Dulce et Decorum est. By Wilfred Owen - background & key themes

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Dulce et Decorum est.

By Wilfred Owen

'Bent double, like old beggars under sacks'

Voted the nation's eighth most popular poem of all time, 'Dulce et Decorum est.,' is one of the most bitterly truthful pieces of literature about war. It was written in 1917 by Wilfred Owen in Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh, where he was receiving treatment for shell-shock after serving in the trenches in the Somme and in St Quentin.

Owen had been writing poetry for many years but had little confidence in his work, until he met Siegfried Sassoon, a fellow patient at the hospital and a famous poet. Sassoon encouraged Owen to write more direct poems, using everyday speech, and to openly express the anger and disgust he felt at the callous spending of soldiers' lives by people safe in London.

'Dulce et decorum est. Pro patria mori,' the Latin 'tag' was written by the Roman poet Horace, and was much quoted during the Boer war and after 1914. It means, 'It is sweet and meet (decorous) to die for one's country,' but while Horace meant it sincerely, Owen is using it with bitter irony. Owen wanted to attack the sentimental, bogus patriotism of stay-at-home war enthusiasts.
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On the original draft of the piece, he addresses the poem to Jessie Pope, who had published several shallow right wing poems in the papers encouraging men to fight. Wilfred Owen wanted these jingoistic civilians to know what exactly they were encouraging young men to go into.

He wanted to describe war as it really was and saw no point in telling lies to comfort civilians at home.

The poem begins with an image of dirty, sick, and exhausted soldiers marching through the sludge, cursing at every step they take. They are struggling away from the ...

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