Dulce Et Decorum Est Conflict

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Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum est” has historical conflict behind it. In the first two lines of the second stanza of this poem, Owen hints that the “distant rest” may be death because World War 1 killed 9 million people and left millions of other injured both mentally and physically . Another event that Wilfred eluded to is the use of the machine gun and trench warfare, two new inventions and ideas introduced in the Great War. In following one and a half lines of “Dulce et Decorum est”, Owen uses imagery “Many lost their boots, but limped on blood-shod”, he is painting a picture to the reader showing them that soldiers lost limbs and parts of themselves during this ubiquitous war. Next, in lines 6-8, Owen Wilfred uses his background from the war in the line “all went lame”, to convey that even though only nine countries were major participants in the war, every country’s people were effected by someway throughout this world-wide war. …show more content…

Wilfred Owen expresses the horror of fighting in war in the last few lines of his third stanza and in the fourth, by describing the event of a fellow soldier dieing due to a gas shell. Throughout the whole fifth stanza, Owen recounts the death of this solider in rigorous detail therefore he illustrates how gruesome soldiers’ deaths and World War 1 overall were. Propaganda was used all over the world during World War 1 to promote nationalism and get men to fight in the war. In the last stanza of this poem Owen blames all those people who promoted propaganda for getting himself and all others into this horrific

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