Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen

Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen

"Dulce et decorum est" is a poem written by the poet Wilfred Owen

during the First World War. It was written to portray the reality of

war. In it he describes the horrors he witnessed as a soldier from the

front line of battle. The aim of the poem was to tell people that

Jessie Pope, a poet who was encouraging young men to go to war because

it was glorious, was wrong.

The poem starts with soldiers marching away from the battlefield. They

have just been in battle and are heading back to their rest areas:

"bent double"

Owen describes the way in which the soldiers are walking. They are

bent double with exhaustion and fatigue. They walk in a crooked

stance. They are unable to walk properly; it is too much effort so

they walk leaning over almost collapsing but not quite.

The way that the soldiers look is portrayed in the poem:

"like old beggars under sacks"

The soldiers have been in a bloody battle, they are dirty and shabby.

Owen describes them as like beggars because they remind him of

homeless people with rags for clothes, uncomfortable and undesirable.

Their clothes look like sacks, battered and torn.

The men are "knock-kneed". The men are probably shaking with terror

and lack of sleep and nutrition. This means that their knees are

likely to be shaking therefore giving the impression that their knees

are knocking. Owen uses alliteration to again represent the extreme

exhaustion of the soldiers.

The soldiers are,

"coughing like hags"

They probably caught lung diseases from the appalling conditions in

the trenches and being so close to people all the time. They soun...

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...main one of these is the emotive language that Owen

uses for shock. He also uses alliteration, metaphors, similes, listing

in threes and onomatopoeia to name but a few. The sarcasm to Jessie

Pope and other people who shared her point of view is evident all the

way through the poem especially the final stanza. In the poem he has

mixed realism with description to produce a poem that reflects his

personal account of the night. To write this poem must have been hard

and heart rending as the poet has had to remember his friend and the

night when the event happened. I think that Wilfred Owen was writing

for a good cause. Everyone deserved to know the truth and understand

more about what war was. Owen wrote from his heart and I think his

poem deserve respect because they are true and paint a vivid picture

in your imagination.