“Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge,
'Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards the distant rest began to trudge.”
Lines 2-4, Stanza 1 - DD
In the beginning of "Dulce et Decorum est", the lines are long and contain many commas. This too brings the reader into the poem. The reader might want the line to stop but until it does the reader must carry on reading and only pause for breath at the commas. This is like the soldiers who keep marching on – they are tired but they never stop until they reach the end.
The words ‘trudge’,’sludge’, ‘march asleep’ and ‘limped on’ along with the descriptions of their physical condition, only add to the slow pacing of the first stanza and it emphasises further their lack of motivation and low moral. On comparing the young soldiers it hags and old beggars and saying that their once new and clean uniforms are sacks, we are once again shown the state of physical and mental degradation at which they are.
Brooke's poem, on the other hand, makes the act of being at war and dying seem worth it. He uses a personification of England to make the idea appealing.
“A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s breathing English air,
Wash’d by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.”
Lines 5 to 8, Stanza 1 - S
His personification of England makes her seem like a motherly figure, kind and nurturing to the soldiers. It gives the poem a very patriotic and romantic feel to it – with comparisons like these, ideas like the ones transmitted by poets such as Wilfred Owen in “Dulce et Decorum est” and “Anthem for doomed youth” would never enter the readers mind. All realistic views are pushed aside and replaced by Brooke’s optimistic and noble fantasy. The whole concept Brooke is trying to transmit seems naïve and of someone with no experiences whatsoever in regards to war.
A soldier going to war narrates the poem and his addressee could be his mother or his girlfriend/wife, perhaps even his friends or just everyone in general. Its intentions are to leave the reader at rest and to not let them worry about what will happen to him because if he is not afraid of dying, others should not be either. The poem passes a message that could be found in a propaganda poster or brochure convincing people to enlist in the army. Owen's poem would never be published for such purposes, the encouragement of youths to join the army was something he was strongly opposed to and one is left to wonder if he might not have been one of those deceived youths.
Line 4 in "Dulce et Decorum est" leads us to ponder what type of rest Owen means. He says it is distant, another word describing the long way they have to go to leave the war – but is this rest a final one? Could Owen mean that however much they march, it will be of little use for they will die anyway – be it now, or later?
The word ‘drunk’ in line 7, stanza1, gives the reader a description they might be able to relate to – seeing as the poem was written during the war, Owen was probably trying to transmit an idea that people back home (in this case England) or someone with no war experience, could understand. His highly graphic descriptions all the way through the poem, strengthen the idea that war is a very real issue and not – as the soldiers might’ve been told so before or lead to think after reading Brooke's poem – a grand and noble thing.
“And think this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less”
Lines 1 and 2, Stanza 2 - S
‘Heart’ in this case, is a metaphor Brooke uses for himself – he is the heart with all evil shed away. He believes that soldiers will go down in history and extending the metaphor he expresses this idea by saying that he’ll be a ‘pulse in the eternal mind’, the eternal mind, being history. He glorifies the ‘hero’s immortal legacy’ and with it, his immortal legacy - one in which Owen does not show to believe.
“Gas! GAS! Quick boys! – an ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the helmets just in time,”
Lines 1, 2, Stanza 2 - DD
It is suddenly, and with these words that the poem starts to speed up – a cry of panic and warning that wakes the soldiers up. Panic is demonstrated through the use of exclamation marks, capital letters in the second ‘Gas’, short quick words, and the words ‘ecstasy of fumbling’.
The word ecstasy, one might think, is a little out of context because it is usually associated to bliss or enthusiasm. Here it is meaning is a nervous and even morbid state of anxiety and stress just this word helps the reader develop a psychological characterisation of the soldiers.
“But someone was still yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime –“
Lines 3 and 4,Stanza 2 - DD
Owen says that not every man is quick enough at waking up and putting on his mask and when describing what happened to the man who was struck by the gas (either Chlorine or Mustard) he compares his reaction to that of a man in a fire or lie. Being caught in a gas attack is not something people with no war experience will be familiar to so Owen, once more, compares the situation to one that people might be able to visualise – a man on fire.
"As under a green sea, I saw him drowning”.
Line 7, Stanza 2 - DD
The word ‘drowning’ literally says that the gas is surrounding the soldier and he can no longer breath. He is being asphyxiated. However, this word is more powerful than that – the idea of drowning in water is horrid. The sense of frustration felt by those who are drowning for must be incredible because the air is only a set distance away, if they could reach it then they’d be safe but the feeling that they cannot prevails. A similar situation occurs with gas – if the soldier could only take a few steps into the clear air then he might be able to live. However, the gas is attacking his lungs so he is suffering too much to move or even think rationally.
"In all my dreams, before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”
Lines 1 and 2, Stanza 3 - DD
These lines, still as graphic as the ones before, not only transmit a sensation of sorrow and sympathy to the reader, they also transmit one of anxiousness to read the rest of the poem in order to discover the fate of this man. He repeats the word ‘drowning’ for emphasis and we get the idea that the narrator, Owen himself, will never forget the scene he has witnessed.
"Behind the wagon we flung him in…
… You could hear, at every jolt.”
Line 2 and 5, Stanza 4 - DD
Again, the idea that nothing is calm or peaceful is given when the soldier is ‘flung’ into a jolting wagon. He is neither laid down carefully or having a smooth ride.
Owen hammers the revolting imagery into the readers minds repeatedly, with every word he make the concept seem almost too horrid to be real but because his words are so sharp and so crude, the reader is dragged into the reality of the situation. Brooke's poem just lets the reader 'float' away in visions of grandness and beauty.
The impression that Hell is nearby is vividly given when Owen states,
“His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;”
Line 4, Stanza 4 - DD
In the final stanza, the imagery is so strong and so powerful that it is enough to make the reader sick. It is Owen’s final blow before hitting the reader with his punch line. It is where he describes how horrible and macabre dying for your country really is. He describes the sounds his fellow soldier is making and the state of his lungs using words such as ‘froth-corrupted’, ‘obscene’ and ‘bitter’.
While Hell is being called into Owen's poem, Brooke is calling Heaven into his poem,
“In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.”
Line 6, Stanza 2 - S
‘Heaven’, being the last word, leaves the reader with a feeling of bliss towards life – even if this feeling lasts only for a little while.
Owen goes on to say,
“[The blood] Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud”
Lines 6, 7, Stanza 4 - DD
The whole of the fourth stanza has no full stops until the last line. "The Soldier" maintains its speed throughout the whole piece, never accelerating to a final point.
In "Dulce et Decorum est" the pace starts to pick up, making you read faster and faster until you reach the main message of the poem,
“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
Toe old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.”
Lines 9-12, Stanza 4 - DD
“Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori” means that it is sweet fitting to die for one’s country – a thing, which after reading this poem, one will find very hard to believe. That is the main message of this poem. That this sentence is little more than a lie – that is the reason ‘lie’ is capitalised in the middle of the sentence.
The friend Owen refers to could be anyone, but upon a little research turns out to be a poetess called Jessie Pope – author of poems such as “Who’s for the Game?” written for children who, as Owen puts so well, are “ardent for some desperate glory”. Owen with a tone of dissension tells Jessie Pope (and with this, others like her) that he believes what she is doing to not only be wrong but disgusting because it is giving innocent children the idea that war is a noble and great thing. He also says, or implies, that because she has no war experience (otherwise she would not have written the type of poems she did) she has no right to misguide children into believing what she says is true.
This criticism is as valid for Pope as it is for Brooke who does the same - because children are competitive and want to be high achievers they are vulnerable to people’s influences because they have had little time and experience to be able to form their own opinions.
“…There shall be
In that rich earth, a richer dust conceal’d;”
Lines 3-4, Stanza 1 - S
Brooke romanticises the idea of dying for one’s country. Rather than saying that in a morbid, dirty, muddy and sick battlefield his corpse will lay, decomposing – he euphemises the happening by calling the battlefield a rich earth and his body an even richer dust. This very pacific idealism and writing, gives the poem a very appealing and slow tone with no anger or feeling of bitterness at all. The reader is left with the idea that the poet’s feelings are very true and not at all sarcastic or disdainful. The contrast between the ideas of both poems is extremely strong because one, Owen's, fills you with disgust a longing to push the vivid imagery out of your head and a hatred for the whole ghastly happening.
The idea of a nurturing motherland is continued throughout the whole of the second stanza, when Brook further states,
“Gives somewhere back the thoughts be England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace…”
Lines 3 to 6, Stanza 2 - S
Words such as ‘laughter’, ‘friends’, ‘gentleness’, ‘happy’, ‘day’ and ‘hearts at peace’ independently of where they are in the poem, bring the tone up and the mood. One cannot be angry whilst reading words that have such positive vibrations. The fact that the word ‘day’ is there gives an idea of sunlight and clarity as opposed to the word 'night' that could bring on the idea of darkness and mystery.
Throughout the poem, Owen is describing a moment that he witnessed while fighting in the First Word War. In it, he describes the awful death that came to one of the men – a man who is given no name so we do not know who he is. He is just one of the many like him, who died this way and whom few will ever remember. He describes his feelings and uses detailed imagery to pass his idea – the last line are to me, the best lines of the poem for it is with them that the final message the poem has been building to, is transmitted. It is an excellent poem in every way, from the way it forces the reader to participate to the way it is laid out in an apparently random form to indicate chaos and confusion.
To me, Brooke's poem is an insult to all those who have gone to war and lived through the horror and felt the pain, the sorrow, the despair of being on the verge of death and not knowing what tomorrow holds. Personally, I find that this poem fails to capture my interest. I do not mean this in a condescending way but because I've read Owen's poem, live in 21st Century and having seen the continuous news updates on war, terrorist attacks and bombings I feel that this poem has little effect on me. However, saying this I must take into account that this poem was written many years before I was born, in the year 1914, when the world had seen much less horror and weapons were much less developed. If I had lived in 1914, before both world wars then perhaps this poem would have filled my heart with patriotism and motivated me to join the army. I can only feel sorrow for the mothers of those who signed up and who lost their children in battle because of poems and propaganda like this one, which put ideas of wonder in innocent young minds.
