Dulce et Decorum Est Poem Analysis

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Dulce et Decorum Est Poem Analysis

The poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ was written by Wilfred Owen during World War One. It’s a very anti-war poem and portrays an unseen version of war, the horrible part of it. It was one of the many poems that were not published until after the war as it hardly belonged amongst all the smiling soldiers in the propaganda posters. It centers around the retelling of a gas attack - one of the battlefield methods that were common in Owen’s day – and how a soldier didn’t get his helmet on in time.  The title ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ is a part of a common phrase that was tossed around a lot during Owen's time, which loosely translated into English means, ‘It is sweet and fitting’. The soldier’s death is barely ‘sweet and fitting’ which is why the title is very misleading and ironic.

The poem consists of four stanzas. Owen starts the poem by describing the state of the soldiers, again very different than the clean, healthy men in the posters. It seems to the reader that every aspect of the soldiers was damaged – physically, mentally and spiritually. The simile Owen uses ‘…like old beggars’ in my opinion is one of the very effective images in the poem. It could be interpreted as the soldiers feeling betrayed, deserted by their own people, put into a battlefield they didn’t sign up for, like the beggars who feel ignored and forgotten, balancing on a thin line between life and death. Two metaphors that caught my eye were ‘Men marched asleep’ and ‘Drunk with fatigue’ which both strongly indicate that the soldiers were on auto-pilot, not in control of their actions, almost like robots or zombies, neither dead or alive. ‘Men marched asleep’ is a metaphorical paradox because you can’t march while you’re asleep, and ‘Drunk with fatigue’ is a metaphor where you can’t literally be drunk with fatigue, but it implies that the soldiers are so tired that they are powerless and weak, relating to the effects of alcohol where the mind is weak and irrational.

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In the second stanza the poem moves on to describe a gas attack, and the reader is dragged into its midst. The soldiers struggle to get the helmets on, forcing the reader to empathize with the soldiers, so young and sprightly with a long life ahead of them, but fighting to stay alive in a matter of seconds. ‘An ecstasy of fumbling’. This metaphor illustrates to the reader the human instinct to survive, how nothing is more important than fitting the helmet on and the panic and rush of adrenaline the soldier feels. Yet one man, representing the worst of ...

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