How Wilfred Owen Challenges The Romanticised & Glamorised Picture Of War

How Wilfred Owen Challenges The Romanticised & Glamorised Picture Of War

This essay is to explain and to show how Wilfred Owen challenges the

glamorised image surrounding the war. This glamorous image was created

by the media in order to get people to join up for the war, as a

result of the propaganda people believed that it was honourable to go

to war and you would be regarded as a hero. To do this I will need to

present evidence, using quotes and commentating on his various writing

techniques. To show this I am going to write about two of his poems:

Dulce et decorum est and Disabled. Both of these poems are renowned

for challenging the propaganda created by the media and proves that it

was all lies created to make people sign up for war and it's not in

any way honourable, heroic, glamorous or romantic to die in the war.

These poems have credibility because Owen has first hand experience in

the war as he served in WW1. He uses this to his advantage and writes

truthfully and openly to crush any remaining propaganda that may still

say that it is sweet and fitting to die for your country.

Dulce et decorum est is a poem that follows a nameless man through a

day during WW1 and describes some of the things that he saw.

He writes that they look 'like old beggars'. This is an effective

simile because when you think of 'old beggars' you think of dirty,

scruffy, weak ill people, which is a complete contradictory to the

image of a soldier that the media created using propaganda. They were

'coughing like old hags'. This is a simile. 'hags' are unhealthy and

unfit and this is not what soldiers are expected to be like. 'All went

lame, all blind;/Drunk with fatigue.' This is written in the past

tense and it is ono...

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... same but it is put in different style

of writing. At the end in Dulce he directly addresses the reader,

angrily and definite. Disabled has the same message but instead of

telling you what you should and shouldn't do it makes you think. The

message is there but in a different way.

The characters in each poem are completely different. Dulce's

character is written about in first person narrative and the man who

dies is anonymous, which I think symbolises how you don't have to know

some one to be permanently affected by their death. It shows that

death can strike anyone. The man died by accident. Disabled though

gave us a history of the character, so we knew a little bit about his

personality and what he used to be like before the war. I think this

shows us how much one person can be changed and how his life has been

ruined just because he couldn't say no.