‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ can be understood as “It is sweet and decorous to die for one’s country”. Ironically, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ contradicts its own title, where Owen has simply focused on communicating war and its entirety. Owen’s ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ challenges traditional texts of war that emphasise the false glory of how war is “sweet and decorous”, presenting the everlasting physical and physiological struggles that the soldiers sustained beyond war- a cause that they did not quite understand, as well as depicting the extreme reality of war- not the beautiful ideas or glorious attitudes towards war conjured up by governments, politics and propagandists, but instead a harsh reality that was immensely influenced by the horrific actions
