The Harsh Realities of War Illustrated in Dulce et Decorum Est?

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

The soldiers who had attended the war were shown to have died brutally, like “cattle”, yet when reaching the home front, it is seen that they are laid to rest in a much more civil and dignified manner. The concept of this can be seen as an extended metaphor throughout the entire poem, with the battle front seen as a world filled with violence, fear and destruction, where as the home front is perceived as a place marked by order and ritual, a civilized world. The second sonnet opens with “What candles may be held to speed them all?”, invoking a more softer and compassionate tone towards the audience, more specifically through Owen’s use of a rhetorical question. It captures the readers’ attention, engaging them to feel empathetic and notice the shift of energy from anger and bitterness to a sadder and more somber tone. Owen’s use of descriptive language, as simple as it seems, such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ provokes the audience to view the horrors of the war as if they had been placed onto children, because in reality the ‘men; who had signed themselves into war to fight in glory for their country had really only just been boys themselves.

This technique serves to emphasize the solemn and serious content. In stanza one, Owen describes the soldiers as they set off towards the army base from the front line. The simile "Bent double, like old beggars"(1) not only says that they are tired, but that they are so tired they have been brought down to the level of beggars who have not slept in a bed for weeks on end. Also, the simile "coughing like hags"(2) helps to depict the soldiers? poor health and depressed state of mind. Owen makes us picture the soldiers as ill, disturbed and utterly exhausted. He shows that this is not the government-projected stereotype of a soldier, in gleaming boots and crisp new uniform, but is the true illustration of the poor mental and physical state of the soldiers. By telling us that many of the platoon are barefoot, Owen gives us an idea of how awful the soldiers? journey already is; it then gets even worse. Owen tells us that the soldiers, although they must have been trained, still do not notice the deadly mustard gas shells being fired at them from behind; such is the extent of their exhaustion.

The purpose of war is again in question through the ironic titles evidenced in most of Owen’s poems. In ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, the sweet and fitting death is contrasted against the bitter and

Young lives are wasted in war which only increases the cruelty and meaningless of it. Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Dulce et Decorum est” follows the death of a young soldier. In the line “If you could hear at every jolt the blood froth from his corroded lungs. The strong use of visual and sensory imagery depicts what the soldier’s final moments of how his life ended, the soldier died a painful death from suffocation due to a fierce gas attack.

Owen paints a picture of the oppressiveness of war and the fears that constantly follow them to help create the tone. Owen talks about the repercussions of war and how the soldiers never rest completely because they are always on the lookout for another attack. Once optimistic, young, healthy soldiers have been turned into depressed, fatigued, and hunger ridden shells of the human beings they once were (Spacey). By comparing parts the war to “smothering dreams” and to being as “obscene as cancer” (Owen 494), Owen proves that the war is not anything of which to be proud. However, it is in the last few lines that Owen truly expresses his disapproval of the war. He says it is a lie to tell children that it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country. He accuses America for taking advantage of young men who are “ardent for some desperate glory” (Owen 494) by convincing them that war is a way to receive that glory. Owen

Owen, in his war poetry reveals the awful reality of war and its effect on the young men involved. Given that these men are suffering in treacherous conditions, Owen expresses empathy towards the wretched soldiers who are fighting in a battle which they have little hope of surviving. Owen discloses his sympathy towards these young men by revealing the harsh conditions they live in and exposing their suffering both physical and mental. He exposes the reality of the war in an attempt to reveal the lives shattered to the unknowing public who do not know the true war conditions.

In the first stanza, Owen describes a regiment marching through sludge, something not unusual for soldiers at the time. In the second stanza, however, he introduces a new threat, mustard gas. The speaker exclaims: “Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!” (Owen L9). As most of the soldiers are putting on their gas masks, one fails to do so. The speaker is left watching the man struggle: “flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…guttering, choking, drowning.” (Owen L12-16). After watching his fellow soldier succumb to the hellish effects of the gas, the speaker could not erase the images from his memory. In the last stanza, he chastised the people at home who romanticize war and challenged them to think about how admirable it is to watch a man die: “the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin” (Owen L19-20).

This image is definitely not the glamorous picture of glory that, say army recruitment presents; worse, the soldiers are doing worse than civilians. As soon as the next stanza “[m]en marched asleep. Many had lost their boots” (5). They have lost their usual awareness and move mechanically; that doesn’t sound appealing! It gets worse: “[b]ut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind” (6). So now they’re limping, apparently wounded, covered in blood, and can’t even see? It worsens further, “[d]runk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind” (7-8). The soldiers are so exhausted it incapacitates them, and they can no longer hear the bullets being fired. This poem sounds like a distorted nightmare, except the speaker is living it, and even reliving the torment of the soldier’s death while he is unconscious. Owen’s wording expresses that the soldiers are merely men, deteriorating and inconceivably overwhelmed the opposite of positive war poetry containing glory and honor.

Owen uses vivid war themes & imagery to visualize the reality on the Western front. We are able to feel the confusion, haze, chaos & destruction that is occurring around him, an example is; “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling” (Owen 9-10). This helps to relate to the frenzied situation & empathize with the young soldier fighting a never ending war in muddy trenches against an enemy that had new fighting technology. An enemy that used trench warfare, poison gas, machine guns which made the war much more deadly than previous

Owen does this again through the aural imagery, ‘the shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; and bugles calling for them from sad shires’. This shows the effects of war on the soldiers and causes an emotional connection between them in the reader which therefore enforces the harsh reality of war. Both of these aspects challenge the reader’s perspective on war as they both contradict the glorification it receives through propaganda.

The rhetorical question “When can their glory fade?” suggests young men who are patriotic and enlist, will have a legacy of ever-lasting ‘glory,’ despite the certainty of death. In Contrast, Dulce et Decorum Est demonstrates Owen’s disgust of the futility of war and the conditions under which men died, “as under a green sea, I saw him drowning” and “his hanging face, like a devil sick of sin.” This sense of loathing is illustrated by use of a sardonic and dismissive tone, “children ardent for some desperate glory”, and through his descriptions, Owen conveys his uncensored depiction of the realities of war based on his

There are several image groups used in this poem, two of which I will be reviewing. The first image group is “Sleep or Dreams”. Owen often refers to many subconscious states like the afore mentioned one, the reason why he uses these references so frequently is that war is made apparent to the reader as being a subconscious state as the realities often seem to be too hard to except, an example which backs up my opinion is: “Men marched asleep”. The poet often refers to dreams. I believe part of the reason for this is that by dreaming you are escaping from the physical reality and surroundings and due to the horror and constant threat of death the soldiers would constantly be dreaming of home and their loved ones. However,

In majority of Owen’s poem, he demonstrates the true image of war and the impact it has on the soldiers rather than masking it with the lies of pride

In both poems Owen shows us the physical effect of war, Wilfred starts the poems showcasing unendurable stress the men were going through. Appalling pictures are created and expressed through similes and metaphors. Owen’s lexical choices link to the semantic field of the archaic which conveys the atavistic effects of war. The men are compared to old beggars, hags, the once young men have been deprived of their youth and turned into old women, the loss of masculinity express the how exhausting and ruthless war was. The men were barely awake from lack of sleep, they “marched in sleep” their once smart uniforms resembling “sacks”. He also expresses how