war continues to inflict pain upon returned soldiers. Similes and metaphors are two language features Owen used that helped me understand the important idea of the true horrors of war, which is worth learning about today. In ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ one language feature used was similes, displaying the awful scene of physically drained men and a gruesome gas attack which depicted the important idea of the true horrors of war. The poem begins with the vivid simile “bent double, like old beggars under sacks”.
Gas! Quick, boys! “ and as the fumble to put their gas mask, one is not quick enough, owen graphically describes his death “gargling”,”choking” and “froth-corrupted lungs” to shick the reader about some of the horrible experiences of war. Anthem for Doomed Youth before even been read it already conveys the attitude on war. “the shrill demented choirs of wailing shells; and burgles