Wilfred Owen aimed to convey the pity of war in his poetry. How effectively does he do this in Dulce et Decorum Est.?

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Jessica Ireland 11T                                                                                                      English Essay

Wilfred Owen aimed to convey ‘the pity of war’ in his poetry.  How effectively does he do this in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est.’?

Wilfred Owen was born on the 18th of March 1893 and died 4th November 1918, 1 week before World War 1 (WW1) ended. The poem was written in WW1 when Owen and his friend Sassoon saw the horrors of trench and gas warfare. Owen said that Sassoon was a great influence on him, for his profound effect on his poetic voice. Owen uses lots of description about what it was truly like to be in the war. In the poem he uses lots of imagery and visual sounds to develop his exploration of the pity of war. Owen also uses a differentiated vast choice of language, dramatic devices and irony in his poem.

Owen likes to use lots of imagery to show the reader what he had to go through. In this imagery he uses both vivid and disturbing images, “Bent double” The use of the words ‘Bent double’ creates the picture of. This has the effect of the reader feeling empathy for what the soldiers were going through. By using this imagery Owen gets the reader involved by making them feel that they are actually going through it themselves. Another vivid and disturbing image that we get is in stanza 3, when he says “if in some smothering dreams, you too could pace.” The word ‘smothering’ gets the image of pillow over face, to stop them breathing. This makes the reader feel extremely helpless of what they go through during the gas attacks. This has the effect that they don’t just die peacefully and slowly they die a slow and painful death.  By making the reader share his helplessness, Owen has the effect of making the reader more helpless for what they went through

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As well as imagery, Owen uses sounds as well. In the first paragraph he describes that the gas-shells dropping ‘softly’ behind. Using the word softly Owen is making the reader feel that they were quiet and peaceful, and that you wouldn’t notice they were coming, he is also uses contrast to heighten the impact of the dialogue in the poem.  In the second stanza after Owen has described about the gas attack, he says that ‘He plunges at me, guttering, choking, and drowning.’ By using the words guttering, choking and drowning the reader starts to get the image of ...

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