Dulce et Decorum Est Flashcards
Context:
Based on gas attack on 12th January 1917.
Wrote in Craiglockhart whilst suffering shell-shock.
Who was the poem dedicated to?
Early drafts are dedicated to ‘a certain poetess’.
Jessie Pope, who had never stepped foot on a battlefield, but wrote jingoistic poems like,
‘Who’s for the game?’, depicting war as a rugby match.
What is the last stanza focuses on?
The ‘unspecified ‘you’’.
Owen directs his contempt at this ‘you’.
Title:
Somewhat ironic.
Derived from ‘On Virtue’,
meaning ‘it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’.
Iconoclastic poem, criticising the beliefs of the time.
‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks’.
Simile, men in their ‘prime’ have been aged.
‘Coughing like hags’.
‘Prematurely aged’.
Guttural consonance.
‘Haunting flares we turn our backs’.
Omnipresent sense of war.
‘Trudge’.
Great difficulty, all to return to the ‘distant rest’, which would be surrounded by mice, lice, trench foot, as this was set on a perilously rainy day.
‘Blood-shod’.
Their shoes are replaced by blood.
‘Drunk with fatigue’.
Delirium tremens.
‘Gas! Gas! Quick boys!’
Exclamative diction is two spondees after another.
Caesura followed by ‘Gas! Gas! Quick boys!’
Pause= moment of realisation for the boys before they have to resort to safety.
‘Ecstacy of fumbling’
‘Intoxicated by a sudden rush of adrenaline’.
‘Like a man in fire or lime’.
Brutal and slow death.
Ellipsis at the end highlights there is nothing they can do.
Third stanza:
Brevity, highlights that he is haunted by this image, bit as a soldier he simply needs to move on to save himself.
