They are weak and exhausted, comparable to old women.
‘coughing like hags.’
The poet describes the unreasonable expectations of the fighting men, how they lost their boots and had to limp bare-foot through the battle grounds.
‘Many had lost their boots, but limped on.’
To start the second verse, a series of short one syllable words with exclamation marks are used, this shows the urgency.
‘Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!’
This verse is describing some sort of gas attack on the soldiers, they struggle to put on the uncomfortable helmets just in time but someone was too late.
‘But someone still was yelling out and stumbling.’
He then goes on to describe the slow, painful and horrific death of that man who never fitted his gas mask.
Verse 3 is two short sentences where the poet expresses how he is haunted by these images of death in all his dreams.
Owen then directs the forth verse to the reader by mentioning the words ‘you’ and ‘My friend’.
‘If in some smothering dreams you too could pace’
He continues to describe the disgusting sights he witnessed and uses persuasive writing to make you agree with him.
The language has a tint of ‘old-fashioned’ words and is very descriptive. For almost each ‘thing’ the poet uses an adjective or verb to describe it.
‘Blood-shod’, ‘Drunk with fatigue’, ‘An ecstasy of fumbling’, ‘Clumsy helmets’, ‘froth-corrupted lungs’.
There are also a couple of onomatopoeias like ‘hoots’ and ‘gargling’.
The assonance on most words are long, this gives the impression of a sad and slow attitude, opposed to a lively one.
Dulce et Decorum est contains many examples of imagery, the poet uses a lot similes throughout the poem to help you imagine the scene.
‘His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin’
He describes how they’re ‘coughing like hags’ which gives the image of how exhausted they are.
‘flound’ring like a man in fire or lime’
The poem contains no metaphors, alliteration or personification.
The tone of this poem is reflected by the poet’s attitude towards war. Owen believes that war isn’t glorious and that it isn’t honourable to die for your country. He has taken a serious approach to the poem.
The rhyme scheme of this poem takes time to develop because the poet is symbolising how long it seemed when he was walking back home through the battle field. This rhyme is in the form of A, B, A, B. The line lengths are longer than short with lines of up to nine words, this helps to convey the slow and sad mood of the poet.
This poem works quite well for me, I like the way the poet has used loads of similes to describe stuff. I also think the subject (War) is an interesting subject to write a poem about and Wilfred Owen has done a good job of doing this.
Damian Gaskin
