Dulce et decorum est is a well known battlefield poem written by Wilfred Owen.
Critical Analysis
Dulce et decorum est is a well known battlefield poem written by Wilfred Owen. It has been written in the first person and the present tense to make the reader feel as if they are actually there. It is in three clear sections, which are eight-line stanzas, rhyming ABABCDCD. It has an extra four lines in the last stanza to incorporate the main message of the poem. It uses many similes and metaphors, which add drama and make it more effective.
The first stanza creates the impression of the men being tired and wounded. It describes many afflictions which are normally associated with old age, it is as though the war has aged them prematurely for example, they are now ‘knock-kneed’ and ‘bent double’ . It is about the men’s journey to a distant rest place away from the battlefield ‘til on haunting flares we turned our backs’. ‘Cursed through sludge’ tells the audience that the conditions are awful and that the language being used to drive them forwards is harsh. The poem gives the feeling of horror and desolation and it is like the men have distanced themselves from this atrocity. The lines ‘all went lame all blind…deaf even to the hoots of tired, outstripped Five-nines that dropped behind’ sounds like the men have seen and heard too many terrible things, that now they simply did not register them. ’Drunk with fatigue’ gives the image that the men have lost all awareness of what is around them, like they are disconnected from their environment like when people are drunk. ‘Many had lost their boots but limped on blood shod; explains that the men’s feet are covered in blood, whether this be from themselves or the battlefield The last line condemns the mistakes their own side have made ‘Outstripped Five Nines that dropped behind’.
