• Home Page
  • How Does Wilfred Owen Use Vivid Imagery And Diction

How Does Wilfred Owen Use Vivid Imagery And Diction

Superior Essays
Show More
Sierra Crites
Allison Kirkman, Instructor
AP Literature and Composition/Poetry Final Essay
05 February 2018
Vivid Imagery, Diction, and Tone in Wilfred Owen's "Dulce Et Decorum Est" Wilfred Edward Salter Owen is one of Britain's most famous war poets, despite his few published works in his short lifetime ("Wilfred Owen"). Born on March 18, 1893, in Oswestry, Shropshire, Owen lived a remarkably uninteresting life. He spent his first few years after graduation in technical work. Owen, interested in the arts from a young age, began to explore poetry at just seventeen years old (Buckwalter 98). Soon after, World War I broke out while Owen is tutoring in France. After much internal debate, Owen returned to England and enlisted in the Artists' Rifles. …show more content…
"Dulce Et Decorum Est" is a quotation from Latin poet Horace, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." This translates to "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." This is ironic because the entirety of the poem illustrates the horrors and dishonorable actions of men at war through the use of vivid imagery and diction. The title's full origin is also revealed in the last two lines of the poem itself, allowing the reader to see the speaker's use of irony. The irony conveyed in the title alone conveys a spiteful tone, contributing to the speaker's disgusted …show more content…
Critics also go on to say Owen's most renowned work is actually not his finest achievement, due to his inability to transcend the scorn and the protest and find the scorn (Simcox). That being said, critics also recognize Owen's poetry as anti-war polemic (Santanu). Owen's desire to reveal the true nature of war by depicting the horrors of the battlefield and success in doing so confirm his prose as anti-war

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Wilfred Owen's Poem 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'
    • 329 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Wilfred Owen's Poem 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'

    Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a scathing condemnation of war that uses vivid and visceral imagery to contradict the idea that battle is glorious. The title of the poem ironically refers to the Latin maxim promoting the sweetness and nobility of war, while the first stanza contradicts this in its depiction of the harsh conditions of the battlefield and the traumatizing aftermath of war. This jarring juxtaposition between the idealism of society and the reality of the soldier’s experience creates an ironic contrast that unsettles the readers but also forces them to reconsider their preconceptions about war.…

    • 329 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Dulce Et Decorum Est By Wilfred Owen: Poem Analysis
    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Dulce Et Decorum Est By Wilfred Owen: Poem Analysis

    “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is a poem by Wilfred Owen that showed the British what war was like when it first came out during World War I. People back then had an illusion in their minds of what war was really like and how their soldiers died, and this poem changed that. Owen uses poetic devices like imagery and metaphor to show the reader how terrible deaths in World War I were and how not every man could die a hero.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Superior Essays

    Futility Of War In Wilfred Owen's Poetry
    • 1310 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Futility Of War In Wilfred Owen's Poetry

    Wilfred Owen was one of the most significant poets of the First World War. Owen encompassed the cruel conditions faced by soldiers and observed the true nature of the battlefield. He expressed his ideas through his compositions in a variety of poems such as ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth.’ Owen’s perspectives on human conflict were initially represented throughout his encounters amid ‘The Great War.’ Owen’s poetry moves from traditional formulaic forms to a more violent realism, incorporating imagery that powerfully captures the despair of an innocent individual; manipulated into participating in the war. Both poems depict Owen’s perceptions through the use of poetic techniques and features; which place an emphasis upon…

    • 1310 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner By Wilfred Owen Analysis
    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner By Wilfred Owen Analysis

    Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 and was pressured into volunteering for the military. He wrote nothing of importance until he saw action in 1917. After experiencing the true horrors of war, his boyish demeanor changed entirely. He wrote home saying, "The people of England needn 't hope. They must agitate" (Owen, letter to his mother). This shows his attitude towards the war. He was terrified for himself and for France. This is important to keep in mind when reading “Dulce et Decorum Est”.…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Great Essays

    Compare And Contrast The Soldier And Dulce Et Decorum Est
    • 1302 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Compare And Contrast The Soldier And Dulce Et Decorum Est

    When Britain declared war on the Axis powers in 1914, many young English men saw this as an opportunity for bravery, glory, and chivalry. As the war escalated many people started to change their view as they saw the brutalities of the fighting. This war had a big influence on poetry in future decades. The main difference between the attitude towards the war sparked from the poet's tone. The tone varies from seeing the war as glorious, to it being a dreadful experience. The Soldier by Brooke exemplifies an opinion where they saw the war as glorious and honorable, while Owen’s poem Dulce et Decorum Est conveys a completely opposite view, where he sees the war as a dreadful experience. Both poems manage to express the war as two different experience…

    • 1302 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Imagery In The Things They Carried By Wilfred Owen
    • 321 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Imagery In The Things They Carried By Wilfred Owen

    As the speaker follows behind the wagon—painfully aware of his friend’s suffering—the reader begins to truly see the human toll of war, and the speaker continues to decry Horace’s words. The speaker employs graphic imagery to describe a young man, the victim of a mustard gas attack, after he is throw into a wagon when the group of soldiers in marching. The dying or dead soldier is grotesque to behold, and it is not enough to wake the speaker from his nightmare of war. The speaker describes the man’s face as “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;” (Owen 20), and he describes the horrible gargling and foam coming from the soldier’s mouth. The surreal concept of a devil, in all its wickedness, growing tired of doing evil sticks with the…

    • 321 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Superior Essays

    Obscene Brutality And Wastefulness Of War Essay
    • 1536 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Obscene Brutality And Wastefulness Of War Essay

    Tim O’Brien and Wilfred Owen both seek to convey to their readers the obscene brutality and wastefulness of war by presenting their own personal war stories. Through the intermingling of both past and present experiences and emotions in their texts, these writers are demonstrating the impact of war had on themselves as a means of conveying its horrors. O’Brien chooses to focus on the specific memories of the war itself while Owen chooses to reminisce on the happenings that took place before the war. On the whole, they differ immensely as O’Brien’s book is described as a very exhaustive study while Owen’s poem is more of an exaggerated and illustrated take on the war. Stylistically, they differ as well, O’Brien text uses a mixture of his own…

    • 1536 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Wilfred Owen Rhetorical Analysis
    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Wilfred Owen Rhetorical Analysis

    Being an officer in the British Army, Wilfred Owen was able to experience the war at first hand which can be clearly seen in his poem by the great use of imagery and description of the events that occurred. Owen describes the disturbing events he experienced which changed his mind of the…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Personification In The Poem Exposure
    • 1191 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Personification In The Poem Exposure

    Even a century long time after his death, Wilfred Owen is still famous for his war poetry written during World War 1. In his poem, Owen uses various language techniques to vividly illustrate the horrendous reality of the war. Hence, he communicates his own anti-war feelings implied beneath his techniques. However, although he is now known as an anti-war poet, for once, he had been a naive boy, who had volunteered to fight in war.…

    • 1191 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Wilfred Owen's Life In The Great War (WWI)
    • 637 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Wilfred Owen's Life In The Great War (WWI)

    Wilfred Owen, the poet behind "Anthem for Doomed Youth", was a young British Officer who fought in The World War One. The experience…

    • 637 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Dulce Et Decorum Est Diction
    • 209 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Dulce Et Decorum Est Diction

    In his poem, “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, Wilfred Owen uses diction to evoke grotesque imagery that portrays the true horrors of the WWI battlefield in contrast to the blind patriotism promoted by propaganda. He uses this to relay an anti-war message.…

    • 209 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Superior Essays

    Wilfred Owen Poem Analysis
    • 3114 Words
    • 13 Pages

    Wilfred Owen Poem Analysis

    Also the comma in that quote again leaves a small gap between, (“In the old times”) and (“before he threw away his knees”) which again stresses the gap and again increases the anti-climax. He also uses a hyphen here,…

    • 3114 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Superior Essays
    Read More
  • Superior Essays

    Guttering, Choking And Drowning By John Wilfred Owen Critical Analysis
    • 1235 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 1 Works Cited

    Guttering, Choking And Drowning By John Wilfred Owen Critical Analysis

    One of Owen's talents is to convey his complex messages very proficiently and demonstrates that here because without the use of the emotive language, the scene could not be set. In the fourth stanza, it reads, " If in some smothering dreams you could pace/behind the wagon that the we flung him in", here Owen is suggesting that the horror of the scene that he has witnessed, is forever eternalised into his dreams. Although this soldier died an innocent, the war allowed no time to give his death dignity. That in turn makes the horror so much more poignant and haunting. Owen also describes what the young lad's face looks like "Devils sick of sin", this painfully illustrates how the life is ebbing away from him and that the skin is just hanging on his face. In the fifth and final stanza Owen makes a heroic and very public stand, by challenging the newspaper columnists, back home in England, that if they had seen the horrors that he had witnessed, then Unlike most of his poems where Owen is questioning war and people. Here, it is plain to see that "Futility" has barely controlled emotion to it and that Owen appears to be questioning life itself. His lack of powerful imagery by the use of words, only serves to highlight his patients plight, which is being put across as a lack of hope and a quiet resignation towards life itself. In the first stanza, Owens use of assonance such as 'whispering' and 'sleep' demonstrates sounds that give the poem a quiet tone as if the reader is whispering; there are no pleas to the lord or anyone else for that matter. Also, the lack of physical and horrific visualisation only proves to make the poem more intensely psychologically emotional with the idea of a catatonic patient with no true hope of recovery. In the second stanza the tone changes to one of questioning hopelessness and of quiet resignation with the onset of death. Owen demonstrates this by asking the reader to think, "Think how it wakes the seeds- Woke, once, the clays of a cold star". Here the reader can see that the suggestion of clay as being cold and lifeless and…

    • 1235 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 1 Works Cited
    Superior Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    How Is Metaphor Used In Dulce Et Decorum Est
    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages

    How Is Metaphor Used In Dulce Et Decorum Est

    Second Lieutenant, Wilfred Owen in the British army wrote many different poems incorporating the theme of the horrifying war and the…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Rhetorical Devices In Greater Love By Wilfred Owen
    • 1205 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Rhetorical Devices In Greater Love By Wilfred Owen

    Wilfred Owen was an officer in World War I, however was sent to a hospital because he suffered from "shellshock". Here, he met poet Siegfried Sassoon, who played a part in influencing him to write poetry about war and the suffering of soldiers. He later returned to the war, where he was killed.…

    • 1205 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More

Related Topics

Ready To Get Started?
Discover
Company
Follow
©2023 Cram.com
Privacy Policy |  About Ads |  Site Map |  Advertise  | 
  • Cookie Settings