Wilfred Owen can be considered to be one of the finest war poets of all times. His war poems, a collection of works composed between January 1917, when he was first sent to the Western Front, and November 1918, when he was killed in action, use a variety of poetic techniques to allow the reader to empathise with his world, situation, emotions and thoughts.
'Dulce et Decorum est' is a poem written through Owen’s eyes, based on his own experiences and views of sheer horror of war. Owen mounts a powerful argument against the complacency of those who believe the war to be a glorious patriotic duty and that dying for your country was noble and heroic.
Whilst in recovery in a hospital in Edinburgh, Owen met Siegfried Sassoon, an army captain and an established poet who wrote passionately of his experiences in the war. This was marked as a turning point in Owen's career as a poet. Sassoon was admired by Owen’s poetry and persuaded him to ‘sweat his guts out writing poetry,’ whilst encouraging him to further develop his unique style. Owen was introduced to a new circle of intellectuals including Robert Graves and others that corroborated his stature as a fellow poet. Initially Sassoon's influence was extreme and Owen began to write poetry that echoed his contemporary style. Though, he soon found his own unique approach to writing about the war. As his style matured, so did his characteristic use of such techniques as pararhyme, alliteration and assonance.
Owen uses four main groups of imagery that run throughout the poem:
1 – Tiredness, sleep, dreams, a nightmare world: “Men marched asleep”,
“Drunk with fatigue”, “In all my dreams”, “If in some smothering dreams”,
Owen suffered from nightmares as a result of shell-shock.
2 –...
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...ar is glorious. He is critical of the 'high zest' and the great enthusiasm that is used to convince men to go to war. He refers to the soldiers as having ‘innocent tongues’ and sees war as brutal and wasteful of young lives. His choice of the word 'children' is significant; as impressionable young men are almost lured to war by the promise of 'desperate glory'.
In conclusion, Owen breaks from the pretty language prevalent in the poetry of his era to show his society the awful images of real and not romantically heroic war. Finally, Owen juxtaposes the idea of war as devastating and the idea of war as heroic to illustrate the poem's ultimate irony - "The Old Lie: Dulce Et Decorum Est, Pro patria Mori", which translates from Latin as “it is sweet and right to die for your country,” a concept Owen strongly denied.
Works Cited
www.answers.com/topic/wilfred-owen -
Owen, Wilfred. "Dulce et Decorum Est." The Faber Book of War Poetry. Ed. Kenneth Baker. London: Faber, 1997. 3-4.
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.
Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem about World War I. Owen describes the horrors of war he has witnessed first-hand after enlisting in the war. Prior to his encounter with war he was a devote Christian with an affinity towards poetry, and after being swayed by war agitprop he returned home to enlist in the army; Owen was a pacifist and was at his moral threshold once he had to kill a man during the war. The poem goes into detail about what the soldiers had to endure according to Owen, “many had lost their boots / but limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; / drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots” (5-7). Owen’s conclusion to the poem is that “the old Lie; dulce et decorum est / pro patria mori” (27-28), Latin for “it is sweet and right to die for your country,” is not easily told when one has experienced war. In his detailed poem Owen writes about the true terrors of war and that through experience you would probably change your conceived notion about dying for your country.
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” is made up of grotesque diction scattered all across the poem to illustrate the conditions in which soldiers try to retain their humanities both physical and psychological, whereas “Suicide in the Trenches” offers little description of the horrendous physical aspects of war. Right from the get-go, Owen jumps into the brutality of war as he recalls, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,” (Owen). His use of words like beggars, knock-kneed, and ha...
War is an event that has been trivialized and encouraged by authority for a thousand years. From the First Crusade, to the American Revolutionary War to the current war in Afghanistan; it is something that society today still encourages men and women to participate in. Although our soldiers now have a far greater support system and understanding of war then those who participated in World War I, our ANZACs enlisted relying on the cheerful, happy times proposed in the government’s propaganda. Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ challenges the image that the government put forth and brings portray the reality of war. The poem depicts the struggles of a soldiers return to base camp. It defies the image created by the government by displaying how gruesome and horrific the conditions that these men had to survive through.
World War One was one of the deadliest results of human violence, simply to attain riches, land, and to fulfill the greed for victory and pride. Young and old men alike were deceived into joining war to fulfill a fictitious and nationalistic duty, and were forced to live in the inhumane conditions in the trenches, offering their lives as a patriotic duty. In Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Dulce et decorum est”, the readers are given an accurate description of the hardships and horrors of the world war 1, through the personal experience and eyes of Owen himself. Poetic devices and figurative language were both used immaculately in representing the tormenting situations that the soldiers were placed in. Vibrant imagery, themes and irony were also incorporated exceptionally into the poem, adding depth and meaning. With a remarkable use of techniques, Owen really creates a mental image of utter despair, disgust, revulsion and well, war in our minds.
Owen's poems the irony between the truth of what happens at war and the lie that was
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.
The similes and metaphors used by Owen illustrate very negative war scenes throughout the poem, depicting extreme suffering of young men fighting during World War I. The first simile used by Owen describes the soldiers as “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”, giving them sickly, wounded, and exhausted attributes from battle and lack of rest (1). Next, the soldiers are described as “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags”, which once again portrays these young men as sick...
Wilfred Owen's poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" was written during his World War I experience. Owen, an officer in the British Army, deeply opposed the intervention of one nation into another. His poem explains how the British press and public comforted themselves with the fact that all the young men dying in the war were dieing noble, heroic deaths. The reality was quite different: They were dieing obscene and terrible deaths. Owen wanted to throw the war in the face of the reader to illustrate how vile and inhumane it really was. He explains in his poem that people will encourage you to fight for your country, but, in reality, fighting for your country is simply sentencing yourself to an unnecessary death. The breaks throughout the poem indicate the clear opposition that Owen strikes up. The title of the poem means "It is good and proper to die for your country," and then Owen continues his poem by ending that the title is, in fact, a lie.
...e see a young boy being taught how to use weapons. In “Exposure”, Owen depicts a group of soldiers freezing to death at war, even though they aren’t in the midst of fighting. Lastly, in “Dulce Et Decorum Est” we read about a soldiers who struggles to get his mask on during a gas attack (when the enemy releases a gas deadly upon inhale). Owen describes the soldiers slow death in detail. Not only do these images provide the reader with first hand accounts of war, but they also show Owen’s feelings towards the war. All of these images that are glued into his head will be there forever, which is why he incorporates these realities in his poems, so that everyone can realize that war is nothing more than a inhumane act of terror.
Wilfred Owen was an officer in World War I, who was sent to a hospital because he suffered from "shellshock". There, he met poet Siegfried Sassoon, who played a part in influencing him to write poetry about war and the suffering of soldiers. He later returned to the war, where he was killed. ' '
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...
Wilfred Owen can be considered as one of the finest war poets of all times. His war poems, a collection of works composed between January 1917, when he was first sent to the Western Front, and November 1918, when he was killed in action, use a variety of poetic techniques to allow the reader to empathise with his world, situation, emotions and thoughts. The sonnet form, para-rhymes, ironic titles, voice, and various imagery used by Owen grasp the prominent central idea of the complete futility of war as well as explore underlying themes such as the massive waste of young lives, the horrors of war, the hopelessness of war and the loss of religion. These can be seen in the three poems, ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and ‘The Last Laugh’, in which this essay will look into.
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.