"...forever plagued with visions of his comrade's demise"(Students 112). Through the hardships of war, many men and women are scarred for life with the grotesque things they witness daily. This act of involuntary remembrance is shown through both Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. With the support from Kimberly Lutz and an article from Poetry for Students this message of the war never truly leaving the soldier can be shown.
In Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est", the speaker talks of seeing "him" in their dreams. Even though the speaker has left the war at this point in the poem, the war has yet to leave the speaker. "In all my dreams before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me, guttering, …show more content…
The soldier in the gas mask in “Dulce et Decorum Est” seems to be haunted subconsciously and in his sleep by the man who he watched suffer an agonizing death. There was nothing they could do, the man had already inhaled the gas, and Lavender had already been zoned in on and shot by a sniper. By the time the man reached out to the speaker, the gas was running through his respiratory system, going after his skin and eyes, causing painful sores on the skin and slowly killing him in the most brutal way possible at that time. Lavender was dead the second that the sniper spotted him, shooting him in the head. The speaker in “Dulce et Decorum Est” has not accepted his guilt consciously for the death of this man so the dreams are coming from his subconscious while he sleeps, reminding him of the guilt he wishes to be done with. This is unlike the way Cross has seemed to handle his guilt in The Things They Carried. Although Jimmy Cross is still haunted by Lavender’s death, he seems to have put it past him for the most part. There is still some guilt there, but not to the degree of the gas mask soldier. Cross has convinced himself that it was his fault that Lavender died, but he has come to terms with it. “Lavender was dead. You couldn’t burn the blame…He would accept the blame for what happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a
In Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est", the speaker talks of seeing "him" in their dreams. Even though the speaker has left the war at this point in the poem, the war has yet to leave the speaker. "In all my dreams before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me, guttering, …show more content…
The soldier in the gas mask in “Dulce et Decorum Est” seems to be haunted subconsciously and in his sleep by the man who he watched suffer an agonizing death. There was nothing they could do, the man had already inhaled the gas, and Lavender had already been zoned in on and shot by a sniper. By the time the man reached out to the speaker, the gas was running through his respiratory system, going after his skin and eyes, causing painful sores on the skin and slowly killing him in the most brutal way possible at that time. Lavender was dead the second that the sniper spotted him, shooting him in the head. The speaker in “Dulce et Decorum Est” has not accepted his guilt consciously for the death of this man so the dreams are coming from his subconscious while he sleeps, reminding him of the guilt he wishes to be done with. This is unlike the way Cross has seemed to handle his guilt in The Things They Carried. Although Jimmy Cross is still haunted by Lavender’s death, he seems to have put it past him for the most part. There is still some guilt there, but not to the degree of the gas mask soldier. Cross has convinced himself that it was his fault that Lavender died, but he has come to terms with it. “Lavender was dead. You couldn’t burn the blame…He would accept the blame for what happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a