Dulce Et Decorum Est

Question 1

Bent double like old beggars under sacks,

Answer 1

• Simile – soldiers have been prematurely weakened (made infirm), even emasculated by conflict
• Making the young men analogous to old beggars sharply contrasts with wartime propaganda
• Immediately opening with plosive alliteration communicates the intrusive and inherently harsh nature of warfare
• Dishonourable realities of warfare intented to shock reader

Question 2

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind

Answer 2

• ‘Limped’ starkly contrasts matching
• Caesura allows irony to resonate with the reader – they are not ready for action, but slowly moving forward, sleep-deprived and underprepared
• Graphic imagery of ‘blood-shod’ soldiers creates a nightmarish image of their reality
• These devastating descriptions allow Owen to emphasise that horror permeates/pervades all aspects of war
• ‘Blind’ and ‘lame’ have biblical echoes – ironic, as amidst the war, the soldiers have no savour figure
• Use of hyperbole accentuates how ‘all’ were (severely) debilitated (means: made weak) by the horrific effects of war – there were no survivors

Question 3

In all my dreams, before my helpless slight

Answer 3

• Speaker switches to presenter tense — reflecting on the events of the past
• Functions as a [folate? ] in the poem as the PTSD experienced by the speaker is accentuated
• ‘Helpless’ – convents sense of despair and futility, as he was unable to save his comrade – similar to the guilt felt by many who fought in The Great War
• Short, isolated third stanza – reveals another aspect of the horror of war: even surviving war offers ceaseless future torment
• The speaker’s sleep is permanently haunted by the trauma of the death he has witnessed – he has not/ and cannot ever achieve the ‘rest’ mentioned in stanza one (the sole positive idea mentioned in stanza 1)
• Present tense – indicates these dreams are still yet to fade, to the present day
• The speaker, who has physically survived, even just for the moment, is permanently scarred by his life-long trauma

Question 4

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

Answer 4

• Asyndetic triadic emphasises the suffering of the dying man in his last moments
• Auditory tricolon communicates the obscenity of the moment in horrific detail
• Repetition of ‘all’ (last row) and ‘drowning’ – reiterates the barbaric nature of war

Question 5

my friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory

Answer 5

• Directly criticising propaganda of pro-war poets, such as Jessie Pope (Who’s for the game) and Owen Seaman (who wrote ‘Pro Patria’)
• ‘Friend’ used almost sardonically, as though the horrors of his experiences has instilled the speaker with deep cynicism
• Pope’s patriotic poems epitomised the glorification f war that Owen so despised – (in fact, an early draft of the poem was subtitled ’To Jessie Pope’)
• Direct address of ‘My friend’ intensifies his bitterness, and Owen is heavily critical of the antibody as well as ignorance of those who promote war without ever experiencing its realities on the battlefield
• Great pathos created as there is a tremendous sense of tragedy and injustice
• This admonitory(/warning/reprimanding) tone is particularly poignant for a contemporary audience, who are aware of how WW2 quickly followed, as if Owen’s warning had been blatantly ignored

Question 6

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria mori

Answer 6

• ‘Lie’ capitalised – represents the falsehood promulgated by the ruling powers, and believed by many of the population
• As someone, who has experienced war first-hand, Owen understands the true horrors of war
• The speaker makes it clear that the depiction of war as glorious is not just a misconception made by those unfamiliar with war – it is, rather, a ‘lie’ — a purposefully told falsehood intended to inspire young men to willingly give their lives to serve the political needs of their countries
• Latin phrase
• Written in Latin – only those who had received good quality education would have been able to translate the words (private/grammar school + elite universities) – as a result, Owen sends a somewhat coded message to those in power, the very people who benefited from such a privileges schooling, highlighting the irony between the reality the soldiers faced, and the supposed heroism contained within those words

• ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ (poem) is not only simply trying to reveal the horror of war to the unknowing public, but also the poem attempts to condemn the historical institutions and political/social structured that have, for time immemorial, sent young men to their deaths based on highly skewed/misleading tales of glory. The poem demands that the readers face thr truth and no longer remain complicit to the ‘Old Lie’ that it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.

Question 7

Title:

Dulce et Decorum Est

Answer 7

• Latin syntax – translates to ‘it is sweet and right’ (a line by Roman poet Horace) – frames the deceitful propaganda that young men were exposed to
• Critical response to Jessie Pope’s ‘whose for the game’, which glorified war

Question 8

Context

Answer 8

• Owen was wounded in combat in 1917 and evacuated to a war hospital after being diagnosed with Shell shock, where he wrote the poem
• Unable to escape the psychological effects of war, Owen returned to the battlefield where he died one week before the end of WW1 in the British Army’s trenches near the Sambre-Oise Canal
• Early versions of the poem were addressed ‘to a certain poetess’, referring to Jesse Pope, a journalist and poet who had espoused jingoistic enthusiasm for the war
• WW1 was a time of brand new warfare including chlorine gas, and barbed wire which made fighting on horseback no longer possible
• Dulce et decorum est = ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for your country’ – by using the first half of this phrase as the title for his poem, Owen demonstrates how propaganda poetry only told half a story, emphasising the heroic while concealing the horrific realities and dangers of war

Question 9

Form and structure

Answer 9

• Consists of four stanzas of various lengths
• The first 14 lines can be read as a sonnet, although they do not end with a rhyming couplet
• Sense of routine created via ABAB rhyme scheme = Heaviness and misery of the soldiers
• Stanza 1 = iambic pentameter reflects relentless but, sadly, routine nature of the horror experienced by the men
• Stanza 2 = pentameter disrupted by longer 11 syllable lines = sense of being out of time / disarray

Question 10

Notes

Answer 10

• Only uses half of the saying as the title to show how pro pro Ganda only showed the positives of going to war and completely ignored the negative, traumatising effects it has