How Does Wilfred Owen Use Imagery In Dulce Et Decorum Est

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Throughout his poems, Wilfred Owen uses dramatic imagery to emphasise the carnage and destruction of war. His use of imagery does this by helping to recreate some of the sounds, visuals, emotions, and impacts of armed combat. Specifically, in his poems Dulce Et Decorum Est (Dulce) and Strange Meeting, Owen highlights the gore on the battlefield, and the detrimental effects on soldiers after being there. He uses religious references to further his points. Owen also shows the broader loss in society as a result of war.

Owen draws attention to the carnage on the battlefield throughout Dulce. Lines 5 and 6 read, “…Many had lost their boots/But limped on, blood-shod…” There is so much gore around them; soldiers are wearing ‘shoes of blood’. This …show more content…

Line 8 of Strange Meeting reads, “Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.” This line causes the reader to form an image of hands clasped in prayer, and makes them picture Jesus Christ. Owen is comparing the wrongful and unjust death of Christ to the sacrifice of the soldiers that are massacred in war.
Owen uses another reference to Jesus in lines 34 and 35. “Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,/I would go up and wash them from sweet wells”. The chariots represent machinery used in war to drive the attack. Owen presents a picture of the amount of bloodshed caused in battle, to the point where machinery is ‘clogged’. ‘I would go up and wash them from sweet wells. Owen is referring to healing and the washing away of sins as done by Jesus in the bible. Owen uses religious imagery to help conjure images on the carnage and bloodshed during war.

Owen looks ahead to the impact of war on the world. He touches on it in line 25 of Strange Meeting, “The pity of war, the pity war distilled”. Owen personifies war, saying war is a distiller creating nothing but pity. As distilling is to reduce something to its purest form, Owen is suggesting the only outcome of war is pity and destruction, nothing good comes of it. This conveys his feelings of regret and sorrow the war happened to the

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