Wilfred Owen ‘Dulce et Decorum est’

The numbers Dulce et Decorum est is a verse which shows us the horrors of contendfare. It shows us how innocent lives ar creation wasted on a war. The poem tells us close how the poet feels close war.The firstborn stanza tells us about the condition of the sol break inrs. It shows us that the sol frighten offrs be sick, tired and are not aware of themselves. It as well tells us that the soldiers were in bad condition. They did not care about the shells that dropped behind them. In the first line the soldiers are compared in a simile to old beggars. This implies that they look shabby, which is not the compass of soldiers in b advanced shiny uniforms, which would be in keeping with the glorious image of war. The line has a slow yard with no large(p) described, which is also a contrast to the image of war, as people at home might predict the soldiers to be marching along at a brisk pace. The second line continues this them as it compares the soldiers to hags, which are ve ry bid beggars. It tells you that the soldiers are knock kneeded and coughing, which implies a very low morale.In the second stanza, the poet has create verb completelyy about a gas attack that he has witnessed. This stanza tells us about the confusion and panic, which arises when the soldiers lives are in immediate danger. The pace of this verse is a lot quicker in order to demonstrate this, and also provides a contrast to the precedent verses as it is written in the present tense to make it await more real, whereas the first verse is written in the perfect tense, which makes it try outm more distant. During the gas attack, umpteen soldiers homoaged to get their gas helmets on time. But one soldier could not make it. He was let loose and stumbling as the gas overcare him. The poet has seen the unfortunate man die a slow and painful death.The third stanza is short. It expresses the poets fears and nightmares he has beca hold of the anxious(p) man reaching his have out fo r help. But Wilfred Owen was helpless. The poet tells us that the dying man was guttering, strangling and drowning as the gas made its way through his lungs.The ivth stanza is telling us a little(a) bit about what the soldiers did to the dead soldier. They flung him in the back of a butterball. His condition was still bad. There was roue coming out from his mouth and his face was hanging in bad shape. The poet then tells his friend that it is not right to tell keen and young soldiers eager for glory that It is a good and noble thing to die for your country as it is a lie. Moreover, the last verse is a plea to the reader to renounce their opinion that dying for your country is sew and honourable. Wilfred Owen is aphorism that if the reader was there, and saw this man dying in the back of the wagon then they would not tell the old Lie. Owen, by his graphic description of the mans death, is intending to shock the reader into think they accommodate been tricked by the Old Lie i .e. it is good to die for your country, and make them think more deeply about the values of war and how they ass become heroes.Wilfred Owen is creating a horrific picture of how bad war is. He has done this by making use of similes.In the first stanza, Owen describes the exhaustion of the soldiers by sayingBent double, like old beggars under sacksIn this quote we can see that Owen is telling us that the soldiers are too tired to walk properly and that they can hardly stand up. He re-enforces his wrangle by sayingMen marched a recreation. more had lost their bootsThis is giving us a vivid image of how tired and ill the soldiers are from war. To add to the atmosphere of depression, the haunting flares imply that the scene is taking come at night, as flares are not visible in the daytime. The fact that the flares are haunting adds to the misery of the soldiers, as it could be that they are remembering past horrific incidents involving the flares that haunt them. The distant rest in line four could mean that the soldiers are going to sleep for the night, but they will not be able to sleep because of the poor conditions. The word trudge implies that they are walking with difficulty, and slows down the line, which indicates the slowness of the soldiers walk. The alliteration in the fifth line emphasises what Wilfred Owen is saying. It makes the simile men marched asleep seem more real and holds the line together over the full stop. Men limp blood shod emphasises their predicament and how different it is to the glorious battle they had expected. The two lines in this verse create the fancy that the soldiers are somehow in a daze and do not hear sounds fully. It is as if they have become isolated within themselves.Their illness is further emphasized when the poet says coughing like hagsFrom these sentences in the first stanza, we can imagine how tired and worn-out the soldiers must have been due(p) to the war they are oblige to fight.Wilfred Owen is also makin g use of metaphors to strengthen the lines of his poem. In the second stanza, Owen tells us about a dying man when he inhaled the gas.But someone was yelling out and stumblingAnd floundering like a man in fire or limeFrom this quote, we get a picture of how the dying man felt right as he had inhaled the smoke.Wilfred Owen has made use of new(prenominal) literary techniques such as Direct speech, head rhyme and Onomatopoeia.In the second stanza, Owen has made use of direct speech to give the reader a true-to- behavior(prenominal) feeling about what is happening in the poem.Gas Gas Quick, boysThe poet has also made use of aloneiteration. In the third stanza, the poet saysBehind the wagon we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face here(predicate) the poet is telling us about the state in which the dying man was.The poet has also made use of two special features, enjambement and caesura. Wilfred Owen has made use of enjambement very often from the second stanza. This increases the pace of the poem which gives the reader an inside look into how fast people had to work at war. On the other hand, Owen has also made use of caesura. This slows down the pace of the poem and allows the reader to think about what the poet is saying. In the third stanza, Owen saysHis hanging face, like a devils sick of sinHere the poet is letting the reader to live on how the dying man looked like after he inhaled the gas.In the poem Dulce et Decorum est, there are four verses with 28 lines. Each verse has a number of lines that vary in every verse. The poem does not have a definite rhyme but mostly it goes like a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d and so on but this pattern is disrupted a little bit in the later use of the poem. Stanza 3 is short as it sums up the nightmares Wilfred Owen is going through. Since the two lines are in the middle of a lot longer verses, the readers eyes get attracted to those lines.The poem Dulce et Decorum est was written by Wilfred Owen during the First World War. In 1914 the First World War broke out on a largely innocent world, a world that still associated warfare with glorious cavalry charges and the noble pursuit of heroic ideals. This was the worlds first insure of modern mechanised warfare. As the months and years passed, each bringing increasing slaughter and misery, the soldiers became increasingly disillusioned. Many of the strongest protests made against the war were made through the medium of poetry by young men fright by what they saw. One of these poets was Wilfred Owen.World War I, military conflict, from 1914 to 1918, that began as a local European war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia on July 28, 1914 was transformed into a general European struggle by Germanys declaration of war against Russia on August 1, 1914 and eventually became a global war involving 32 nations. The immediate cause of the war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was the assassination on June 28, 1914, at Sarajevo in Bosnia (then pa rt of the Austro-Hungarian Empire now in Bosnia and Herzegovina), of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir-presumptive to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones, by Gavrilo Princip, a Serb nationalist. The fundamental causes of the conflict, however, were rooted deeply in the European history of the previous century, particularly in the political and economic policies that prevailed on the Continent after 1871, the year that marked the appendage of Germany as a great world power.The living conditions for the soldiers were terrible during the First World War. Many died due to diseases, epidemics and injuries caused through battle. Sometimes, the soldiers had no ammunition to fight with at all and hence were left helpless. Living conditions were as bad. Many had no proper shelter, or clothing. Wilfred Owen had made these conditions a reality in his poem. The vividness of the poem gives us an issue of how bad the conditions mustve been for the soldiers during the war. Moreover he is saying th is because he feels the soldiers are giving their life for nothing. Therefore he is stressing on the terrible conditions the soldier were living and fighting in.Wilfred Owen has written negative visor of his feelings for war. He has written about the tiredness of the soldiers when he saysMen marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blindDrunk with fatigue drunk even to the hootsIn this quote we can see that Wilfred Owen is trying to tell us that the soldiers were very tired. This tells us that Wilfred Owen is giving us a negative impression of warThis poem was written by Wilfred Owen, who was a soldier in the First World War. He therefore gives a very vivid account of what it was like to be there, as he has had first- hand experience. The title of the poem means it is sweet and honourable, and the phrase is continued at the end of the poemto die for your country. Just before this is stated at the end of the poem, Wilfred Owen chooses t o write The Old Lie. This tells us he does not believe this statement to be true. The poem is filled with horrible stories about what really happened, and so Wilfred Owen is saying how can all of this suffering be sweet and proper?In my opinion, I do not like the poem very much. It gives a very horrific image of war. Although Wilfred Owen is right about Dulce et Decorum est professional Patria Mori I still think that the poem is written quite harshly.The language used by the poet is not bad but the content is. The examples that Wilfred Owen has given us of warfare are very horrific. A man drowning in a gas of poisonous gas, a group of soldiers in ill condition etc, all this reflects upon the horrific accounts of warfare. If the poet were trying to stress his point through non-horrific examples, then the poem wouldve been a lot more enjoyable. But that doesnt mean I am criticizing the poet. Needless to say the poem is very well written. Its what the poet feels about warfare, which o bviously I wouldnt criticize that at all as it is the poets opinion.