Dulce Et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen Flashcards
‘Beggar’
‘Like old beggars under sacks’
Soldiers are physically and emotionally deprived of energy. Loss of individuality and reduced to large mass of exhaustion. Alliterative pattern make it feel words are clumped together
‘Drowning’ ‘Dreams’
‘Drowning’ ‘In all my dreams’
Present participles of ‘drowning’ implicates struggle from gas. Owen is haunted by dreams and the figure of dying soldiers. For the first time, individuality is used suggesting image is burned in Ownen’s mind
‘Smothering’
‘If in some smothering dreams’
He is suffocating in the nightmare of the soldier who drowned. The medium is gas and he is haunted by how he could not save the soldier. Now he is suffocating as the soldier was.
‘Devil’
‘Like a devil’s sick of sin’
Simile suggests the monstrous evil of war as hell trying to horrify the readers into realisation that war is not a game and is truly horrendous
‘Dulce et’
‘The old Lie: Dulce et decorm est Pro patria mori’
Owens believes it is a lie that ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland’. His shares his disapproval of the propaganda encouraging youth to war. He thinks it is wasteful to die for the homeland showing juxtaposition between the title and content
