Dulce et Decorum est by Willfred Owen Flashcards
‘Bent double like old beggars under sacks’
‘knock-kneed, coughing like hags’
—> -similes emphasise the exhaustion/ desperation
- old beggars: soldiers are like beggars who are physically and emotionally bankrupt
- physically broken by war
- -> old and hag suggest that even the most fit and young of men have aged significantly due to the harshness of war
‘Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!’
—> -Monosyllabic words/minor sentences.
- Increases speed, creates a frenzy of action reflecting the tension and urgency of the soldiers as they struggle to fit their masks in time.
- Contrasts the slow and dragged pace of stanza one; chaos is suddenly all around - capitalisation of second ‘GAS’ emphasises the panic
‘dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning
—> simile drawers out soldier’s painful death
- repetition of green for emphasis
- ‘drowning’ = graphic preparation for 3rd stanza
‘in all my dreams, before my helpless sight’
—> direct reference to PTSD here
- the war was never over for the soldier
‘guttering, choking, drowning’
—> -power of 3
-visual, auditory
repetition of drowning and the rhyme scheme with itself suggests the horrific imagery is stuck with the speaker’s mind, just like PTSD
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace”
—> - ‘if’ highlights the fact that Owen feels the reader is likely unable to fully comprehend the extent of PTSD
- ‘you’ shows that this stanza is taking a more accusatory tone in its direct addressing of the reader
-bitterness & anonymity
To smother is to suffocate, to injure or kill by depriving of air. More mildly, it can mean suppression, blanketing, or overwhelming. The speaker’s dreams are smothering because they weigh heavily on him and overwhelm him. The word also hearkens back to the choking effects of the gas and the suffocation of the gas masks. The speaker’s memories of smothering persist, invading his dreams. And the dreams themselves keep occurring, making the dreams themselves smothering as well.
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin:
—> “hanging” grotesque imagery highlights the horrors of war
—> religious imagery of ‘devils’ and ‘sin’ have connotations of evil which dehumanises the soldier, highlighting how war takes away the humanity from people
“ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud”
—> -auditory imagery
- ‘corrupted’ = damage that should not be there
unflinching visceral depiction of the effect of gas involving the senses
—> graphic simile intensity the dying soldier’s suffering, comparing it to cancer, an incurable disease once past a certain point, meaning a patient cannot be saved, just like the soldier
“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To Children…”
—> -brings conclusion (very long sentence showing the inescapable nature of this) addresses those who believed the propaganda
—> emphasises new soldier’s innocence, before they experience the horrors of war themselves
-a warning by Wilfred Owen of what war is truly like
‘The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum Est/ Pro Patria Mori.’
—> - bitter irony and sarcasm- very powerful line
-capital ‘L’ = proper noun. this is an accepted Lie
“It is sweet and proper to die for your country
In the title and the final two lines of this “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen alludes to an ode by the Roman poet Horace. Horace’s ode encouraged young men to find fulfillment and discipline in military service. The poem criticizes cowardice and weakness, pointing out that everyone dies in the end, whether gloriously or not. Given this, Horace argues that it is best to strive for courage and a steely temperament.
Owen includes the allusion to Horace for exactly the opposite reason. Owen’s poem—which is full of brutal, awful death that is marked by only confusion and agony, and to which glory and courage could not even begin to apply—seeks to expose the entire traditional belief in the glory and honor of war as being a lie. That he includes the original lines from Horace, and not a paraphrase or English translation, makes clear that it is the entire tradition, from Roman antiquity to the time of World War I, that he sees as fraudulent and destructive. Put another way: Owen seeks to undermine and refute what he is alluding to.
Form and structure:
alternate rhymes of ABAB reflecting the soldiers relentless suffering
enjambments and caesurae create a disjointed rhythm and variable pace
-irregular stanza length and metre add to the tone of uncertainty throughout the poem, reflecting war’s unpredictable nature
Line 14 ends with drowning and so does Line 16 (identical rhyme)
At the same time, its unexpected appearance links that present to the past, which makes sense since the third stanza is actually talking about how the speaker can’t escape from the trauma of the past (seeing the other soldier die in the gas attack).
In this poem, it has a deadening effect on the rhythm, dragging readers back to what’s already been said as they attempt to move forward. This, in turn, echoes the way that the image of the dying soldier endlessly repeats in the speaker’s dreams.
Good old context:
Dulce et Decorum est (1917)
- Experiences of war: Owen was wounded in combat in 1917 and evacuated to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh after being diagnosed with shell shock. Owen rejoined his regiment in 1918 and returned to France. He was awarded the Military Cross for bravery at Amiens. He was killed on November 4 of that year while attempting to lead his men across the Sambre-Oise canal at Ors, aged 25 years old.
- Challenging propaganda poetry: Owen’s poems stand in stark contrast to the patriotic poems of war written by earlier poets of Great Britain, such as Rupert Brooke and Jessie Pope. A review of Owen’s poems published on December 29, 1920, just two years after his death, read, “Others have shown the disenchantment of war, have unlegended the roselight and romance of it, but none with such compassion for the disenchanted nor such sternly just and justly stern judgment on the idyllisers.”
- ‘Dulce et decorum est’: The latin phrase ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ translates as 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 heroism or soldiers while concealing the horrific reality and danger of war.
