Dulce Et Decorum Est

Christopher Martin

After having read Owen’s poem, it shows us that his attitude to war is completely juxtaposed to Tennyson’s views on war, as Owen has experienced war, where as Tennyson had not.

The title of the poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ means ‘it is sweet and fitting’. The use of Latin in this title suggests that Owen is being ironic, as Latin is a dead language, just as war should have been at this time. Also, the Latin propounded that there was a lot of death in this horrendous war, and that it should cease.

In this poem, Owen conveys the true image of war, unlike all the propaganda pieces of work from Alfred Tennyson and many other poets who had never experienced the war to know what it was like. All of Owen’s information came directly from the front line, where as, Tennyson’s information was passed from the front line to him via different people, so his view is partly wrong as it could have been changed by someone on it’s way to him.

In the first few lines, Owen creates a powerful image of men staggering around like they were zombies as they were ‘drunk with fatigue’ which means, they were exhausted from having nightmares and lack of sleep due to the war. In my opinion, Owen delivers a more powerful image to his readers, as ‘men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, but limped on, blood shod’. This is what I think delivers a more powerful image, as they were marching although they were fatigued, many had lost their boots in the mud and had to stagger through the diseased mud and water even if they got gangrene from it, and they had blood over them.

Owen’s notion of patriotism was opposed to Tennyson’s as Owen thought that it was wrong to send young men into a war to be murdered instead of the political leaders sorting it out in different ways to avoid the war, and Tennyson thought that every young man should fight for his empire whatever the consequences.

This is a preview of the whole essay

In stanza 1, Owen creates an image of pain and misery the soldier’s are encountering and to imitate how slow they are walking by using a slow halting rhythm. Stanza 1 tells us a lot about the conditions of the soldiers, both physically and mentally, and how appalling they are. He portrays this by the use of similes, metaphors and vocabulary. He uses similes such as ‘Bent double, like hags’; this simile illustrates how many of the men fall ill. Owen also uses metaphors such as ‘drunk with fatigue’ to display how tired the infantrymen are, this metaphor leads us to think they that are so tired that they are not aware of what is going on around them. He uses such words as ‘sludge’, ‘trudge’ and ‘haunting’ to describe the harsh conditions on the battlefield.

In stanza 2, the rhythm suddenly increases, which displays the panic during the gas attack. Punctuation is used to help create this faster rhythm, exclamation marks and short sentences suddenly speed up the pace and creates more excitement. This gives us, the readers, an image of weary soldiers becoming panic-stricken men, and this makes the reader feel more involved in what is happening. ‘Gas! Gas! Quick boys!’ direct speech is used to create panic. Owen also uses vocabulary such as stumbling, floundering and fumbling to describe the desperate attempts of a dying man to save his life. The simile ‘like a man on fire’ is used to describe the agony, which the man is encountering, it suggests how the man is writing and twisting in desperation as the gas burns him. ‘As under a green sea, I saw him drowning’, this describes how the gas causes a thick green misty haze around the men. This is a useful phrase as it enables us to visualize what is happening and use our imagination; it also gives us a sense of how unreal it all is. Owen displays his guilt in the line ‘In all my dreams before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning’. The guilt is shown because he consistently dreams about this, and that the man is plunging at him in particular.

In stanza 4, Owen uses such words as flung, hanging, vile and incurable to give the readers a detailed description of what these horrors are like. ‘Behind the wagon that we flung him in’, the word flung is used as it gives us the impression that the other soldiers had absolutely no respect for their companion. The poet uses onomatopoeia in the verse to communicate the actions of the dying man, ‘Come gargling from his froth corrupted lungs’. Similes such as, ‘his hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin’, this portrays how the man was desperate and giving up his fight for life. ‘Obscene as cancer’ this simile is used to describe the sores on the men’s tongues, most people appreciate how serious cancer is therefore they would imagine that if something is compared to it then they would believe that they are awful. Owen refers to the reader in stanza 4 as ‘my friend’ to deliver a more powerful message for what he had to say next. ‘My friend you would not tell with such high zest, To ardent children for some desperate glory’ this means that we should not tell our children that it is good to fight for your country as it is a lie, as Owen goes onto say, ‘the old lie: Dulce et Decorum est, Pro patria mari’. Stanza 4 is a very dramatic monologue and it is directed at people who think it is ‘sweet and fitting thing to die for ones country’. Owen uses plosive alliteration to evoke an angry tone in stanza 4, ‘my friend you would not tell with such high zest, to ardent children for some desperate glory, the old lie: Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mari’, this is directed at the authority figures of this war. Owen is trying to put people off war in the last stanza, and in my opinion, this is a very strong poem with the images, to put people off war, and Owen accomplished what he had set out to do.