Dulce et Decorum Est Flashcards
Form
Iambic pentameter with some exceptions
ABAB rhyme scheme- relentlessness of suffering and inevitability of war.
Enjambement and caesura create a disjointed rhythm and a varying pace, war is unreliable, you never know when your whole world will be broken
Irregular stanza length and metre add to the sense of uncertainty- long stanza length- they want to get as much description in as possible, as any day could their last
Caesura show the slow pace of walking
Complex used to show vivid memories, panic at helplessness, PTSD
Repetition and exclamatory phrases change the pace, showing how quickly ones life can end
Structure
Describing soldiers walking
Sudden gas attack
Back to present
The story of the faceless soldier
Memory into current affect of the memory. Severe tone turns panicked and then ironic at the end
‘In all my dreams’ separated but still conforming to stanza 2 rhyme means that he is trying to be the same but he is irrevocably changed. Also years has passed but he still sees this thing
Last line ends abruptly - as it is possible for every soldier’s life to. Insinuation that every soldiers life ends as soon as they believed that old Lie and joined the war.
Language
Brutal reality
Does not glorify war
Like old beggars
Knock kneed
Coughing like hags
All went lame;all blind;
Simile
Subverts expectations - not patriotic heroes
Repetition of ‘all’ - there is no exception, war as a concept breaks everything
Haunting flares
Visual imagery
Towards our distant rest began to trudge
Death?
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!
Direct speech shocks and involves the audience , showing frenzy
Clumsy helmets
Political
Supposed to be life-saving
flound’ring like a man in fire or lime
Horrific simile
under a green sea I saw him drowning
metaphor -> nature is killing him. Human nature? Greed? It is the nature of war for people to die horrific deaths, but it still always happens.
Colour imagery shows evil and sickness and death and poison
guttering, choking, drowning
Tricolon, increasing desperation
Participles don’t indicate a tense, show how he still sees it and still fears it- the actions and fear are still immediate to him
watch the white eyes writhing in his face
Alliteration emphasises the pain of the soldier and also the helplessness
Like a devils sick of sin
The devil is sick of sin -> his entire purpose. Emphasises just how morally disgusting war is and how much death there really was
Also dehumanises the soldiers -> war has caused them to lose their humanity
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud, of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues
Obscene similes intensify suffering
‘Obscene’ - no-one should suffer it
Bitter suggests futility
Realistic images of war
Owen doesn’t attempt to glorify war, he’s condemning it
Bent double
Knock-kneed
Broken imagery
They have been snapped by war; morally too?
Alliteration shows their deformity, the fragility and disjointedness with which they walk
Similes
‘Like old beggars’
Old-> loss of youth and innocence
Beggars -> begging to be free, begging not to have ever done it in the first place. Begging is illegal, makes the state seem cold towards their situation
An ecstasy of fumbling
Ecstasy normally has connotations of excitement - here its fear and panic
Also the drug- shows how they’re not themselves, war has changed them mentally
‘Fumbling’ and ‘clumsy’ shows how ill prepared they were, blames the state
Froth corrupted lungs
His life has been stolen from him by something who is just using him as a pawn for their own gain and doesn’t care
Aural imagery
‘If you could hear’ -> directly appeals to us but by not explicitly describing, Owen forces us to imagine the sounds, deeply harrowing
Repetition of drowning
It’s used to rhyme with itself - it’s the only thing the author can think of , he can’t move on
They are both drowning
High zest
Ironic tone
Disdainful
Use of Latin
Gives the poem traditional tone -> he is confused at how how dying is considered traditional and glorified. Exemplifies that war has always been around, always will, constant, so much death
People don’t fully understand the price they pay for the glory
Lie
It is well established
It is so heinous it deserves its own capital
Innocent
Children
Friend
All used at the end subvert the harrowing descriptions we have just been bombarded with, making them even more visceral as we are forced to remember that these are innocent children who have been destroyed
The fact he’s still generous enough to call us his friend, humanises him. No human should suffer this.
Drunk with fatigue
Metaphors show inability to function properly
It has played with them mentally, they are not the same person, more morally lax -> killers
