Analysis Of Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est

World War I is known as one of the bloodiest wars in history, claiming over 17 million total casualties. It was a conflict between global powers that produced mass destruction and casualties on a completely unprecedented level. So much so, that the generation of young, surviving soldiers became known as the “lost generation”. Towns and cities lost whole generations of young men. Wartime has been the producer of many hardships, but critics and historians have often found that wartime also serves as an inspiration for many poets, and the Great War is not an exception. Wilfred Owen is one of many poets that came out of the first world war. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was a young man from Great Britain who consistently wrote poems during his time on the Western Front. In a brief analysis of his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”, his anger at the mindless cruelty and destruction of war is revealed, along with his hatred of the glorification of combat and dying for one’s country.
Wilfred Owen was born at the end of the 19th century (1893) in Oswestry, Shropshire, England. He was the eldest of four children. Soon into his childhood, the Owen family moved, and Wilfred began his education, attending the Birkenwood Institute and later Shrewsbury Technical …show more content…
Early 20th century Britain and Europe was an industrial society, and this is mildly revealed with waging of chemical warfare. Newer, more dangerous weapons were produced and used to fight and kill. In addition, it can be inferred that the act of “dying for one’s country” was seen as an honorable, heroic thing. It is obvious from the text that Owen heartily disagrees.
“Dulce et Decorum Est” is just one of many poems written by Wilfred Owen, but it conveys his personal beliefs on war quite well through the use of imagery and literary realism, as well as highlighting his disgust at the societal mindset that war was a thing to be glorified and