Dulce Et Decorum Est By Wilfred Owen

Superior Essays
In Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen appallingly recounts the occurrences on the battlefield throughout World War One. The poem is centered on the quote, “Dulce et decorum est- pro patria mori”, ironically meaning, “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country”. However, there is absolutely nothing in the poem that is sweet. He depicts war as an aging and dehumanizing experience by utilizing terrifying metaphors and sensory details effectively. Owen then forces the reader to cringe through a gas attack from beginning to end. Owen utilizes sensory details as well as comparisons to challenge the quote that is, “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country”; as he seeks to expose the real lasting effects of watching countless men die in …show more content…
The introductory lines vividly describe how the soldiers are crippled, mentally and physically by this war. We are introduced after reading the title to the line, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks” (line 1). The young men are suggested to have become doubled, as two people. These young vibrant men prior to the war, and now disfigured old beggars during the war. Following that line, the soldiers are “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, [cursing] through sludge” (line 2). Knock knees is an angular deformity of the knees in children. Owen using this childhood deformity to describe these men denounces their virility, as well creates the image of how bad the body is warped during war. He also compares these young men to old hags. These men have lost their youth by the war, as well as their masculinity. Imagery is used very effectively in this line. We can hear the soldiers coughing and cursing as they trudge, as well as imagine these men trying to grasp anything they can to steady their knock knees and bent backs. Owen describes the “Men [as marching] asleep” (line 5) utilizing a hyperbole to illustrate how immensely exhausted they were. This also gives a distinct image of the soldier’s mental health. People do not walk asleep unless something is seriously wrong. Owen also describes war as a dehumanizing experience. In the line, “[they] limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind” (line 6) Owen utilizes the words lame and blood-shod which are usually associated with animals to describe the men. People typically use shod to describe fitting a shoe to a horse, and lame for an animal that does not walk properly. Illustrating these young eager soldiers prior to the war, turning into lame animals during the war. Later in the poem Owen utilizes the line, “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud” (line 23) Cud provokes a farming image in the readers mind since it is half-digest pasture of

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Just like in the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” it is a soldiers account of warfare in World War 1. The poem relates to the book All Quiet on the Western Front because they are both soldiers accounts of what first person warfare was like. “Dulce et Decorum Est” relates to the book All Quiet on the Western Front because what life was like in the trench, handling mustard gas, and coping with deaths of solders. The poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” illustrates what a soldier’s life was like being in the war and what life was like after being in the trenches for some time. “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks.”…

    • 1062 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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
  • Improved Essays

    ‘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…

    • 130 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The poems ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen and ‘Such, Such is Death’ by Charles Hamilton Sorley explore a similar theme about the futility of death and how it relates to war. Owen’s poem is about the latin phrase ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ which translates to ‘It is sweet and right.’ This phrase was very popular in war propaganda during World War 1 as a way of recruiting soldiers to join the war by stating that dying for your country is the most honorable way to die. The poem is written in disagreement with this phrase, that in the author’s eyes glorifies war and the deaths that it causes. The very first line of the poem describes soldiers as being like ‘old beggars under sacks,’ in direct contrast with the glorifying title of the pOem.…

    • 249 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “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. “Dulce Et Decorum Est” shows that not all of the deaths in war are glorious. The quote this poem is named for, “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” can roughly be translated to, “how honorable it is to die for your country,” (Owen). Owen calls this an old lie that society would tell the soldiers as they were shipped off to battle.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    His hanging face […]” (Owen 19-20), or telling us that “Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots/But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind” (Owen 5-6). Effectively using extreme, gloomy details, Owen created a piece which tells the reader a tale of war, but it is a completely different reading experience compared to “APO…

    • 948 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    World War 1 was believed to be the war that would end all wars. It was new, exciting and was expected to be over before the Christmas of 1914. Then, 4 years later, after gruesome trench warfare and severe casualties, our views on war changed completely. The days of enthusiastic enlistment dissolved, while the horrifying reality about the battlefield emerged. This change in beliefs, and the influence of generations, can be seen accurately through the poems, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen and “Pro Patria” by Owen Seaman.…

    • 1060 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    "Dulce et Decorum est" is a Latin titled poem meaning to die for one’s country. It was written during the World War 1 by Wilfred Owen in the 1920’s. The poem is known for its terrible imagery and denunciation of war. Also, the poem describes how sweet and honourable it is to die for one’s country. The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner is a five- line poem written by Randall Jarrell and published in the year 1945.…

    • 572 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I believe that Owen voice is one distressed over the war and what it brought to the soldiers. Owen uses imagery to describe the exhaustion by telling the reader that they were limping and dragging their feet. He saw and smelt the clouds of gas, he saw the effects of the gas from hearing a seemingly sick man yelling, coughing and choking on blood. He uses simile by comparing the soldiers to old beggars and comparing the coughing soldiers to sick, old people.…

    • 143 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Experiences like this can leave anyone in trauma. Seeing blood everywhere, land filled with corpses, soldiers choking and dying must have been flashing in his mind. Anyone who experiences this will not be able to forget this for the rest of his life. In Anthem, Owen uses rhetorical questions to get the reader thinking about the condition of soldiers What passing bells for these who die as cattle?…

    • 1164 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Owen’s use of emotive Language ‘guttering, choking, drowning’ is used to alert the audience to the grim realities of war to counteract the idealised notions of those at home. Also Owen’s use of descriptive language emphasises on the loss of human life, and the unexpected turn of events, which highlight the futility of war. Owen deliberates this as he enthuses the idea of death upon his friends, triggering concept of consciousness vs. Duty which highly evokes the true nature of war. In sharp contrast, the sonnet ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ written in 1917, criticises the means of war. The youthful dead of the First World War is lamented in elegiac form.…

    • 1310 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    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.…

    • 1235 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 1 Works Cited
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Unlike The Soldier, Owen’s poem tells the horrifying experiences that a soldier is going through, the inhumane and unthinkable images that happen during the war. The poem has an anti-war approach and explains it with shocking imagery. The poem follows a theme of war, patriotism, and propaganda. The poem follows an iambic pentameter with 28 lines and starts out as a double sonnet. The poems have a rhyme scheme of an octave (AB, AB, CD, CD) during the first stanza, but drops this structure and goes solo.…

    • 1302 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    World War One was the first of its kind, men used toxic gasses as weapons, there were tanks, airplanes, and other technological advances. The mass development of war also means there are more ways to kill the enemy. Isaac Rosenberg’s “Break of Day in the Trenches” and Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” are both poems that depict World War One as hellish and evil in nature, as soldiers, they are surrounded by death. Both poets represent death in an ironic way, because war is considered hellish and gruesome, people die, and Owen shows the irony between the romanticized war while Rosenberg shows irony through the freedom of a rat; the two poets alludes to death in devices such as imagery. “Break of Day in the Trenches” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” stand in for death because they use war as a paradox.…

    • 812 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Within this essay, two poems will be discussed and compared to distinguish which of these poems would be considered the most powerful at portraying the theme of the realities of was. The chosen poems, Freedoms Horror was written in 2010 by James Clark and Dulce et Decorum Est was written in 1917 by Wilfred Owen. The theme of both poems is the realities of war. These poems are among the thousands of other poems that are categorized as war poetry.…

    • 1160 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays