Dulce et Decorum Est Flashcards
Summary
-Owen is rebuking the idea of it being sweet and honourable to die for your country by vividly describing the horrors of war.
Context
- Owen fought and died in the first world war so had personal experience.He enlisted at 18 so he was one of the children who fell for the ‘old Lie’
- Early draft of the poem as dedicated to Pope who wrote war propaganda poems, but he directed it to all war propaganda poems by removing her name
Strucutre/form
- Alternate rhyme scheme could mirror the marching of the soldier.
- Four uneven stanzas reflecting the unpredictability of war.
- Overwhelmingly negative tone throughout contrasts positivity fo war propaganda.
- First stanza sets the scene and describes being in war, second stanza focuses on one soldier who couldn’t get his mask on, the third stanza talks about the narrator’s nightmares and the fourth stanza directly addresses the reader and rejects the notion that war is sweet and honourable.
Themes
- Conflict
- Death
‘Dulce et Decorum Est’
-The title expresses a patriotic pro-war sentiment so it would be expected that the poem will be positive about war, however Owen subverts these expectations and uses the phrase in an ironic way as he has experienced the horrors of war. Title could have been used to attract people who thought positively about war at the time, to then attempt to enlighten them on its horrors.
‘Bent double, like old beggars’/’coughing like hags’
- Simile compares young exhausted men to old, homeless people suggesting they’ve prematurely aged and weakened due to the atrocities of war. This immediately opposes the idealised idea of war promoted by pro-war propaganda.
- Beggars are poor, simile suggests the soldiers are emotionally and physically bankrupt, contrasts propaganda showing soldiers in clean uniforms excited to be fighting.
‘blood-shod’ ‘lame’
- Since ‘shod’ essentially means shoe this phrase suggests that some of the soldiers are wearing shoes made out of their own blood, which emphasises the brutality of war.
- Phrases typically used when talking about horses, de-humanises the men, shows the way war has reduced them and put them in horrible conditions as if they were just animals.
‘haunting flares’
-Adjective ‘haunting’ hints at the nightmares of war men would experience afterwards. These nightmares are referenced again in the third stanza.
‘Gas!Gas!Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling’
- Fast pace contrasts the slow nature of first stanza. The repetition of ‘gas’ creates a sense of urgency, and the exclamation marks give a sense of panic.
- Noun ‘ecstasy’ used relating to intense excitement and rapture, however Owen is talking about sever panic and fear, reflects how propaganda attempted to portray horrors of war in positive way.
‘In all my dreams’
-Shows the extent of damage of war, Owen can’t have peace even when sleeping. The determiner ‘all’ suggests that the narrator is permanently haunted by this event and cannot escape it.
‘He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning’
- Tricolon emphasises the gruesomeness of the way the soldier died.
- Onomatopoeic words heighten the vivid imagery created
- Verb ‘guttering’ conveys idea of light of life being extinguished
- The present continuous verbs imply that the image of the soldier drowning is repeatedly plaguing him, and hasn’t been put in their past, it’s still haunting them in the present.
- The stanza stands out when viewing the poem as its only two lines, this is to emphasise the way in which the memory stands out in the narrator’s mind and can’t be forgotten.
‘To children’
-Word ‘children’ shows Owen believes war is a waste of young lives and that impressionable young boys are lured into war in the promise of false glory and blames attitude at home
‘The old lie’
- Ends poem on a note of finality, rejecting the attitude and propaganda of his country as false, after describing the horrors and his personal experience, he has the right to make such a statement.
- The last being so short could represent the livers of the soldiers that have been cut short due to war.
‘gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs’/’white eye writhing in his face’
- Grotesque shocking imagery emphasises horrific consequences of war, he is very Suggests man is still alive when they ‘flung’ him in the wagon there is no time for dignity in death at war. The death is brutal, painful and undignified doesn’t reflect propaganda.
- Alliterative phrase ‘watch the white eyes writing’ emphasise the horror of the image to rebuke the traditional images of wartime heroism.
Comparison
-The soldier
