How Wilfred Owen Presents the Horror of War in Dulce et Decorum est

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How Wilfred Owen Presents the Horror of War in Dulce et Decorum est In the First World War people wanted the young men to go to war, but no-one really knew about conditions of the fighting in the war. Wilfred Owen was one of the people who wanted to tell the public what war was really was like. He tried to do that through his poetry. One of his poems "Dulce et decorum est" shows the horror of war very well. We know that Wilfred Owen really does know what he's talking about as he served through most of the war and died shortly before the armistice. I am going to compare "Dulce et Decorum est" with other poems on the horror of war. "Dulce et Decorum est" is short for the Latin saying "Dulce est Decorum est Pro Patria mori" this means, it is a great and wonderful thing to die for one's country. Wilfred Owen tries to tell us that this is the opposite of what war was actually like. "Bent double like beggars under sacks" is how he describes the soldiers returning from the front line. This is not the patriotic view that the public was given. Wilfred Owen shows the horror of war by telling us that the young men in war were acting like old men who had trouble walking and are tired and weary from life. This isn't the image we should have of the young men that are going to protect the country and that they are the people the paper talked about. The poem describes a gas attack and alerts our senses by telling us the effects of the gas attack on a person that fails to put their gas mask on in time. By telling us things like that it alerts our senses and we imagine that we're choking and that it could be us that are choking and that ... ... middle of paper ... ...et Decorum est" experienced, they experienced the direst horrors of 1914 war, they heard the shells dropping, they saw their friends die; they had to live in the trenches. Modern day war doesn't happen like this so the only people left to witness the horrors after they are dead are the family who have lost a son or a father or a brother. The poem is set out simply. It has two stanzas and has a simple rhyming pattern. I think this gives it a very simple understated mood that you would get when a child speaks to you about their day at school. This gives over the affect that war is only sad for those who understand it. The child who is speaking doesn't really understand the concept of war. I am given this impression because the child speaks of everything else first, and then last mentions the girl whose father died.

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