Anti-War Poem In Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen’s, “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” is arguably the greatest anti-war poem. It was composed near the end of the First World War by Owen who had actually experienced the horrors of the trenches. Owen gives readers the reality behind the wartime recruiting phrases, “it is sweet and fitting to die for your country,” as he records a friend’s death during a gas attack. This is a First World War poem, the poem that most brilliantly, most accurately, most informatively sums up the horrors, the fears, the terror of being a combatant of being a soldier in that particular military engagement. The poem was written in 1918 by a man who soldiered in that war, a man who experienced what he is talking about in the poem itself. The poem’s title, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is Latin. It’s from the Latin poet Horace and it means “it is sweet and fitting to die for your country.” Owen writes “Dulce Et Decorum Est” at a time when military propaganda- to get young men to enlist to join up and fight- is …show more content…
Plainly, the clumsy helmets are the gas masks or helmets that the soldiers have to put on to stop themselves from breathing in the gas. According to my research it was mustard gas that was used in the trenches. The “ecstasy of fumbling” (Stanza 2, Line 9) which he speaks of here is the adrenaline rush that invigorates the soldiers, the exhausted bodies of these soldiers who know they’ve got to get the gas masks on; otherwise, they’re going to breath in the poison gas and die. It sounds like they get the helmets and they’re trying to put it on and they can’t do it because they’re too tired, they’re fumbling, this “ecstasy of fumbling” that they feel “fitting the clumsy helmets just in time.” This line is more of an accusation made by the soldier against the helmet because it is clear that he is having trouble putting the helmet on so he calls the helmet,