Dulce Et Decorum Est is a poem written by Wilfred Owen, an English poet and former soldier. He has written many popular and well renowned poems such as 1914, Apologia Pro Poemate Meo and A New Heaven. Wilfred suffered many mental issues such as 'trench-fever' from his time in the war but he continued to write poems that today are highly renowned.
Dulce Et Decorum Est, Latin for “It is sweet and right” describes the struggles both physically and mentally a soldier went through during World War 1. The poems main theme is showing the trickery which governments performed to convince the young men that going to war and dying for your country is the most honourable and sweetest way to die and praised the war for being nothing but a way to prove yourself as a man. Of course the men realised the war is nothing like what the government praised it to be and many of them who did die weren’t honoured or given a proper respectful burial. On top of this as depicted in the poem any man that did live and return were scared from what they had seen and were to depressed, distraught and mentally scared to talk to anyone about what happened.
The poem is made up of carefully chosen words that when put together create a huge emotive response from the reader. Words such as “Cursed through sludge”, “Before my helpless sight” and “Through the misty panes and thick green light” all provide a great descriptive and detailed poem that the reader can picture themselves.
Wilfred uses many different types of language features in Dulce Et Decorum Est, including personification, metaphors and similes. Along with all of this he uses a lot of emotive language. Examples of this includes “He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” and “Floundering like a man in fire”. In the poem Wilfred used an end rhyme, ABAB scheme. This provides a more poem like sense that makes the poem sound better.
At the end of the poem the last 2 lines says, “The old lie: