Does Wilfred Owens Use Metaphors In Dulce Et Decorum Est

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Wilfred Owens was a poet in the early 1900s mainly, in the First World War. The poems that Owens wrote were ones that are full of the realistic horrors of war and the struggles faced by the soldiers risking their lives. People report that Owens was suffering from “shell shock” a type of PTSD common during the War (Williamson). Owens wrote the poem Dulce et Decorum Est while in a psychiatric hospital, and met people that inspired him the write this poem and other poems that recalled the dooms of war. The poem Dulce et Decorum Est uses many literary and poetic symbols like, metaphors, tone, and double meanings to express the gory truth of the War. Wilfred Owens uses metaphors and similes to illustrate the horrors he experienced in the First World War. …show more content…

“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots / But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind” (Owens 5-8) is used to show how empty the soldiers were, tired, lost, and confused about what is going on outside of the trenches. Owens employs imagery and a catalogue to display the PTSD, or insanity that so many acquired while fighting for their lives, “ I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning” (Owens 15-17). We see one of the speaker’s company dying from the gases through the eyes and words of the speaker, “ [The speaker] watches the man succumb to the gas, desperately groping the air between them as he drops to the ground, like someone drowning” (Parfitt). Even the speaker of the poem is part of the imagery used to portray the horrific scene of war, “The speaker is among a company of exhausted men who after a stint at the front are marching unsteadily toward the rear when they are suddenly overtaken by poison gas”

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