Wilfred Owen's Poem 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'
Brianna Chambo
22. April 2013
English 340.001/Studies in Poetry
Professor Goldstein
Final Paper
Dulce et Decorum Est
During World War I there were many advances in chemical warfare. The Allies and the Central Powers were introduced to tear gas, chlorine gas, mustard gas, and many more lethal chemicals. Chlorine gas is a powerful irritant that, in high concentrations and much exposure, can damage eyes, noses, throats, lungs, and even cause asphyxiation. Mustard gas was not always fatal, but it blistered skin, irritated eyes, and induced vomiting. It could cause internal and external bleeding, attack the bronchial tubes, and could take up to four or five weeks to kill its victim.
Acclaimed poet Wilfred Owen was one of the soldiers to experience firsthand the horrors of gas attacks during World War I. In his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”, Owen shares a specific experience as a soldier at the front line during World War I. He clearly states his disgusts towards the encouragement of young men to join the war, and that it isn’t an honor and the right thing to do. The realism of this poem portrays the death …show more content…
and repulsion; he makes readers feel as though they’re on the field with him, experiencing the same suffering and struggles to stay alive. In the earliest edition of this poem, Owen dedicated it to Jessie Pope, a patriotic English writer best known for propaganda during the first World War, who enthusiastically encouraged young men to join the war. He appears to be blaming the civilians who have never been to war for being the reason that it is still continuing. People like Pope, who see war as a glorious and necessary sacrifice for the country have never seen the true horrors; he challenges them that if they really knew how war looked, they may not be so fast to ship the young boys off. Through literary devices, Owen captures the message that fighting for one’s country is not as glorified and privileged as many make it out to be.
Owen has organized the poem in three sections, each exposing a different stage of his war experience. The beginning of the poem depicts an active war scene on the front line.
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks/ Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,/ Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs/ And towards our distant rest began to trudge./ Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots/ But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; / Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.” (lines 1-8)
In the first two lines, Owen tries to show how crippled these soldiers are by comparing them to images his audience may be more familiar with. He uses similes to relate himself and his men to beggars and hags. They are bent over in pain, possibly even vomiting, due to the (mustard) gas bombs, as many beggars are seen to be unhealthy and crippled. Being knock-kneed suggests the men are unstable, almost unable to even walk anymore. By comparing themselves to hags and beggars, he instantly ages them, as most hags and beggars are older (or are typically depicted as older). The use of words with a hard “K” sound, such as “knock-kneed”, “coughing”, and “cursed” create a sharp, harsh sound right away in the poem. Throughout this stanza there is a repetition of an “L” hum, providing a calm, lulling sound, and with the sharp “K” sound. It strikes me as the popping sound of bullets or explosions to break the silence on the battlefield. In lines three and four, Owen explains that the men are on their way to their “distant rest” which has two interpretations—their actual camp that is away from the front lines, to recover from the fighting or it could be referring to their deaths, a death, that with the gasses, could take a long time to actually come. By the men turning their backs from the flares and bright lights of the artillery shells and heading towards the rest, it offers a sense of foreshadowing, that the men are turning from the horrors of war and turning to the more peaceful option— death.
Line five offers one of the truest depictions of these men— “Men marched asleep”. The first image that popped into my head was that of zombies. They are walking and moving along, but with nothing much more than that movement. Owen isn’t trying to offer any deeper meaning in this comparison; he is keeping it as real as can be. The horror of the men walking as if they were already dead sums it up. The insertion of a caesura also adds to the short and conciseness of the line. The loss of their boots in lines five and six have not only caused them physical pain (the limping), but they must also trudge through a gross, bloody mess. The blood is both literally and figuratively covering them.
These men are so physically and mentally exhausted that they aren’t even responding to the shells being dropped behind them anymore. By describing the shells as “tired” and “outstripped”, even the war itself has the feeling of just being tired, worn out, and exhausted. At this point in the poem, I am reminded very much of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. The young men in the story have no idea why they are fighting their war anymore and it seems to have less and less of a purpose the longer they are stuck at war. The direction the war is headed in in this first stanza emits the same feeling— that the war really has no direction, that the men are stuck out there dying and being maimed for what seems to be no reason. The poem has no clear idea of why their fighting in the poem, only that they’re fighting. “Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—And ecstasy of fumbling, / Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; / But someone still was yelling out and stumbling/ And flound 'ring like a man in fire or lime.— / Dim, thought the misty panes and thick green light/ As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”
The repetition and haste of the cry “Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!” draws readers straight into battle. While gruesome, the first stanza at the very least was calm and relaxed, from an outside observer point of view. Now the frantic and scared command brings the readers straight into the action of the attack. The repetition of the word “gas” gives the poem an onomatopoeia, with the “S” sound reflecting the same sound the gas bombs would give off— a hissing. “An ecstasy of fumbling” and “fitting the clumsy helmet just in time” shows the soldiers feeling scared and overwhelmed in a chaotic situation. I thought the use of the word “ecstasy” was very interesting diction, but I believe it had to do with the effects of the drug— the confusion, the paranoia, and anxiety, much like how the soldiers were probably feeling at that very moment (The effects ecstasy has on the brain, such as irregular moods, aggression, lack of sleep, are also very similar to the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder). In lines eleven to fourteen, we see the immediate effects the gas bombs have on a soldier that didn’t get his mask on right away.
The man who was yelling and helplessly stumbling around experiences a very gruesome and painful death, and the narrator has to watch. Lime, mentioned in line twelve, is a chemical compound that burns through a body, much like its parallel in the poem: fire. If the bombs were actually mustard bombs, like the first stanza had implied, the bomb is more than likely suffocating him and well as internally and externally burning him. This makes itself very clear with “like a man in fire or lime” and “I saw him drowning.” Not only was this poor soldier being burned by chemicals, the gas itself was suffocating him. The attention to the color green shows exactly what he is surrounded by— the green smoke that the bomb is releasing. Not only does the image affect the poem, but the word itself changes how the lines thirteen and fourteen are read. “Green” has the long “ee” sound, which lengthens the reading of the lines. This has the same effect on the poem as showing the scene in slow motion in a film.
“In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me guttering, choking, drowning.”
The break of this stanza is very curious. While the general poem has the structure of two sonnets (the first one being the first and second stanzas, eight and six lines a piece and the second being the third and fourth stanzas, two and twelve lines each), this two lined stanza matches the rhyme scheme of the second stanza. This break of the stanza does allow readers one thing: it jerks them out of the gruesome past scene of the war and the dying man and brings them to the present day, to experience a more terrible present. This marks a large shift in the poem. The yanking time change and scene change is much that of waking from a nightmare. I would like to believe that the first two stanzas were the narrator having a nightmare, then the third one is him being jolted awake, out of the nightmare. He must deal with the images of this man’s face when he tries to sleep, and he is helpless against it. The author must relive the moment of watching this man choke to death over and over again. The image of the dying man plunging towards the author in the dream allows for the interpretation that the author may blame himself for this death, and that the dead man is reaching out for the author to help him, but they are both so helpless. There is nothing that the author can do, except sit there and watch the horrors of the scene on replay in his mind.
“If in some smothering dreams you too could pace/ Behind the wagon that we flung him in, / And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, / 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, / Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud/ Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- / 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.”
In this fourth and final stanza, readers can see exactly how a soldier with post-traumatic stress would react to a situation like this. The narrator is smothered and haunted by these nightmares. The idea of being smothered is similar to that of the nightmare, where he is witnessing a man suffocating, and in turn, he now feels as though he is suffocating as well.
Addressing the “you” in this poem can be rather difficult to handle because Owen never actually clarifies who this “you” is. Owen could be addressing the poem to Jessie Pope, the woman I had previously mentioned that the poem was geared towards. This poem could be directed towards the government that Owen felt was the cause for all the war problems, making them see and force responsibility on them for what they had done to people. But if it is accepted that the “you” is directed towards the readers, the civilians, Owen is making a huge gap between the civilians and the soldiers very clear. He makes it very clear that the poem’s attitude towards civilians’ opinions is for them to not encourage what they don’t understand. By using “if”, he challenges the “you” figure. He says that if only you could have seen that and taken part in something so horrid, then maybe you could understand what he must deal with every minute. But Owen does know that even though he paints readers very vivid images of war, that “you” can’t even know, not until it is experienced firsthand. There is no way that a common civilian will ever be able to understand the pain and horror the narrator must live with every day.
The narrator is haunted by the appalling image of the soldier who is “flung” in to a wagon to be brought back to camp. It is very clear that there is no hope for this soldier, but they did not feel right leaving his body behind on the battlefield. This shows that the men do still have a sense of humanity, despite the horrific blood thirsty atmosphere of war. The second description and scene is even more gruesome than the others. The image of “white eyes writhing in his…hanging face” is, in every sense of the word, death. Every bump the soldiers encounter makes the dying man choking on his own bubbling blood. The simile “obscene as cancer” is effective, because everybody fears cancer; it is a horrible way to die and there is no cure. Cancer is the disease that can turn a vivacious human being into a crippled, barely functional person. Within minutes, this young man’s body goes from fairly healthy and youthful to being completely destroyed and is falling apart from the inside out. Owen adds to the scene the image of “vile incurable sores on innocent tongues,” insert another grotesque and unimaginable injury for the readers to think about. While it may be hard for many people to stomach just these words because of the image that it conjures up, but Owen becomes very bitter when he makes how clear it is that these are the images that he much live with all the time.
Some may argue that the last four lines of the poem are the most important lines. Owen’s use of the words “my friend,” toward the end of the last stanza suggests to me that Owen is directing this poem directly at the people of the government and their propaganda that was promoting war. This address has an ironical and extremely threatening tone. Owen is not afraid to tell people that this idea of dying for your country is just a big lie. He is lashing out at the people who he blames for putting him in this situation and lying to him. After everything that has been said by Owen, this “my friend” could be read with a sneer. “If…you too could pace…” and “If you could hear…,” then “you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old lie.” Again Owen is challenging the ‘you’ saying that if they really knew, they wouldn’t be in such a rush to encourage war so much; they would be a little more thoughtful when it came to throwing these young men’s away and destroying any chance at them regaining any innocence.
The poem ends with the Latin quotation “Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori,” which roughly translated means: “It is sweet and right to die for one’s own country.” I think Owen stays away from simply using an English slogan or quote to really drive a couple of points home. One concept is that Latin is a dead language. It is a bit haunting, much like this entire poem to think that Owen is using a dead language, one that no one can speak anymore, to mock the very idea of itself. Secondly, Owen is taking a jab at our country and the foundations it has been created on. Horace was one of the biggest influences to the English language, one of the greats in the world of literature. Horace himself wrote these very lines of “Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori”. Reciting sections of Horace 's Odes wasn 't that uncommon for the people during the war. Every student who had gone to public learned this poems and knew all about the idea of glory and honor in war. It goes to show that our nation and language have been founded on the idea of honorable death for your country. Owen wants to make it very clear to everyone exactly what this ‘honor’ looks like and is doing to people.
One of the smallest details that I would like to draw attention to is how the narrator referred to the soldiers as throughout the poem. In the very first stanza, Owen chooses the word “Men” (line 5) to describe the soldiers. This gives the appearance of older soldiers, ones who have lived their lives, have experience, knowledge and strength. This is how all of the propaganda posters depict its soldiers; the men are all very strong, handsome, and happy looking. This government would project this ideal idea of the soldiers, a big strong men in a crisp clean suit and boots, becoming the perfect man. They make the men look excited to be in this war.
But after explaining their fear, their pain, and their horror, Owen then refers to the “men” as “boys” in the second stanza. He says “Quick, boys!” hastily giving them directions. This actually reminded me of how a parent would talk to their little boy, telling him to finish up what he was doing quickly. While this makes the soldiers appear much younger, they still have a spirit of their own and a bit of worldly knowledge.
By the last stanza, Owen refers to the same soldiers that he originally called men as “children”. This completely changes the tone of these men. They are no longer strong and experienced, but now they are small, weak, and possibly even helpless. By addressing the “you” of the poem and telling them to protect their “children”, Owen could possibly be trying to strike the parental emotions of his audience. Parents may be okay with sending their eighteen year old son into the world of wars, but sending their six year old son really changes everything. He is saying that if they thought of it that way, as them sending in their young children that they might look at war a little differently.
In this poem, dying for your country (or even fighting for your country) seems quite a bit less worthwhile than the fabricated sayings of old patriotic battle cries imply. Deliberately dragging his readers through the frightening reality of life in a battle zone, Owen turns patriotic commitment into a kind of deadly life force. The people at home or the powerful calling the shots just can 't understand how horrible life on the front actually is because they’ve never had to experience and never will have to. The soldiers in war can 't remember why they are fighting anymore because it is just becoming a goalless bloodbath. Like the boots of the soldiers, everyone appears to be lost— whether they are lost in the deadly green fog of war and chemical bombs, or in the hopeless ideals that sacrificing their youth for the sake of national glory is the way to properly handle dangerous war situations.
"Dulce et Decorum Est" is an incredibly powerful poem that creates an ironic line between the civilians who advertise war efforts and the men who fight their battles through propaganda.
As Owen suggests several times, there is no way for either group (civilians verses soldiers) to understand the other. Only those who have experienced the horror of battle can understand the trauma of losing a fellow soldier. The irony comes in when these soldiers don 't have the ability to actually communicate with those at home who could bring the war to an end – the people who repeat old outdated slogans about honor, duty, and patriotism without ever having to experience the terror of battle themselves. The very word "war" begins to mean two very different things for the two populations in this poem. Tragically, to Owen, these views seem increasingly
irreconcilable.
Works Cited
Brookshire, Sophia. " Analysis of Wilfred Owen 's "Dulce Et Decorum Est"." Yahoo. Yahoo! Inc., 19 Sept 2009. Web. 22 Apr 2013. .
"Chemical weapons in World War I." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Chemical weapons in World War I, 13 Apr 2013. Web. 22 Apr 2013. .
"Dulce et Decorum Est." Poetry Foundation. Viking Press, n.d. Web. 22 Apr 2013. .
"Dulce et Decorum Est." Schmoop. Shmoop University, Inc.. Web. 22 Apr 2013. .
"Dulce et Decorum Est." Wikipedia: : The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, 08 Apr 2013. Web. 22 Apr 2013. .
Roberts, David, ed. "Dulce et Decorum Est: best known poem of the First World War." The War Poetry Website. Saxon Books, n.d. Web. 22 Apr 2013. .
Schoenbaum, Austin. "Dulce et Decorum Est: Analysis." Peeje: The positive Energy Humanity Community. Peeje LLC, 28 Jan 2012. Web. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. .
22. April 2013
English 340.001/Studies in Poetry
Professor Goldstein
Final Paper
Dulce et Decorum Est
During World War I there were many advances in chemical warfare. The Allies and the Central Powers were introduced to tear gas, chlorine gas, mustard gas, and many more lethal chemicals. Chlorine gas is a powerful irritant that, in high concentrations and much exposure, can damage eyes, noses, throats, lungs, and even cause asphyxiation. Mustard gas was not always fatal, but it blistered skin, irritated eyes, and induced vomiting. It could cause internal and external bleeding, attack the bronchial tubes, and could take up to four or five weeks to kill its victim.
Acclaimed poet Wilfred Owen was one of the soldiers to experience firsthand the horrors of gas attacks during World War I. In his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”, Owen shares a specific experience as a soldier at the front line during World War I. He clearly states his disgusts towards the encouragement of young men to join the war, and that it isn’t an honor and the right thing to do. The realism of this poem portrays the death …show more content…
and repulsion; he makes readers feel as though they’re on the field with him, experiencing the same suffering and struggles to stay alive. In the earliest edition of this poem, Owen dedicated it to Jessie Pope, a patriotic English writer best known for propaganda during the first World War, who enthusiastically encouraged young men to join the war. He appears to be blaming the civilians who have never been to war for being the reason that it is still continuing. People like Pope, who see war as a glorious and necessary sacrifice for the country have never seen the true horrors; he challenges them that if they really knew how war looked, they may not be so fast to ship the young boys off. Through literary devices, Owen captures the message that fighting for one’s country is not as glorified and privileged as many make it out to be.
Owen has organized the poem in three sections, each exposing a different stage of his war experience. The beginning of the poem depicts an active war scene on the front line.
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks/ Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,/ Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs/ And towards our distant rest began to trudge./ Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots/ But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; / Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.” (lines 1-8)
In the first two lines, Owen tries to show how crippled these soldiers are by comparing them to images his audience may be more familiar with. He uses similes to relate himself and his men to beggars and hags. They are bent over in pain, possibly even vomiting, due to the (mustard) gas bombs, as many beggars are seen to be unhealthy and crippled. Being knock-kneed suggests the men are unstable, almost unable to even walk anymore. By comparing themselves to hags and beggars, he instantly ages them, as most hags and beggars are older (or are typically depicted as older). The use of words with a hard “K” sound, such as “knock-kneed”, “coughing”, and “cursed” create a sharp, harsh sound right away in the poem. Throughout this stanza there is a repetition of an “L” hum, providing a calm, lulling sound, and with the sharp “K” sound. It strikes me as the popping sound of bullets or explosions to break the silence on the battlefield. In lines three and four, Owen explains that the men are on their way to their “distant rest” which has two interpretations—their actual camp that is away from the front lines, to recover from the fighting or it could be referring to their deaths, a death, that with the gasses, could take a long time to actually come. By the men turning their backs from the flares and bright lights of the artillery shells and heading towards the rest, it offers a sense of foreshadowing, that the men are turning from the horrors of war and turning to the more peaceful option— death.
Line five offers one of the truest depictions of these men— “Men marched asleep”. The first image that popped into my head was that of zombies. They are walking and moving along, but with nothing much more than that movement. Owen isn’t trying to offer any deeper meaning in this comparison; he is keeping it as real as can be. The horror of the men walking as if they were already dead sums it up. The insertion of a caesura also adds to the short and conciseness of the line. The loss of their boots in lines five and six have not only caused them physical pain (the limping), but they must also trudge through a gross, bloody mess. The blood is both literally and figuratively covering them.
These men are so physically and mentally exhausted that they aren’t even responding to the shells being dropped behind them anymore. By describing the shells as “tired” and “outstripped”, even the war itself has the feeling of just being tired, worn out, and exhausted. At this point in the poem, I am reminded very much of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. The young men in the story have no idea why they are fighting their war anymore and it seems to have less and less of a purpose the longer they are stuck at war. The direction the war is headed in in this first stanza emits the same feeling— that the war really has no direction, that the men are stuck out there dying and being maimed for what seems to be no reason. The poem has no clear idea of why their fighting in the poem, only that they’re fighting. “Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—And ecstasy of fumbling, / Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; / But someone still was yelling out and stumbling/ And flound 'ring like a man in fire or lime.— / Dim, thought the misty panes and thick green light/ As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”
The repetition and haste of the cry “Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!” draws readers straight into battle. While gruesome, the first stanza at the very least was calm and relaxed, from an outside observer point of view. Now the frantic and scared command brings the readers straight into the action of the attack. The repetition of the word “gas” gives the poem an onomatopoeia, with the “S” sound reflecting the same sound the gas bombs would give off— a hissing. “An ecstasy of fumbling” and “fitting the clumsy helmet just in time” shows the soldiers feeling scared and overwhelmed in a chaotic situation. I thought the use of the word “ecstasy” was very interesting diction, but I believe it had to do with the effects of the drug— the confusion, the paranoia, and anxiety, much like how the soldiers were probably feeling at that very moment (The effects ecstasy has on the brain, such as irregular moods, aggression, lack of sleep, are also very similar to the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder). In lines eleven to fourteen, we see the immediate effects the gas bombs have on a soldier that didn’t get his mask on right away.
The man who was yelling and helplessly stumbling around experiences a very gruesome and painful death, and the narrator has to watch. Lime, mentioned in line twelve, is a chemical compound that burns through a body, much like its parallel in the poem: fire. If the bombs were actually mustard bombs, like the first stanza had implied, the bomb is more than likely suffocating him and well as internally and externally burning him. This makes itself very clear with “like a man in fire or lime” and “I saw him drowning.” Not only was this poor soldier being burned by chemicals, the gas itself was suffocating him. The attention to the color green shows exactly what he is surrounded by— the green smoke that the bomb is releasing. Not only does the image affect the poem, but the word itself changes how the lines thirteen and fourteen are read. “Green” has the long “ee” sound, which lengthens the reading of the lines. This has the same effect on the poem as showing the scene in slow motion in a film.
“In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me guttering, choking, drowning.”
The break of this stanza is very curious. While the general poem has the structure of two sonnets (the first one being the first and second stanzas, eight and six lines a piece and the second being the third and fourth stanzas, two and twelve lines each), this two lined stanza matches the rhyme scheme of the second stanza. This break of the stanza does allow readers one thing: it jerks them out of the gruesome past scene of the war and the dying man and brings them to the present day, to experience a more terrible present. This marks a large shift in the poem. The yanking time change and scene change is much that of waking from a nightmare. I would like to believe that the first two stanzas were the narrator having a nightmare, then the third one is him being jolted awake, out of the nightmare. He must deal with the images of this man’s face when he tries to sleep, and he is helpless against it. The author must relive the moment of watching this man choke to death over and over again. The image of the dying man plunging towards the author in the dream allows for the interpretation that the author may blame himself for this death, and that the dead man is reaching out for the author to help him, but they are both so helpless. There is nothing that the author can do, except sit there and watch the horrors of the scene on replay in his mind.
“If in some smothering dreams you too could pace/ Behind the wagon that we flung him in, / And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, / 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, / Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud/ Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- / 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.”
In this fourth and final stanza, readers can see exactly how a soldier with post-traumatic stress would react to a situation like this. The narrator is smothered and haunted by these nightmares. The idea of being smothered is similar to that of the nightmare, where he is witnessing a man suffocating, and in turn, he now feels as though he is suffocating as well.
Addressing the “you” in this poem can be rather difficult to handle because Owen never actually clarifies who this “you” is. Owen could be addressing the poem to Jessie Pope, the woman I had previously mentioned that the poem was geared towards. This poem could be directed towards the government that Owen felt was the cause for all the war problems, making them see and force responsibility on them for what they had done to people. But if it is accepted that the “you” is directed towards the readers, the civilians, Owen is making a huge gap between the civilians and the soldiers very clear. He makes it very clear that the poem’s attitude towards civilians’ opinions is for them to not encourage what they don’t understand. By using “if”, he challenges the “you” figure. He says that if only you could have seen that and taken part in something so horrid, then maybe you could understand what he must deal with every minute. But Owen does know that even though he paints readers very vivid images of war, that “you” can’t even know, not until it is experienced firsthand. There is no way that a common civilian will ever be able to understand the pain and horror the narrator must live with every day.
The narrator is haunted by the appalling image of the soldier who is “flung” in to a wagon to be brought back to camp. It is very clear that there is no hope for this soldier, but they did not feel right leaving his body behind on the battlefield. This shows that the men do still have a sense of humanity, despite the horrific blood thirsty atmosphere of war. The second description and scene is even more gruesome than the others. The image of “white eyes writhing in his…hanging face” is, in every sense of the word, death. Every bump the soldiers encounter makes the dying man choking on his own bubbling blood. The simile “obscene as cancer” is effective, because everybody fears cancer; it is a horrible way to die and there is no cure. Cancer is the disease that can turn a vivacious human being into a crippled, barely functional person. Within minutes, this young man’s body goes from fairly healthy and youthful to being completely destroyed and is falling apart from the inside out. Owen adds to the scene the image of “vile incurable sores on innocent tongues,” insert another grotesque and unimaginable injury for the readers to think about. While it may be hard for many people to stomach just these words because of the image that it conjures up, but Owen becomes very bitter when he makes how clear it is that these are the images that he much live with all the time.
Some may argue that the last four lines of the poem are the most important lines. Owen’s use of the words “my friend,” toward the end of the last stanza suggests to me that Owen is directing this poem directly at the people of the government and their propaganda that was promoting war. This address has an ironical and extremely threatening tone. Owen is not afraid to tell people that this idea of dying for your country is just a big lie. He is lashing out at the people who he blames for putting him in this situation and lying to him. After everything that has been said by Owen, this “my friend” could be read with a sneer. “If…you too could pace…” and “If you could hear…,” then “you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old lie.” Again Owen is challenging the ‘you’ saying that if they really knew, they wouldn’t be in such a rush to encourage war so much; they would be a little more thoughtful when it came to throwing these young men’s away and destroying any chance at them regaining any innocence.
The poem ends with the Latin quotation “Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori,” which roughly translated means: “It is sweet and right to die for one’s own country.” I think Owen stays away from simply using an English slogan or quote to really drive a couple of points home. One concept is that Latin is a dead language. It is a bit haunting, much like this entire poem to think that Owen is using a dead language, one that no one can speak anymore, to mock the very idea of itself. Secondly, Owen is taking a jab at our country and the foundations it has been created on. Horace was one of the biggest influences to the English language, one of the greats in the world of literature. Horace himself wrote these very lines of “Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori”. Reciting sections of Horace 's Odes wasn 't that uncommon for the people during the war. Every student who had gone to public learned this poems and knew all about the idea of glory and honor in war. It goes to show that our nation and language have been founded on the idea of honorable death for your country. Owen wants to make it very clear to everyone exactly what this ‘honor’ looks like and is doing to people.
One of the smallest details that I would like to draw attention to is how the narrator referred to the soldiers as throughout the poem. In the very first stanza, Owen chooses the word “Men” (line 5) to describe the soldiers. This gives the appearance of older soldiers, ones who have lived their lives, have experience, knowledge and strength. This is how all of the propaganda posters depict its soldiers; the men are all very strong, handsome, and happy looking. This government would project this ideal idea of the soldiers, a big strong men in a crisp clean suit and boots, becoming the perfect man. They make the men look excited to be in this war.
But after explaining their fear, their pain, and their horror, Owen then refers to the “men” as “boys” in the second stanza. He says “Quick, boys!” hastily giving them directions. This actually reminded me of how a parent would talk to their little boy, telling him to finish up what he was doing quickly. While this makes the soldiers appear much younger, they still have a spirit of their own and a bit of worldly knowledge.
By the last stanza, Owen refers to the same soldiers that he originally called men as “children”. This completely changes the tone of these men. They are no longer strong and experienced, but now they are small, weak, and possibly even helpless. By addressing the “you” of the poem and telling them to protect their “children”, Owen could possibly be trying to strike the parental emotions of his audience. Parents may be okay with sending their eighteen year old son into the world of wars, but sending their six year old son really changes everything. He is saying that if they thought of it that way, as them sending in their young children that they might look at war a little differently.
In this poem, dying for your country (or even fighting for your country) seems quite a bit less worthwhile than the fabricated sayings of old patriotic battle cries imply. Deliberately dragging his readers through the frightening reality of life in a battle zone, Owen turns patriotic commitment into a kind of deadly life force. The people at home or the powerful calling the shots just can 't understand how horrible life on the front actually is because they’ve never had to experience and never will have to. The soldiers in war can 't remember why they are fighting anymore because it is just becoming a goalless bloodbath. Like the boots of the soldiers, everyone appears to be lost— whether they are lost in the deadly green fog of war and chemical bombs, or in the hopeless ideals that sacrificing their youth for the sake of national glory is the way to properly handle dangerous war situations.
"Dulce et Decorum Est" is an incredibly powerful poem that creates an ironic line between the civilians who advertise war efforts and the men who fight their battles through propaganda.
As Owen suggests several times, there is no way for either group (civilians verses soldiers) to understand the other. Only those who have experienced the horror of battle can understand the trauma of losing a fellow soldier. The irony comes in when these soldiers don 't have the ability to actually communicate with those at home who could bring the war to an end – the people who repeat old outdated slogans about honor, duty, and patriotism without ever having to experience the terror of battle themselves. The very word "war" begins to mean two very different things for the two populations in this poem. Tragically, to Owen, these views seem increasingly
irreconcilable.
Works Cited
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"Dulce et Decorum Est." Poetry Foundation. Viking Press, n.d. Web. 22 Apr 2013. .
"Dulce et Decorum Est." Schmoop. Shmoop University, Inc.. Web. 22 Apr 2013. .
"Dulce et Decorum Est." Wikipedia: : The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, 08 Apr 2013. Web. 22 Apr 2013. .
Roberts, David, ed. "Dulce et Decorum Est: best known poem of the First World War." The War Poetry Website. Saxon Books, n.d. Web. 22 Apr 2013. .
Schoenbaum, Austin. "Dulce et Decorum Est: Analysis." Peeje: The positive Energy Humanity Community. Peeje LLC, 28 Jan 2012. Web. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. .