Throughout history, few conflicts have been that horrific like the First World War. Being one of its combatants, the English poet Wilfred Owen was one of the first to question military propaganda which defended the old Latin proverb: “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori”; meaning ‘it is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country’. With nothing else than words, he created a distinguished and innovative masterpiece that condemned the grandeur of war by picturing how cruel and deranged the reality in the front was. As I will discuss, language is one of the main and significant parts of the composition. All through the poem, Owen meticulously exploited every word so as to create a particular rhythm, imagery and tone that empower the impact of the overall work on the reader’s emotions.
Firstly, the poem opens with the picture of a group of soldiers overcome by the brutality of the trenches. Their old ambitions of gory and honour have vanished as they have faced the reality of the combat. They are “bent double”, “coughing” and “cursing through sludge”, in contrast to the noble icons of young soldiers in the war. In this first stanza, Owen sets a sensitive tone that denotes sorrow and extreme tiredness. The soldiers’ physical conditions are subhuman. Compared to “old beggars” and “hags”, they “trudge towards a distant rest”– namely, away from the front line– while “limping on” and being “blood-shod”. They are “blind” and “deaf” too, since “fatigue” deprives them of their fully capacities. These powerful and vivid images are accompanied by a slow rhythm that makes the stanza difficult to read. I suggest that what Owen wanted was to make the reader feel the same way as the soldiers: having trouble moving forward (either through the battlefield or the poem). The slowness in the reading is very much accomplished by the disposition of the words and sounds. For instance, there are several alliterations of plosive sounds in the first two opening lines: “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, // Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge”. Besides from the difficulty in the reading, this sequence of strong timbres would also remind me of the sound of bombs and gunshots in the warfare. In the second stanza, Owen gives a quick shift to the rhythm by describing the horrors of a gas attack and of death. The initial hurry “GAS! GAS! Quick, boys!” shocks and wakes up the reader from the previous sluggish movement. Likewise, it brings action and anxiety to the next couple of lines. The exhausted soldiers need to exert themselves once again and fit their gas masks in order to survive the attack; they feel “an ecstasy of fumbling”. Yet, not all of them manage to do it in time. With an anxious tone, Owen makes the reader imagine– just as he saw it– the lively and dreadful image of the soldier with no respirator “yelling out”, “stumbling”, “floundering” and “drowning under a green sea”; meaning being asphyxiated by the poison substance. The appearance of the first person singular in line 14, “I saw him drowning”, would denote that he is talking about his own experience, his own nightmare. The next stanza, constituted just by two lines, empowers the terrifying vision of the soldier’s death. The memory haunts the poet “in all [his] dreams” where his companion “plunges at [him], guttering, …show more content…
He wanted to make people aware of the real situation in the trenches, which was very different from the one patriotic and military propaganda used to diffuse. Thus, in Dulce et Decorum the poet got to express the inexpressible: the whole atmosphere of dread and anxiety surrounding the war and its soldiers. The excellent use language; combining imagery, tone, rhythm and rhetorical figures; makes the reader feel unpleased by imagining vividly and empathising with the soldiers’ horror. Moreover, it also makes us listen to Owen’s voice carefully when he appeals to “[his] friend” at the end of the work. Everything in the poem is precisely composed to create a raw and bitter emotion in the reader’s heart. An emotion through which Owen awares those people “ardent for some desperate glory” that there is actually nothing “dulce et decorum” in dying for one’s country in the
Firstly, the poem opens with the picture of a group of soldiers overcome by the brutality of the trenches. Their old ambitions of gory and honour have vanished as they have faced the reality of the combat. They are “bent double”, “coughing” and “cursing through sludge”, in contrast to the noble icons of young soldiers in the war. In this first stanza, Owen sets a sensitive tone that denotes sorrow and extreme tiredness. The soldiers’ physical conditions are subhuman. Compared to “old beggars” and “hags”, they “trudge towards a distant rest”– namely, away from the front line– while “limping on” and being “blood-shod”. They are “blind” and “deaf” too, since “fatigue” deprives them of their fully capacities. These powerful and vivid images are accompanied by a slow rhythm that makes the stanza difficult to read. I suggest that what Owen wanted was to make the reader feel the same way as the soldiers: having trouble moving forward (either through the battlefield or the poem). The slowness in the reading is very much accomplished by the disposition of the words and sounds. For instance, there are several alliterations of plosive sounds in the first two opening lines: “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, // Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge”. Besides from the difficulty in the reading, this sequence of strong timbres would also remind me of the sound of bombs and gunshots in the warfare. In the second stanza, Owen gives a quick shift to the rhythm by describing the horrors of a gas attack and of death. The initial hurry “GAS! GAS! Quick, boys!” shocks and wakes up the reader from the previous sluggish movement. Likewise, it brings action and anxiety to the next couple of lines. The exhausted soldiers need to exert themselves once again and fit their gas masks in order to survive the attack; they feel “an ecstasy of fumbling”. Yet, not all of them manage to do it in time. With an anxious tone, Owen makes the reader imagine– just as he saw it– the lively and dreadful image of the soldier with no respirator “yelling out”, “stumbling”, “floundering” and “drowning under a green sea”; meaning being asphyxiated by the poison substance. The appearance of the first person singular in line 14, “I saw him drowning”, would denote that he is talking about his own experience, his own nightmare. The next stanza, constituted just by two lines, empowers the terrifying vision of the soldier’s death. The memory haunts the poet “in all [his] dreams” where his companion “plunges at [him], guttering, …show more content…
He wanted to make people aware of the real situation in the trenches, which was very different from the one patriotic and military propaganda used to diffuse. Thus, in Dulce et Decorum the poet got to express the inexpressible: the whole atmosphere of dread and anxiety surrounding the war and its soldiers. The excellent use language; combining imagery, tone, rhythm and rhetorical figures; makes the reader feel unpleased by imagining vividly and empathising with the soldiers’ horror. Moreover, it also makes us listen to Owen’s voice carefully when he appeals to “[his] friend” at the end of the work. Everything in the poem is precisely composed to create a raw and bitter emotion in the reader’s heart. An emotion through which Owen awares those people “ardent for some desperate glory” that there is actually nothing “dulce et decorum” in dying for one’s country in the