Analysis Of Dulce Et Decorum Est By Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen wrote about the distilled pity of war from his first-hand experience. Owen concisely features the carnage and destruction of war in both the poems, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Strange Meeting’ Owen uses these poems document the psychological and physical debilitation of war. In ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, Owen uses a various amount of literary techniques to visually depict the cruel and grotesque death from the mustard gas whereas ‘Strange Meeting’, portrays the speaker in conversation with a dead soldier that he is presumably responsible for killing, symbolically which emphasises the effect of the wartime trauma. Wilfred Owen’s poetry effectively highlights the carnage and destruction of war to educate the audience on the disillusionment of war.

Owen emphasises that the massacres caused by war do lead to crippling physical damage. In ‘DEDE’, he conveys this by the use of simile paired with alliteration “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags”. These two lines, to begin ‘DEDE’ sets the mood of the poem, giving the audience a bitter greeting and asserts their fatigue. The comparison the men to beggars emphasises their ageing prematurely and that they have a lack of control over their life. Owen forcefully highlights how these men are going to war young but dying old due to the ageing of this war

In “DEDE”, Owen uses tone and repetition of the title to exemplify the lie in war “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori”. Owen’s bitter and sarcastic tone makes it clear to the audience that for anyone who knew the truth of war could not see it as a heroic act of patriotism. By quoting the Latin poet Horace, this also shows the audience his discontentment. The repetition of the title makes us reconsider our attitudes to war due to what Owen has revealed to us by highlighting the carnage and destruction of