Dulce et Decorum Est - analysis Flashcards
‘Dulce et Decorum Est’
- from a Latin saying which was often quoted at the start of WW1 to encourage men to fight
- it means ‘it is sweet and honourable’ yet in this poem Owen presents harsh and unglamorous reality of trench warfare
‘Bent double’
show soldiers are so exhausted they can’t even stand up
‘like old beggars’ ‘coughing like hags’
simile suggesting the men are prematurely old and weakened
‘began to trudge’
verb suggests a slow and heavy walk because of harsh conditions suffered by the soldiers
‘Men marched asleep’
metaphor. suggests extreme exhaustion of soldiers. they are ‘deaf’ ‘lame’ and ‘blind’ suggesting war has broken these men
‘Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!’
- sense of urgency as soldiers scramble around trying to fit their gas masks
- pace of poem quickens
- exclamation marks make it sound exciting
‘yelling out and stumbling’
speaker describes terror and panic of a soldier who was nit managed to pull on his gas mask in time
‘In all my dreams’
speaker describes recurrent, haunting nightmares of gas attack, showing he can never have peace, not even in his sleep
‘helpless’ ‘guttering,choking,drowning’
- his dreams recount the feeling of helplessness as he watched his fellow man suffocate
- listed verbs to emphasises a slow,drawn-out death
‘you too could pace’
addresses the reader directly. he feels if those back home had experienced the horrors of war first-hand, they would not convince men to go to war
‘flung him in’
grotesque image of the man’s eyes rolling back suggests he is still alive when ‘flung’ into the wall. verb shows there is no time or space for dignity in death at war and no burial for the victims
‘gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs’
more gruesome imagery to emphasise the horrific consequences of gas attack
‘To children’
shows Owen’s belief that war is wasteful of young lives. Owen feels that impressionable young men are lured towards death by the false promise of ‘glory’ and he is blaming the attitude back at home that serving your country is glorious
‘The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est/ Pro patria mori.’
Latin used as the final lines of poem. It means ‘It is sweet and honourable to die for your country’. Owen rejects this as an ‘old lie’ and highlights war is cruel, degrading and horrifying
