“Gas Gas! Quick boys” Owen repeats the word gas as the men are too tired and couldn’t care less. There follows a grotesque and horrific scene as the tired men grope for there gas masks and one “boy” is too slow. His death is seen in a slow motion nightmare through the goggles of Owens gas mask and the green mist of chlorine fumes. “Dim through the misty panes and thick green sea I saw him drowning”.
Owen in haunted in his dreams by the memories of this man “choking” and “drowning while he watches helplessly. This maintains the reality of the nightmare. Dulce et decorum est was a retaliation to Jesse Popes “who’s for the game”. The poems stated purpose was to highlight indifference at home and this poem was directly specifically at Jesse pope who had recently wrote a patriotic poem.
This poem includes the Latin phrase that Owen uses for his title “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” which means it’s a great and fitting thing to do to die for ones country. The poems ends in a more passionate note of irony as Owen shows his anger at the way young “boys” are being killed “children Arden for some desperate glory” there looking to be herotic but there pouring their energy into a worthless cause.
The sentry is another poem that focuses on Owens experiences. The poem is about the death of a solider. In the opening stanza Owen and some of his men are sheltering in a German dug out during a battle. They have been there for some hours. The water and mud “slush” in the dug out is waist high and the rain is pouring down.” Rain guttering down the in the waterfalls of slime” The Germans knew the British was there and started to shell them.
One soldier is put on guard duty the man is the sentry. Suddenly from Owens position the sentry is blown into the trench deluge of mud. “the man is not dead but blind “ o sir my eyes –I’m blind – I’m blind – I’m blind. Owen repeats the word “blind” to show how devastating the injury is. “Eyeballs huge bulged like squids” a horrific simile used. Comparing the sentry’s eyes to a squid – a animal that is not found on land but underwater. This does not even seem human.
Owen forgets about this man because he has other thing to do but he is constantly reminded of this episode in his dreams/ nightmares. Owen knows his men fought hard for their country how they “bled and spewed”. He calls them “wretches” because he feels sorry for they had to endure such terrible experiences Owen also uses onomatopoeia to give a horrific image of the sentry teeth, chattering to shock and fear. “The wild chattering of his broken teeth”
Disabled focuses on a young ‘boy’ who ‘threw away’ both his legs and an arm during the war. In the poem the soldier is sitting in his wheel chair thinking back to what life was like before he went to war. Owen was aware of what life would be like when the men arrived home but the soldiers though they would be treated like heroes. Owen uses the memory of a solider to communicate with the horrors of the war. “Girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim in the old times before he threw his knees away” this shows loosing his limbs didn’t achieve anything and the war was in vain.
The disabled boy was underage but lied to get in the army “smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years”. He seen the war as fun and signed his name to please ‘his meg’ “someone said he’d look a god in kilts” but all this soon become a reality. “Some cheered him home, but not as crowed cheer goal” he wasn’t the hero he thought he would be. Know one was there to welcome his back. Finality of the last statement “why don’t they come?” know one cares.
The final poem I looked at was exposure. This poem describes day break in the trenches in the vicious winter of 1916 and explores the feelings of the men about the situation. In this poem although Owen uses his poetry to describe the horrific conditions of the war and episodes that were pertinent to the British soldiers. He was also aware that these problems applied to the enemy. A major debilitating factor to both sides in the war was the weather he explores the effect this had on the soldiers.
In the poem there is a very successful use of half-rhyme, which in its unreal and discordant effect echoes the subject matter. Each stanza seems to build up into a climax only to end in a short coda. “What are we doing here”, “but Nothing happens”. This evokes feelings of despair and hopelessness imagery is also used to sustain the mood “the earth shudders black with snow”. Also the use of personification is uses “pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces”.
In these four poems we feel sympathy, pity and anger for these men who are sent out to die in a charade of war. Owen communicates with the horrors that these men went through with use of, repetition, personification, imagery, irony, memories and personal pronouns. He uses all off these to show the people at home what really was happening.