A Comparison of Dulce Et Decorum Est and Exposure Essay

Wilfred Owen's war poems central features include the wastage involved with war, horrors of war and the physical effects of war. These features are seen in the poems "Dulce Et Decorum Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth" here Owen engages with the reader appealing to the readers empathy that is felt towards the soldier. These poems interact to explore the experiences of the soldiers on the battlefields including the realities of using gas as a weapon in war and help to highlight the incorrect glorification of war. This continuous interaction invites the reader to connect with the poems to develop a more thorough

From the earliest records of history, accounts of war have been portrayed as valiant acts of heroism. Children and adults alike have gathered together to hear tales of war and its glory. From the stories of Alexander the Great to recent-day movies like Saving Private Ryan, war has been praised and exalted with words such as bravery, honor, and freedom. However, Wilfred Owen's poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" shows the ugly, horrible side of fighting. By use of gripping words and vivid descriptions, Owen paints incredible pictures of what World War I was really like. He tears away the glory and drama and reveals the real essence of fighting: fear, torture, and death. No

The Soldier, by Rupert Brooke, and Dulce et Decorum Est, written by Wilfred Owen three years later, are both war poems, written by officers that fought on the trenches. However, the poems have very different attitudes to war: The Soldier supports the war and glorifies it, while Dulce et Decorum Est is anti-war. In this essay I intend to explore the differences between the poems – I will commence by talking about the religious ideas, which leads me on to the representation of death. After that I will talk about the naivety of the poet, and the poem’s views on enlisting. Finally, I will talk about the structure of the poem, which gives a message about the author’s views on the war.

Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem made of four stanzas in an a, b, a, b rhyme scheme. There is hardly any rhythm to the entire poem, although Owen makes it sound like it is in iambic pentameter in some lines. Every stanza has a different amount of lines, ranging from two to twelve. To convey the poem’s purpose, Owen uses an unconventional poem style and horrid, graphic images of the frontlines to convey the unbearable circumstances that many young soldiers went through in World War I. Not only did these men have to partake in such painful duties, but these duties contrasted with the view of the war made by the populace of the mainland country. Many of these people are pro-war and would never see the battlefield themselves. Owen’s use of word choice, imagery, metaphors, exaggeration, and the contrast between the young, war-deteriorated soldiers and populace’s favorable view of war creates Owen’s own unfavorable view of the war to readers.

Owen’s depiction of the various stages of horror and trauma that war initiates provides insight into the suffering succumbed by soldiers. Firstly, Owen employs hard consonants in the first line in order to express the harsh experience of war, depicting soldiers as “bent double”, comparing them to “old beggars

‘Dulce et decorum Est’ and ‘anthem for doomed youth’ are poems written by Wilfred Owen about his time in ‘the great war’ and all the terrible things the soldiers had to go through and all the pain it caused to not only the soldiers but also the people still at home and because of this and many other reasons these poems do reflect their context really well. And in these poems we get a first person view over the war as Wilfred Owen was also in the war, so he wrote a much clearer poem than those who weren’t in the war or who stayed home during the rough times.

War poetry has a massive capability of evoking strong emotions and images for everyday people reminding them what life was like fighting in war. Many poets have written on this topic including Isaac Rosenberg and Siegfried Sassoon but the poem I will be talking about today, Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen, captures the reader and transports them back to a time of war and hardship, reminding them of our history and how society’s attitudes all those years ago were so naive to the horrors of war.

Poetry is a form of writing that can be used to convey very strong emotions and ideas to the reader, this can be seen in the works of famous poet Wilfred Owen, Owen is the most well-known English trench warfare poet who fought in World War I. His military career began in 1915, when he enlisted himself in the Artists Rifle group and soon became a second lieutenant, like many young men he was ready to fight and die for his country. In 1917 he was wounded in battle and was diagnosed with shell shock; the year he spent in the hospital is when he wrote most of his poetry. His injury influenced many of his poems such as ‘’Conscious’’. Some of his most famous works include ‘’Dulce et Decorum Est’’, ‘’Insensibility’’, ‘’Anthem for Doomed Youth’’, ‘’Futility’’, and ‘’Strange Meeting’’. Owen was shot and died in battle on November 4, 1918; he was only 25 years old. In his poetry, Owen claims that war is a waste of human life and that it is horrible and cruel.

The poet tells us, the glory of war is just an “old lie”. Owen shows the indignity of death in war as the dying man was “flung” in a wagon instead of being honored for his bravery and duty as the way they were told. The last stanza goes into sickening detail of the dying man, “at every jolt the blood – come gargling from his froth-corrupted lungs”, the “white eyes writhing” in his face. The use of alliteration and assonance emphasizes how the memory has a powerful impact on those who witnessed the scene. Owen’s vivid imagery consumes the reader in horror, pity, shock, even disgust and is enough to sear the heart and mind. The cruel reality of war can be clearly seen as men lose their lives in the most pointless futile manner as they are just “flung” aside during death. Just by reading, the readers can perceive Owen’s bitter and disparaging tone towards war, the propaganda and sectors of society who glorified it.

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘The Soldier’ are two poems that talk about war, specifically World War One. Although both poems have the same topic, the message given are vastly different from each other. Whilst Wilfred Owen emphasises the horrors of war and the severe conditions soldiers were in, in Dulce et Decorum Est, Rupert Brooke glorifies the war and expresses that it is honourable to die for your country. Brooke’s poem is designed to reassure young men that it is noble to die for one’s country whereas Owen’s poem asserts the unpleasant realities of the war.

Owen uses lucid, disturbing language to express the devastating effects of the attack, as he realistically describes the death of a fellow soldier. “And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.../Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light under a green sea, I saw him drowning.” (12-14) The speaker witnesses this graphic death of a man who didn't put on his gas mask in time. The event is described using diction such as “floundering”, “green sea”, and “drowning”, as these words are understandable to the reader, leaving them with a powerful and haunting impression. Owen then speaks of the trauma that this experience has left him with, effectively using the technique of connotation. “In all my dreams before my helpless sight/He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” (15-16) The short length of this stanza suggests that the nightmares that he is faced with are too gruesome to properly describe in detail. This captivating imagery leaves the reader in deep shock and disgust. By this point, Owen has successfully imparted his idea to his

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was an English poet and soldier, whose renowned compositions were distinguished in their delivery of a tenacious condemnation of the First World War. Born, 18 March 1893 in Oswestry, Shropshire, Owen commenced his poetic endeavours through his adolescence, and after having completed his schooling, soon became a teaching assistant and aspired for vocational pursuits. However, these were soon disparaged with the eminence of the Fist World War, and in 1915, he eventually returned to England, where he enlisted in the Artists ' Rifles Officers ' Training Corps. On January 1917, Wilfred Owen left for the Western Front, where his imaginative existence was drastically changed after involvement within numerous traumatic experiences. Soon afterwards, Owen was diagnosed as suffering from neurasthenia, and he was subsequently evacuated to England and arrived at Craiglockhart War Hospital, where he became acquainted with the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who shared many of his views and revolutionised Owen’s style and conception of poetry. He returned to France in August 1918 and in October was awarded the Military Cross for bravery, yet, shortly after; on 4 November 1918 Wilfred Owen was killed upon crossing the Sambre–Oise Canal. Wilfred Owen’s most renowned compositions include: Anthem for Doomed Youth, Dulce et Decorum est and Futility, each of which transgress barriers in delivering a harrowing condemnation of War.

Owen uses language, structure and imagery to present the realities of war in ‘Dulce et Decorum est’. Owen himself was an officer in the First World War and therefore speaks from experience. Owen airs his views through multiple poems he wrote throughout his time in war, all of his poems echo the same negative outlook on war which at the time was very unusual due to people like Jessie Pope supporting and encouraging war through poetry. Owen reveals the physical damage to the men in the war using spondees such as ‘blood-shod’, which give the impression of the men being dirty and un-clean due to the awful conditions of war.

His experiences with the brutality and reality of war influenced his work heavily as he had suffered from PTSD, and watching his squad mates die in front of him. Owen had created famous poems in his attendance at the military hospital, the ones that will be focused on is ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Mental

Wilfred Owen reflects a dislike of how war is portrayed in his poems “Dulce et Decorum” and “Disabled”. Owen enlisted to fight in World War I in 1915 after teaching English for two years in Bordeaux. It was during his enlistment that he was sent to the front lines of the war in France. Two years later Owen was sent to the Craiglockhart War Hospital to be treated for shell shock until he could return to combat. Then, in 1918 five of his poems were published and he was killed in combat one week before the war end. His poems would go on to portray the life of soldiers in World War I and mock the ones who claimed it was honorable to fight in the war while they were safe at home ( Mays). “Disabled”, one of these poems, told the story of a young solider that had been tricked into thinking that joining the military was the most honorable and good thing to do and later returned regretful and broken (Owen). “Dulce et Decorum” was another one of these famous poems. It described the horrors that soldiers went through during gas attacks and “protested against the mentality of that perpetuates war” (Parfitt).