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Dulce Et Decorum Est Analysis

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Wilfred Owen was a British university English professor who was fluent in the French language and taught English in France from 1913 to 1915 (Hibberd 110). Owen was conscripted into the British army in 1915 as a Second Lieutenant and eventually became a Company Commander who led “…Lancashire soldiers … some who had been overseas bore the scares of wounds and it seemed absurd for a novice to be giving them orders” (188). Tragically, 25-year-old Owen was killed in action on November 4, 1918, when his unit crossed over a canal under hostile German machine gun fire (365). One week later, Allied and Central forces mutually agreed to the Armistice of Compiègne (Falls 416), which ended World War One (WWI).
General William Tecumseh Sherman, who experienced the American Civil War first hand, stated: “War is cruelty” (Sherman). Sherman’s honesty about the disgusting aspects of war was poetically shared a half-century later. Owen wrote the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” from the perspective of an experienced British WWI soldier who adamantly disagreed with glorified war propaganda. The universal theme of "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen is society (the media, authors, the government, recruiters, and more) should not portray war (especially to our youth) and the act of dying for one's country (through propaganda posters, poems, children's books, commercials, films, songs, etc.) in a way that is glorious and appealing but rather in a way that is truthful because otherwise,

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