Dulce Et Decorum Est Analysis Essay

Throughout the ages poetry has been an instrument used by mankind to express their innermost feelings and thoughts. Poetry written during times of conflict, especially war, has an abundance of gritty details and raw emotions. “Dulce Et Decorum Est” written by Wilfred Owen is a fantastic example of this and realistically portrays the eerie experiences of war. Owen paints a tale of the woes of battle and how gas attacks claim the lives of the unfortunate. He was able to produce such a disturbingly true poem through his own experiences in battle. His tragic death only a week before the end of the war serves to add to the cynical tone (Ward 18). The speaker within the poem has been physically and mentally exhausted by the horrors of the war, and claims that the noble cause of fighting for one’s country is a mere irony. Wilfred Owen uses figurative language, imagery, and …show more content…
All through the poem there is an overabundance of rhyme, and nearly all of it is dismal. With words such as sludge and trudge, blood and cud, and fumbling and stumbling asserting themselves, it only serves to encourage the belief that the soldiers’ situation is hopeless. There are also many instances of alliteration such as, “Knock-kneed…/ Men marched asleep…/…some smothering dreams…” (l. 2,4, & 17). The purpose of this specific sound device is to facilitate the ideal of the exhaustion that is plaguing the poor, wounded soldiers. Each example gives insight to the soldiers’ daily woes, whether it is from fatigue and weariness to nightmares and chilling memories. Owen himself had been sent to multiple hospitals only to be diagnosed with shell shock, which is a mental disorder that’s caused by prolonged exposure to brutal warfare (Stanford 260). “Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs,” is an example of an onomatopoeia, which helps explain the severe abuse the soldiers went through on the