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Dulce et Decorum analysis
What is the intended audience of dulce et decorum est
Imagery of the poem dulce et decorum est
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War is the greatest flaw in mankind. For generations, war has been around. In the old days before World War One, the idea of going to battle was glorified to the young. War was made out to be like an adventure of a lifetime. In the old ages, war was truly viewed as something great. Those who refused to fight would be viewed as cowards, not wanting to join in on the greatest adventure of a lifetime. When World War One came around after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, many young men from both the Triple Entente and Central Powers joined thinking this war would be the best adventure of their lives as told by previous generations of soldiers. However, they were mistaken. What would eventually be known as the lost generation realized …show more content…
The soldiers are described as beaten up and covered in blood. That one night he was switching from his post to get rest with a fellow group of soldiers, the Germans attacked them with gas. The poem describes the chaos that was endured. The soldiers were described as moving quickly to grab their gas masks to protect them from the mustard gas. It also shows how some soldiers failed to get a mask in time and quickly started to suffer in great pain. Owen describes the way the soldier moved in the gas; spastically moving and screaming like if he was burning in flames. Owen describes the way the soldier died as drowning in a green sea. It is then shown through imagery how graphic the soldier's death was, Owen says “he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning...his hanging face like a devil’s sick of sin; if you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”. The poem is mainly about how brutal and sickening war can be. When Owen states “his hanging face like a devil’s sick of sin”, it means that even the devil himself is sick of the cruelty of the war. It shows how bad trench warfare was to the soldiers. It worse than Hell to Owens, as the image of the soldier's grotesque death was imprinted into his mind. He could not stop seeing that soldier's death in every thought, especially dreams. There is irony in the phrase Dulce Et Decorum Est, as it means “It is sweet to die for one’s country. Sweet and decorous!” Owen mocks the idea that war is an adventure as he knows the harsh truth of what war is; Hell on Earth. The poem shows the reality of the tales of warfare they have been told about. The soldiers went into the war believing the lies of adventure and glory; however, when they got to the battlefield, they quickly realized it was not true. The connotation of the poem is that the young are taken advantage of and lied to for others
The warfare before World War I was that of chivalry and heroic ideals, in which soldiers gave their lives for noble causes and, by doing so, went down in history as honourable heroes. The high recruitment rate at the beginning of the Great War shows that in 1914 a whole generation of young men wanted to fight because they believed in the just cause of it. However, the soldiers quickly discard and outgrow this simplistic view and become aware that “the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it” (Sassoon). The tragedy of World War I lies in the fact that so many people lost their lives, either as soldiers or as collateral damage, simply because of rival imperialism, which once more shows that humanity’s greatest enemy is man himself.
Dulce et Decorum Est is about the horrific situation that men went through in trench war fare, ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge’. The poem depicts the struggle to survive and the traumatic experiences of the first world war from the horrible conditions that the men had to face, to the gassing of all those around them. This is evident throughout the poem. ‘Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots, of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling’. This use of oxymoron’s allows the reader to create an image in their minds thus bring them closer to the horrific setting of the poem and allowing them to really feel as if they were there themselves.
In conclusion, depending on the position from which one views war, the standpoint may vary ranging from being supportive of the soldiers because those who die are dying for the country or they are completely unsupportive of war activities because it is a brutal and gruesome experience involving countless unnecessary injuries and deaths. Affected by a number of factors, the authors of the two poems have chosen opposing standpoints on the issue of war where Tennyson glorified it with the main message that it is an honour to die for one's country whereas the other, Owen suppresses the idea of war by illustrating all the horrid experiences of a soldier.
Owen uses very vivid imagery throughout the poem to describe how horrible the war was to the speaker and his fellow soldiers. He starts by describing how worn and tired he and his fellow soldiers are as they start “towards our distant rest” (Owen 695) which can be interpreted as them simply just walking back to their barracks to sleep or, in a darker sense, to their deaths. He describes how they marched asleep and how they were too tired to even hear the sounds of the gas shells dropping behind them. “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” (Owen 695) someone yells when they finally realize what it happening. All of the soldiers scramble to put on their gas masks but at least one man near the speaker can’t make it to his mask in time; “But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...” (Owen 695).
Wilfred Owen is a tired soldier on the front line during World War I. In the first stanza of Dulce Et Decorum Est he describes the men and the condition they are in and through his language shows that the soldiers deplore the conditions. Owen then moves on to tell us how even in their weak human state the soldiers march on, until the enemy fire gas shells at them. This sudden situation causes the soldiers to hurriedly put their gas masks on, but one soldier did not put it on in time. Owen tells us the condition the soldier is in, and how, even in the time to come he could not forget the images that it left him with. In the last stanza he tells the readers that if we had seen what he had seen then we would never encourage the next generation to fight in a war.
World War One had an inevitable effect on the lives of many young and naive individuals, including Wilfred Owen, who, like many others, joined the military effort with the belief that he would find honour, wealth and adventure. The optimism which Owen initially had toward the conflict is emphasised in the excerpt, in which he is described as “a young poet…with a romantic view of war common among the young” (narrator), a view which rapidly changed upon reaching the front. Owen presents responders with an overwhelming exploration of human cruelty on other individuals through acts of war and the clash of individual’s opposed feelings influenced by the experiences of human cruelty. This is presented through the horrific nature of war which the
The narrator concludes, “Honor the charge they made! / Honor the Light Brigade, / Noble six hundred,” which exhibits the tone of glory and moral victory in the battle. On the other hand, Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” the tone created is much grimmer, where there is no glory in war. In the first stanza, Owen presents a scene by utilizing words and phrases such as “haunting” (3), “all went lame, all blind” (6), and “drunk with fatigue” (7). These words and phrases immediately give readers an image of tired and worn-down soldier, which is a stark difference to the exclamations given in the first stanza of “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Through the use of dramatic imagery in Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen is able to recreate a dramatic war scene and put the reader right on the front lines. The use of language is very effective in garnering the readers’ attention and putting the dire images of war into the mind. He emphasizes that war is upsetting and appalling at times. There is nothing sweet about it. He only strengthens his argument by the use of strong descriptive words and vivid figurative language. The utilization of these techniques gives the poem a strong meaning and provides the reader with a vivid portrayal of the events that took place during this grisly occurrence.
...za is when the speaker’s argument changes, and he begins to resent the war and the saying, “Dulce et Decorum Est”, as he is recalling the sight of the soldier dieing from the gas plunging at him. The fourth and final stanza makes the speaker’s argument very clear that it is not sweet and honorable to fight and die for the fatherland. The structure of the poem allows the speaker to relay his experience and finish by summing up his argument by saying if anyone else saw what he saw, then “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est” (25-27). The speaker blatantly establishes his argument, the saying Dulce et decorum est is simply patriotic propaganda to get young innocent men to fight for the fatherland, or in other words, a despicable lie that sends innocent youth to their graves.
Wilfred Owen's, ‘dulce et decorum est’ allows readers to see what actually happened during warfare, challenging the government's way of recruiting young soldiers (like Owen's at the time) via propaganda and the ideas of war. Owen's challenges these ideas through his poetry by creating sensory imagery through the dehumanization of the soldiers, and by creating irony through juxtaposition and the title. The dehumanization of the soldier is framed by depicting the reality of warfare to the audience by projecting sensory imagery throughout the poem. The government represented war to be for handsome, young, honourable men but Owen's is giving the readers imagery that contradicts those ideas.
Owen’s poem uses symbolism to bring home the harsh reality of war the speaker has experienced and forces the reader to think about the reality presented in romanticized poetry that treats war gently. He utilizes language that imparts the speakers experiences, as well as what he, his companions, and the dying man feels. People really die and suffer and live through nightmares during a war; Owen forcefully demonstrates this in “Dulce et Decorum Est”. He examines the horrific quality of World War I and transports the reader into the intense imagery of the emotion and experience of the speaker.
In conclusion, Owen only loosely bases the structure of this free-verse poem on the iambic pentameter. The comparison of the past and the present emphasizes on what the soldier has lost in war. There are several recurring themes shown throughout the poem, such as reminiscence and sexual frustration. Reminiscence is shown through the references to his life before the war, while sexual frustration is depicted through the unlikeliness of a girl ever loving him due to his disability. The message that Owen is trying to get across to his readers is the falseness of war propaganda and pacifism – what war can do to one - and he conveys his ideas using various themes, language and through the free-verse structure of this poem.
The poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen portrays the horrors of World War I with the horrific imagery and the startling use of words he uses. He describes his experience of a gas attack where he lost a member of his squadron and the lasting impact it had on him. He describes how terrible the conditions were for the soldiers and just how bad it was. By doing this he is trying to help stop other soldiers from experiencing what happened in a shortage of time.
It goes through the worst parts of the war and describes them in detail. The horrors in these descriptions contradict the glorification of the war The poem consists of four stanzas, the first describes the soldiers, the second a gas attack, the third Owen’s nightmares and last an accusation to the people back home. Owen’s poems are suffused with the horror of battle, and yet finely structured and innovative. The first stanza sets the scene as it describes the conditions the men fought in and their feelings. Owen immediately shocks the readers by describing the young soldiers as ‘bent double’ emphasising their exhaustion and the way they slump along, deformed by fatigue, I think this is an effective simile because no one back home will be expecting their proud soldiers described as beggars.
... middle of paper ... ... Unlike other poets who glorified war and eluded people’s minds, Owen brought the reality of war and death in front of people’s eyes. War is not just fighting for your nation and gaining victory, it is looking at death and inhumanity eye to eye and experiencing agony, suffering and reality.