In August 1918, after his friend, the other Great War poet, Siegfried Sassoon had been severely injured and sent back to England, Owen returned to France war was still as horrid as before. The butchery war ended on November 11th, 1918 at 11 o clock. Seven days before, Owen had been killed in one of the last vain battles of this war. The situation of Dulce et Decorum est s a tragic situation. The poems speaker is Wilfred Owen. He is a soldier who is sent into the front lines of battle.There is not a particular audience that he is looking for.
The occasion is the cold winter war in the trenches. It is men fighting for their country and dying for an honor. The poem takes place on a cold day in 1917.It is outside on the Western Front in France. The poem is telling our about the hard ships that the soldiers went through. His theme of the poem is about trench warfare. Owen s hurling the pain into the readers face. The pain of this piece writing is its truth. This is something that poet saw and experienced. This sets the serious tone for the poem. His poem starts by telling you the soldiers had a long walk back to their camp and to safety and they were oblivious to the fighting. Then it tells you about a gas attack and how the men are scrambling to prepare. Then he sees his friend dying and is not able to help him. He watches his friend die in pain. Next it talks about how his friend died for his country. I basically see this poem as a soldier telling you about one of the probably many situations that he has been through.
In Dulce Et Decorum Est Wilfred Owen reacts to the war by turning conventional poetic technique into some thing that appears to be normal on the surface but in reality is tainted and corrupted. The poem is written in Iambic Pentameter. The sound in the poem makes you feel like you are right there watching the guy die from the
Gas. Dulce et Decorum est has a conventional form. It rhymes well enough following ABAB, CDCD etc pattern.
The most important means of developing the effectiveness of the poem is the graphic imagery. They evoke such emotions so as to cause people to become sick.
The images can draw such pictures that no other poetic means can, such as in line twenty-two: "Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs." This can be disturbing to think about. It shows troops being brutally slaughtered very vividly, evoking images in the reader's mind. In the beginning of the poem the troops were portrayed as "drunk with fatigue." With this you can almost imagine large numbers of people dragging their boots through the mud, tripping over their own shadow. Later in the poem when the gas was dropped, it painted a psychological image that would disturb the mind. The troops were torn out of their nightmarish walk and surrounded by gas bombs. How everyone, in "an ecstasy of fumbling" was forced to run out into the mist, unaware of their fate. Anyone wanting to fight in a war would become nervous at the image of himself running out into a blood bath. The graphic images displayed here are profoundly affecting and can never be forgotten. The poem ties it all together in the last few lines.
In Latin, the phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro partria mori" means: "It is sweet and becoming to die for one's country." Owen calls this a lie by using good diction, vivid comparisons, and graphic images to have the reader feel disgusted at what war is capable of. This poem is extremely effective as an anti-war poem, making war seem absolutely horrid and revolting, just as the author wanted it to.
In conclusion I think Wilfred Owens Dulce et Decorum Est is a great war like poem. That involves a tragic war situation. It is easily understood and the poem also has very unique sound to it. By the end of the poem the reader can fully appreciate the irony between the truth of what happens at the Trenches and the lie being told at home. The whole poem is contradictory to what was being spread with ‘Dulce et Decorum est.’
(It is a sweet and glorious thing to die for your country.)
