On the first read-through of Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est it seems to just be a poem describing a soldiers experience in World War I, but there is much more to the story than that. Through the use of several literary techniques, Owen is able to vividly describe the speaker’s experiences and at the same time make them relatable to the people reading the poem. He also is able to criticize the people who he thinks are at least partly responsible for “tricking” a younger, more gullible him into the situation in the first place.
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).
Owen then flashes forward in time describing how the death of the soldier still haunts his dreams; “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” (Owen 696). He witnessed a man die before him, there wasn’t anything he could do to help him, and it still haunts the speaker. He describes how he saw “the white eyes writhing in his face,” (...
... middle of paper ...
...r believes that no one will understand anyway. He is also able to make the point that unless you have experienced war first hand like the speaker did, one will never understand and one has no right to convince innocent men to go to war or to promote it. Owen describes war so vividly that no one would wish it on even their worst enemy. Through heavy use of irony in the lines “It is sweet and right to die for one's country.” (Poem and Notes) he is also able to make dying for one’s country in war not seem quite as honorable as the promoters of the war made it out to be.
Works Cited
Owen, Wilfred. "Dulce et Decorum Est." Literature and the Writing Process. By Elizabeth McMahan., et al. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2014. 695-96. Print.
"Poem and Notes – Dulce et Decorum Est." The War Poetry Website. Ed. David Roberts. Saxon Books, 2011. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.
Similarly, Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” describes a soldier who witnesses the death of his comrade from poisonous gas. Using imagery and irony, Owen presents a blunt contrast between the propaganda practiced for recruitment and the truth behind the suffering endured by the soldiers. While presented in different formats, both literary works criticize the romanticism of war, arguing that there is no glory in the suffering and killing caused by conflict.
Just as the poem is written in a rhyme and rhythm that makes poetry easy to follow, the vivid imagery helps one to picture more easily what is going on in the poem. Owen brilliantly chooses words and phrases that illuminate the scene, making the reader feel as if he is physically in the scene along with the characters. For example, Owen describes that the 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 (Gioia 782). A feeling of sadness and pity is felt as one hears the previous words. It is almost as if the scene of the soldiers trudging through the battlefield is being painted for the reader to actually visually ...
The poem Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen captures the reader and transports them back to a time or war and hardship, reminding them of our history and how society made the wrong decision all those years ago.
Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” World War I British Poets. Ed. Candace Ward. Dover Publications, Inc; New York, 1997.
The poet describes the soldier in such a disturbing and painful manner; Owen uses similes and metaphors to describe the condition. The poet opens stanza one with a powerful and strong metaphor: “Bent double” It shows the awful physical description of soldiers, hunch over, carrying equipment, exhausted, broken and shattered. The poem is a contrast to the title. This is supported further by the use of another simile that is used to describe the men in the war: “Like old beggars” this is a very horrific description of the soldiers returning from the front line. Ow...
4. Owen, Wilfred. “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” Exploring Literature. Ed. Frank Madden. Pearson, 2009. 1223.
Owen opens his poem with a strong simile that compares the soldiers to old people that may be hunch-backed. ‘Bent double, like old beggars like sacks.’ ‘like sacks’ suggests the image that the soldiers are like homeless people at the side of a street that is all dirty. This highlights that the clothes they were wearing were al...
Owen uses imagery constantly to convey the conditions and feelings experienced during this war. Firstly I will be exploring Metaphor as it is used so much in this poem. The first metaphor which I will examine is: “Haunting Flares” on line 3 of the first stanza. This quote has so many connotations, my first opinion on this was that the flares which the enemy are firing to light up the battle field are said to be representing the souls of the soldiers fallen comrades. This could also be said to represent the power the enemy has on their own mortality as the bright flares would light up the battle-field exposing everything to their view, this indicates that the enemy always seem to have power upon the soldiers, almost godly. The second metaphor which I will explore is:
Owen first describes in extreme detail the reality of war with graphic imagery in Stanza III. This can be seen in the quotation: “He lost his colour very far from here”. The action of the protagonist losing his colour is a metaphor that Owen uses effectively to symbolise the protagonist losing a lot of blood, which gives the reader a first hint about the brutality of war. “Colour” can also be interpreted as the fruitful and colourful events in life, in which now the protagonist is going to be deprived of, since his life is fading away. Owen mirrors “light – blue trees” in Stanza II with this quotation, in which the two colours are in binary opposition. The colour “light blue” depicts and creates a sense of euphoria and romance. As the protagonist has now lost this “colour”, he will no longer experience elation or affection, and will now live a “grey” life, as mentioned in Stanza I. The phrase “very far from here” also suggests the difficulty for the protagonist in finding this “lost colour”. As he had lost this “colour” very far from here, Owen suggests that his loss maybe permanent and adds to the tragedy and pathos of his situation.
In Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, he uses many important techniques that create an impact. Owen wrote the poem in order to describe the horrors of war, and with that would be able to attack the jingoistic beliefs that many people (such as Jessie Pope) possessed. His description of the horrific nature of war creates a lasting impact on the readers. To achieve this, Owen used techniques such as similes, metaphors, alliteration and finished off with an imperative statement.
Dulce et Decorum est is a poem written about the first world war. Its Wilfred Owens first hand account of World War I, the War that, ultimately, killed him. Wilfred Owen was an anti-war poet. He wrote of the horrible conditions encounter by the young soldier in the trenches.
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
History is an important to today’s modern society because it shows the attitudes and culture of that society and shows patterns of society that can teach us how to avoid such things as genocide and war. The piece that will be adapted in this essay is Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen which will be adapted into a movie. There will have to be some changes to the poem to the length of the plot and setting up the beginning of the story. The movie will also have to keep with the overall theme of the story that war is grim and the effect that war has on soldiers. With an adaptation to a new medium, aspects of the poem could be lost or strengthen. The visuals would be strengthened because the poem has descriptive imagery and the movie would be able to stress the imagery. But with a change to a movie the overall message could be lost because of the way that people would perceive the movie, if they just watch to see World War one in action then they will miss the message about war. The reason why this piece is interesting to adapt because of the message that Wilfred Owen had that war is horrible and the façade of the leaders of war.
Owen, Wilfred. "Dulce et Decorum Est." Perrine?s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. 7th ed. Ed. Thomas R. Arp. Ft. Worth: Harcourt, 1998. 565-566.
The words Owen chooses to use in the poem describing the soldiers are peculiar choices. The speaker refers to them as “[b]ent double, like beggars in sacks” (line 1), very different from a typical idea of a soldier. From the beginni...