Dulce et Decorum Est

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Emilienne Agius

V White 28th November 2005

Dulce et Decorum est - pg 180

Wilfred Owen

In the poem "Dulce et Decorum est", Wilfred Owen gives yet another graphical view of what goes on during war, what these brave soldiers pass through and the harshness of the killing. With the Latin phrase "Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori", meaning that it is sweet and appropriate to die for your country, he gives an ironic sense to war and an opposite meaning to his real view of war. He wrote this poem in a similar way to his other war themed poems where he expresses his negative view of war and describes the useless suffering and deaths cause by war. Having participated in war himself and knowing what really happens during war, he rightly describes it as something crude and harsh, very pointless and useless waste of lives. He shows his accumulated hatred towards war, the exhaustion which the soldiers feel. He uses empathy as a key theme to reach us. He also explains his disagreement with the famous "old lie" that if you go to war you are doing an appropriate and honourable thing as the title itself states.

From the very start, Owen describes how exhausted the soldiers are, so much so that they can even stand straight but instead are " bent double". Through the use of a simile the soldiers are being compared to "old beggars", because by going to war they have lost their young age vitality and their dignity, together with all they own including their own life just like desperate beggars. They are all in an uncomfortable situation at which they are cursing as a place of doom, as they fight in misery and pain, "cursed through the sludge". Then he mentions the "haunting flares" which are signals of battle and bombardments in the vicinity. This is a threatening signal for the soldiers an thus they all flee towards their camps for shelter from the bombs and from their death. Owen then calls the camps their "distant rests" which is a reflection to the first stanza when they were all exhausted and tired. The soldiers are tremendously worn out by that time and consequently were searching for a place to rest. He uses an oxymoron to show the courage and strength of the soldiers as "men marched asleep". This shows that even though they were weary and energy less they still fought like lions whilst looking for defence. He then states in an extremely crude and harsh way how these soldiers get wounded, all "blood-shod", sometimes even loosing parts of their bodies due to bombardments, thus explaining the austerity of war and the agony which the soldiers are victims of. He explains how sometimes they even lose their senses and become "lame", "blind" and "deaf", symbolising a general loss of energy and vitality, therefore the soldiers are becoming inanimate and in there is the use of dehumanisation. These soldiers are "drunk with fatigue", and this serious phrase is also ironic at the same time because we imagine the soldiers unconscious and weary, as if they were drunk. Therefore in the first stanza Owen gives a description of the soldiers returning in a desperate state from war.
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Owen introduces the second stanza by reciting in an unpleasant way the death of one of his companions in a gas room so as to make us feel pity for the suffering which these soldiers have to pass through. He narrates how at one time they found themselves being attacked by gas bombs and how everyone was trying to wear their "helmets just in time" so as not to die due to this green gas which was like "fire or lime". However, just one of them was unlucky enough not to manage and wear his helmet and thus ...

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