Owen’s tone throughout the poem differs from angry to afraid. He seems to feel frustrated at the end of the poem,
“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”
It is easy to perceive the capital ‘L’ in ‘Lie’, emphasizing disgust. You can almost hear Owen spit the word out. He feels robbed by the deceitful notion of the nobility of war. He agrees with the fact that it is unsuitable to mislead youngsters into an early illusion of the heroic glory of war, as it will soon dissolve into the hellish accuracy. The poem has a certain surrealistic element to it. Words like ‘devil’, ‘hags’ and ‘writhing face’, seem to be more nightmarish. Though, you can wake up from a nightmare but not from reality. This concept is what gives the poem a disturbing quality. Knowing that all the events described occurred not in his mind but to hundreds of real people, just like you or I that have tolerated this inhumane torment. You can mentally visualize all incidents mentioned taking place.
The poet uses vivid imagery to portray his harsh outlook of the war. After the struggle to survive while on the front line, Wilfred and his platoon are further ambushed by a gas shell but are too worn-out to care anymore, they no longer have any aspiration to engage in battle.
“Drunk with fatigue: deaf even to the hoots,
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.”
The soldiers are drained from energy, drenched with sweat and blood. The graphic imagery is of the soldiers staggering onwards purposelessly, not fully certain of what is going on as they are in a drunk, zombie-like condition. They are so dazed that they are unable to hear the gas-bombs plummet behind them. Even if they could, it is unlikely that they would have the strength to turn around or take cover. The following line is a considerable contrast to being ‘drunk with fatigue’,
“Gas! GAS! Quick boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling.”
The lower case to capital letter in ‘Gas! GAS!’ evokes rising alarm. The use of exclamation marks enforces the words are shouted rather than said. The group have been forced into ‘an ecstasy of fumbling’ after being so weary they had no concern what happened to them as long as they got back to base. When the protection of the soldiers’ lives had been compromised, it was every man for himself. The persistent dangers the troop were in never rested, like a sleepless monster permanently looming over them ready to strike at any time. The psychological image that appears is of a huge rush to do something so simple as to live on.
The form of the poem also manages to reflect Owens feelings of hatred and disgust at the war. There are three stanzas, three separate parts of the tale, all with their individual tones. The first uses the attitude of defeat,
“Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs.”
The second uses a hasty tone,
“Gas! GAS! Quick boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling.”
The third and final stanza is bitter,
“Of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues.”
This has the effect of taking the reader through different emotions the writer was feeling while writing the poem, a roller coaster ride of susceptibilities and resentfulness.
This poem has a regular rhyme scheme, which is highlighted in the next section,
“Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.”
The ABAB rhyme scheme sounds like marching or the steady tattoo of a drum beating, reminding us of the subject of the poem and the consistent hammering of the angry tone. The simplicity of it reminds me of a children’s poem or a nursery rhyme.
The pace of the poem quickens in verse two from,
“Drunk with fatigue: deaf even to the hoots,
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.”
In verse one, which is quite slow to go with the subject of drowsiness. It swiftly changes to a fast tempo,
“Gas! GAS! Quick boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling.
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time.”
The soldiers are awoken from their state of confusion as their lives are endangered.
I think that the main question Wilfred Owen was trying to get across is ‘how can it be good and honourable to die for your country, when bearing with affliction for months or years then dying, when no-one knows you have died?’
Owen has achieved his aim of making the reader having the same opinion as him. This has been accomplished through compelling metaphors and emotive language, which together become a persuasive argument. Subtle insinuating connotations have been positioned carefully to convince you more.
The phrase,
“Knock-kneed, coughing like hags,”
Is contradictory to the government-projected stereotype of a soldier in a crisp new uniform with shiny boots. This reinforces Wilfred’s anti-propaganda thoughts. I have also acknowledged that war is far more devastating then I first imagined.
“Behind the wagon we flung him in”
Is a true illustration of the poor mental and physical health the soldiers were in. There were so many deaths that flinging a dead or dying man into a wagon developed into routine. He is treated like nothing more than a piece of meat, tossed without consideration.
Personally, I feel quite powerless as I read about the horrors undergone but cannot do anything to aid the pain once and still endured. Owen has created a way that transports the reader back to the scene of the poem. Using the effectiveness of the senses. He describes the sounds, the smells and the sights around to give the feeling that you witnessing the happenings expressed.
My final contemplations to conclude this analysis are not in despair but queries, whether it is rhetorical or not I am not completely sure. The thing that concerns me is how the government send men off to fight war when under the misapprehension that they are fighting for their country? Do they have no conscious, no guilt in sending the doomed youth off to their inevitable deaths? The decisions they make obviously have repercussions as do all decisions, but to knowingly condemn so many innocent people to physical and mental torture then death, to me is worse murder, is it not?
