Louis
Falgas
3eme 3
IGCSE Coursework
How Does Owen Convey the Horror Of War To The Reader
Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori. These lines are drawn from one of Horace’s poems and mean that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. This is the image that people had of war before 1914. The shiny, bright uniforms; mounted men charging gloriously down to slay the enemy. Owen too had that vision of war, until he actually got there. His view changed dramatically after traumatic experiences: he was stuck in a shell hole for three days, and was then diagnosed with shell shock, a stress illness. When he was sent to hospital, he met the young poet Siegfried Sassoon, who influenced him in his poetry. It was then that he started to write anti-war and satirical poems. In Dulce et Decorum est, he shows the horrors of war, he forces us to watch the blood and death. He uses every aspect of the poem to illustrate the brutality and animality in war.
The first element one grasps is the rhythm. The entire poem is based on loose iambic pentameter. The first line starts off with a double stress: “Bent Double”. The effect is quite peculiar. Whilst the iambic pentameter suggests the exhaustion of the men, patrolling in no man’s land, its sometimes jerky rhythm feels like they are staggering “through sludge” and helps the reader immerse himself in the soldier’s body. The irregular beats are like heartbeats, stressed by gunfire and fright. The rhyme scheme is regular, but it affects the poem in a singular fashion. The rhymes are stressed every time by the Iambic pentameter, for that reason the poet places words which all have an important meaning and a violent sound at the end of each line, the “acks” rhyme for example. The caesuras emphasize the uneven character of the rhythm highlighting once more the weariness of war; picturing the struggling soldiers, limping like overloaded animals. The poet also manipulates the rhythm perfectly by controlling the speed at all times. For instance in the last two lines, there is a delayed action realisation, and, he speeds the rhythm up when the action happens.