Wilfred Owen Antiwar Poetry

Literary analysis: Deontology and the antiwar poetry of Wilfred Owen

"And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime/Dim through the misty panes and thick green light/As under a green sea, I saw him drowning."(Owen 12-14). In his poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" Wilfred Owen describes a scene he witnessed in the first world war. After writing about what he had seen, he then states his belief, that Horace's quotation (which is also the name of the poem) is untrue, and if even the most ardent hawk would have seen what Owen and his comrades had seen, they would gladly become a dove. The poem tries to tell the reader that war causes unneeded deaths and suffering. Unlike Horace, Owen sees nothing sweet or proper about dying. When distilled to its essence,
the poem is one that is trying to gather sympathy from the apathetic and stifle the enthusiasm of people who may want to join the army. His poem tries to debunk arguments for war by eliminating all the rhetoric and using his own experience, he uses several techniques to "cut through" all of the propaganda and get to the concrete and factual. By reading over the poem and analyzing the overall sentiment and the time period during its composition, it is more than reasonable to claim Owen's poem attacks utilitarianism and nationalism while it supports deontological thinking.
Firstly, the content and structure support the claim that he is opposed to warfare and concerned with the fate of a single man equally as much as he is concerned with the fate of nations. The story is not long or complicated, the writing style is not didactic, except at the end of the poem. The opening verses depict tired men who are so exhausted they even ignore the sounds around them, which is unusual behavior for a soldier, because failing to pay attention can cost a soldier his life. This points to an extreme form of physical fatigue and complete apathy. There is a transition when an officer shouts "GAS! GAS! Quick boys!"(Owen 9). This is when things get worse for one soldier who breaths in the gas. The next twelve lines are devoted to how much physical torture the boy had to endure. The last three lines are bitter and biting, they give the reader a feeling of desolation and guilt. The last three lines are a warning that use the rest of the poem as fodder for his refutation of Horace's famous words. During his own time, Owen's poem could touch the heart of any man who had fought in the war. It is an echo of what millions of other men had seen. His area of focus and the subject matter are not about the great raids on enemy strongholds or the saving of innocents or any such thing. Instead he details the agony of one man. And he claims, if the reader had seen what he had seen that one time, he would no longer want war. He does not talk about millions of men, even though he could. Instead he focuses on one case and one individual's suffering, which is what deontological ethics are all about.
Secondly, the theme and tone of the poem, and the way the theme is portrayed are important factors. "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks/Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge"(Owen 1-2). Here is a scene of apathy, the soldiers have long lost the zeal they joined the army with. They are able to see its pointlessness because they are going through, Owen has witnessed this and that is reflected by his first person narration in the poem. The first person narration makes sure that he is not removed from the scene, or that his memory makes the event foggy. He is using the authenticity of his emotions to appeal to people's consciences by speaking directly to them. The theme of war is often seen as final and epic, something that will change the shake the whole world. By narrating his poem in first person and describing a single memory, Owen humanizes warfare. He puts his own perspective on it, a perspective that he is completely confident his comrades would share with him. To me, his poem his a statement against honey-coated words and flowery rhetoric that make plans by the government seem sound and sane. He shows us what war is really like, and because he doesn't want to be bogged down in empty political debate, he does not display a trace of partisanship. he does not even request admiration from the reader, he doesn't even ask for empathy. The problems of violence and human suffering are both universal, this being the case, every single person can identify with the poem on some level. What Owen wishes to do is disassemble the word "war" itself and does not use it in the poem, not even once. Nor does he use the words like "soldier" or "battle." Because even if the reader does not have a positive view of these words, which many people do, they probably are apathetic to such words. The author deliberately leaves them out, because he wants to disassociate the word "war" and pretend as though it does not exist. He uses his experience to give us a view that is stripped of all "big picture" considerations. He uses second person in a few of the lines to add to the intensity of the poem, to make sure his message goes straight to the reader's heart.
Thirdly, the diction and syntax put us into his mind's recollection, which is dripping with bitterness, fear and loathing. None of these three things are for the most part considered universally undesirable. "His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin/If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs/Bitter as the cud."(Owen 20-23). Line twenty is one that points to the frustration he and his fellow soldiers felt with the war, to put it bluntly, they were sick of it. He is also telling the reader here that if he could see what he had seen, then he would not support the "old lie."
Indirectly he asks a question much like the one that is presented in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.
"inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance - and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?"(Dostovesky 259). Instead of asking us this question, Owen lays out the evidence and tells us that no moral man could say that the soldier's suffering was warranted, let alone sweet or glorious. The gruesome description of the anonymous soldier's suffering compels the thoughtful reader ask a lot of questions to himself. Do the ends justify the means? What are these ends and what do we want to achieve them? What is the point of human conflict and what drives us to fight against each other? Given his poem alone, there are very few who would find the death of an innocent young man sweet and proper. As a secondary piece of support, the content of the poem mentions no one in particular. No one is to blame, he does not implicate politicians or nations, he simply states what he saw. In this way, his piece is not controversial and does not spark any kind of violent reaction. Even if the reader still agrees with the war, he does not disagree with Owen. He is speaking from an elevated place, similar to the morality proposed by Kant and other deontological thinkers. Things like nationality, the ends of actions and practicality are all unimportant in a world of pure
ethics.
Every element of the poem points to an individualized outlook on war that uses a graphic description of a one man's agonizing death as an argument against all human conflict. "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori."(Owen 25-28) His tone in the final three lines are the final shift in the poem and is the most striking phrase in the poem. In ways, it also sounds like a plea when read over again. He is begging for authority figures to stop telling the people under them the "old lie." His poem is a polemic against the notion that dying in battle is not dying in vain. A single man's happiness and his intrinsic value as a human being should not be computed by a calculus (utilitarianism) and his death should be glorified in the name of a societal construct (nationalism). In his conclusion we see Owen cementing his deontological fealty and attacking the two opposing modes of thought, both of which seem immoral and misused at this point. His plea for sanity echoes through the centuries and will continue to do so as long as nations are quarreling with each other.