Dulce et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen Context Flashcards
Outline the setting of Dulce
• “Dulce et Decorum Est” is set during WW1 on the western front in France
o The purpose of the poem is to protest against the mentality that perpetuated war -
set apart from much other anti-war literature by the effectiveness of Owen’s tightly controlled depiction of war
Explain the titular meaning ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’
• Throughout the war, this Latin phrase—a quotation from the Roman poet Horace - was frequently used in inspirational poems and essays
o In a letter to his mother describing the poem, Owen sarcastically augments the title, “Sweet! And decorous!”
o Although “Dulce et Decorum Est” is seldom considered to be technically Owen’s finest poem, it is nevertheless among his most famous because it captures so compellingly not only the tribulations of the soldiers who fought in the war, but also the belief that the patriotic rhetoric on the home front and the government’s refusal to negotiate a peace were more to blame for their suffering than the opposing soldiers
o Owen, who was an officer with the Manchester Regiment, planned to publish “Dulce et Decorum Est” in a volume that was to present the truth about the war, which he knew to be utterly at odds with the belligerent cant that appeared daily in newspapers and in magazines in England
Suggest to whom Owen was writing this poem
• Two drafts of the poem carry the dedication “To Jessie Pope etc.” (two other drafts simply say “To a certain Poets”), suggesting that Owen had originally specifically targeted such individuals as Jessie Pope and poems such as ‘Who’s for the game’, jingoistically pressuring men into enlistment in tandem with handing out white feathers
o In the end, Owen removed the sarcastic dedication, perhaps to make clear that he wished to address a much broader readership
o Most people in England greeted the outbreak of war in August, 1914, with enthusiasm
o Wars of recent memory were limited, distant affairs; the people expected adventure and heroism from a contained conflict that would be over by Christmas
Explain Owen’s depiction of trench warfare
• In the opening lines of “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owen vividly portrays the price of trench warfare, the exhaustion of soldiers who become like old women, “hags,” coughing, lame, blind, and deaf
o The poet speaks for these individuals who, though they no longer function in tidy military unison, are joined by their shared experience of a nightmare
o The deadly gases (at first chlorine, later phosgene and mustard gas) that remain a hallmark of World War I were first used on a large scale on the Western Front. Although soldiers were equipped with respirator masks, 185,000 British and Empire gas casualties – Imperial War Museum
o The gas, whose effects Owen describes in the second stanza, is the odourless and colourless mustard gas frequently used after July, 1917
o Detectable only by its sting, it gave its victims only seconds to protect themselves and caused severe, often fatal, burns to exposed skin and lungs
o Lt Gen Charles Ferguson: ‘a cowardly form of warfare’
• The poem also expresses “the pity of war,” the theme Owen also articulated in the short preface he drafted for the intended collection
o English poetry, he explains, is “not yet fit to speak” of heroes, but speaking the truth of war may act as a warning to the next generation
Explain the circumstance of Owen’s drafting of ‘Dulce’
• Owen drafted the poem in August, 1917, at the age of twenty-four, while he was recovering at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh
o He finished it about one year later, perhaps shortly before his death. The event described in the poem is almost certainly based on actual experience, as Owen reported such “smothering” dreams to his doctor
o Recovering from concussion, trench fever, and “shell shock” or “neurasthenia” (terms often used as euphemisms for exhaustion), Owen’s stay at Craiglockhart was crucial in his poetic development, in part because he became acquainted with the more experienced soldier-poet Siegfried Sassoon and, even more important, because it gave him a chance to work steadily during a period when his sense of poetic purpose was most urgent.
Explain the technical expression of the poem
• Owen was deeply concerned about the technical problems involved in the expression of his passionate convictions
o The first stanza employs heavy, single-syllable rhymes throughout; to convey exhaustion, Owen breaks up the rhythm, which composes itself in the third line
o After several comparatively regular lines, a dramatic shift occurs with the fragmentary syntax of the first lines of the stanza about the gas
o The four repeating “um” sounds of those line in the words “fumbling,” “clumsy,” “someone,” “stumbling” produce interior rhymes that create a sudden, panicked sense of double time
o After the ellipsis, an eerie, dreamlike calm sets in as the poet coolly, objectively describes the man drowning “as in a green sea.” The couplet literally rehearses the moment as do the dreams, and in place of a rhyme it repeats the falling cadence of “drowning” with extraordinary effect, as though poetry itself must stumble and fall at this juncture
o The final stanza exploits the steady, relentless rhythm of iambic pentameter for the purpose of “accumulatio,” heaping up declarations in couplets that each describe more of what could be seen
o “My friend” announces a last turn: a direct accusation against the time-honoured, respectable, capitalized “Lie.” The extra foot in line 25 shatters the iambic pentameter and produces particularly heavy stresses on the two long syllables of “old Lie,” enhancing the resonance of the foreshortened half-line that ends the poem
